So this is my friend Anthony from the Magnetic Memory Method. He's a memory expert and I will switch to him. He's going to be giving us some tips on, you know, how to remember dreams better, how to improve your memory and just memory in general. So yeah, why don't you just go ahead and introduce yourself, I should say, and tell everyone who you are what you do. All right, well, hello everyone. Thanks for having me here, Stefan, and really appreciate the opportunity to speak to you all. I'm a memory enthusiast, a memory student myself and a teacher of memory techniques at MagneticMemoryMethod.com. And one of my fascinations in how that I got to know Stefan is that I'm really interested in dream recall as a life development practice as something that is a memory exercise and something that enables you to develop more creativity. And that comes from maybe something we can talk about basically quite a long period of personal research in how can I remember lots and lots of dreams so I have lots of cool ideas and novels to write and just better insight about myself and even some problem-solving tools without a lot of the woo-woo of dream interpretation.  Yeah, yeah, I guess it's really subjective with dream interpretation. Cool, okay, so I've put together some questions that I think will help you guys just with dream recall and stuff. So the first one is for improving your dream recall, what would you say if you had to distill it into a sort of a basic idea? What should people practice on a daily basis in order to recall their dreams better? Well, the first thing I would say is intend to recall your dreams, which is a pretty common technique, and then actually write them down, get into the habit of intending to write them down. So a lot of people, they'll just say, I remember my dreams or I will remember my dreams and so forth. But what I did that had the most impact for me and for a lot of my students is I remember my dreams, I write them down. And so one thing you can do is have an actual journal that's dedicated just for that, date the night before, and have that intention. And then the first thing you do when you get up is start writing in the journal. And within a couple of days, you should start to see not only more dream recall, but greater depth of dream recall in terms of duration, and also multiple dreams or, you know, you just see a greater connection to them. So that's very important. Cool. Is there any way that we can remember dreams that have happened sort of more than a few days ago, not just, you know, yesterday, but more than a few days ago? Right, yeah. Well, the writing will help with that. Also reviewing the writing that you do. And you can also use a memory palace. And I wouldn't necessarily recommend getting into a memory palace right away. But when you have reliable dream recall, you can use a memory palace to remember certain episodes, certain symbols, images and so forth. And then you'll have much better recall geographically back into the past. There's something called a mnemonic calendar or a magnetic calendar that I teach, and it enables you to actually remember the exact numbers of days. So, you know, it was June 25th that I had a dream where I was with my business partner and great friend Jonathan Levy, and we were on the roof of this building, and we were just talking there about all our business stuff. The important thing was the symbol of being on the roof of this building for so long. And I remember that it was May 25th. I remember it was that day, because I have an image for every day. And when I still write down my dreams, but I don't really like the effect so much anymore of like getting up and writing down the dreams and then going back to sleep and then getting up. So what I'll often do is use my bedroom as a memory palace and just create a core image up in the corner of the ceiling and just stick it there. And then I'll remember later when I wake up and I'll just jot down my dreams and so forth. And then it's the 25th, because there's a giant nail that I associate there. And there's really good to the reasons why it's a nail. But anyway, 25 is always a nail. It could be Neil Ferguson, if you're in the UK, like you are. Yeah, that's really interesting. So with them anchoring things, like you say anchoring into the corner of the room, how would that work? How would I go about doing that? Just if I knew nothing about memory or anchoring, what would I do? Well, it really helps to know about the basics of memory, memory techniques and memory palaces. So just take a step back. A lot of how we learn is through association.  And it helps consolidate memories with much stronger links between the neural pathways. That's all the science talk. But basically, it's just associating one thing with another. One way to think about how that might work is if you think about a movie like The Matrix, right? Yeah, and you remember that it's Keanu Reeves as Neil, well, you're associating Keanu Reeves with Neil. Right. And then if you think, well, who was Morpheus? Well, who's associated with Morpheus? Lawrence Fishburne, right? So our minds learn those things as associations. Then if I want to remember on the 25th of last month, that I had a dream with Jonathan, well, I need to use an association between a dream image and a corner in my bedroom. And I need to wind them together in an associative manner. So I built a memory palace out of the bedroom. And then I can just get that image. And because I want to remember it as the 25th, I have an image for 25, right?  And then I'll be able to tell Jonathan, hey, I had this weird dream on the 25th about you and I, we were up on this roof. And, you know, Jonathan is already an association, but roof I need to think about. So to remember it, it wasn't in the dream, but to make sure I remember that it was on a roof, I see him just pushing his feet through the roof and it's really kind of, I change it a little bit to make it more striking and impactful. So yeah, stuff like that. It's just layers of association. And if you can get a little bit of sense of sound, like hearing his voice, hearing the sound of his feet, pushing through the roof, feeling what that would feel like. It's not just visual, it's pushing through all these things, maybe a smell, a taste. It really, really helps to make it much more memorable. That's really cool. I've just thought, I think, I don't know if he made this technique up, but I read this book by Darren Brown and he was saying about the linking method. And that's pretty much a similar thing where, you know, you link things one to the other by using all your senses.  Yeah, that's really cool. And it does work as well, because I've tried that as well. Brown has great stuff. Tricks of the mind has some good stuff. Nobody made this up. This has been with humanity since the beginning of time. And we know that it has, because we have archaeological and prehistoric records of Aborigines, for example, really, associating imagery, right, with the location of plants that you could eat during a drought, right? And they would pass this knowledge on to each other in order to help future generations survive, right? So there's a survival advantage to memory techniques. The book to read on this is called The Memory Code by Lynn Kelly. She goes deep into the prehistoric origins. It's in the Buddhist traditions. It's in the stations of the cross and Catholicism. It's in remembering the fire alarm in elementary school. Association to location, to imagery, to things that you need to remember is just part of how humanity has survived. And the more you get really, really strategic about how you use it, the better your life becomes. And you don't only survive, but you become more competent as a human being. Yeah, I suppose it was necessary to know where the right plants are to eat. And what about memories that we maybe don't know we have, if that makes sense. So memories that we, they are there, but we don't know them because obviously we've forgotten them. Is there any way of accessing those? Well, I don't want to speak too certainly, but yes, I imagine that there are. But we have to be careful about that because we know that when we recall information, we actually change it. So we can be very inventive and we can be remembering things incorrectly. And we can be remembering things that never happened at all. And we'll feel very convinced that they happened. So we want to be careful about that. And everybody has heard about false testimony, false witness testimonies and the danger that that creates. But I'd rather put it in the sense that if you, I mean, I just I had a YouTube video that I just put out the other day with a young woman named Olivia from the UK, actually, here in Australia. And I put the camera on and asked her if she wanted a quick memory exercise. And I asked her, you know, do you remember grade five? How old you were and so forth? Or she asked me if she could help recall memories from when she was 10 and she was a grade five in the UK. And I said, well, get out a piece of paper and draw a square that represents the school and then start to draw the squares of the classrooms in the school and then start to ask yourself questions like what was my teacher's name? What did my teacher look like? What was my favorite novel? What were my favorite music albums? And I share with her some of my examples so she could understand. Yeah. And then you can say who was my best friend? What was their favorite album and so forth?  And these all become the path to strengthening your memory for the future of your life and the health of your brain. And so I imagine that that's a way that you'll recall things that you don't remember. And I've gone and done these memory experiments and I have some recordings of demonstrations where I've gone to my friends from elementary school and just done this. Who was our teacher in grade three? And it was like Mrs. Debra Reiswick and who was your best friend? And it's amazing the vast amount of information that's in your head that you remember if you just ask. That's really amazing. Excuse me. Yeah, no, I actually sort of see roughly the same thing with Dream Recall, where to remember them like more details of a dream. You should just start by the basics, you know, where was I and then ask series of questions like what was the temperature, you know, which season was it, what was the weather like, where was the other people. And you start to build up a bigger picture of the whole thing. If people only had 10 minutes a day to dedicate to improving their memory, what would you suggest they practice or do? I'd suggest, well, if you're interested in remembering your dreams better, I'd suggest that you practice recalling your dreams and try to work up to a memory palace approach to recalling dreams so that you can have the best of both worlds. You still want to write your stuff down, but you can actually not have to get up all the time, because you'll be able to just wake up and you'll say, oh yeah, I remember this dream, you'll stick it in this corner and you have another dream and you put it over there. And you know that in effect, I'm sure you've had this where you have like these cluster of episodes and you actually can distinguish them in your mind, right?  But here's the thing, this is what's really going to give you memory improvement as well as more dream recall. Before you write anything down, recall it, right? Some people they will link writing with remembering, but actually bring it to mind first and then write it down. And that'll give you great memory exercises to improve your memory across the board and you'll get more out of dreams. Yeah. And you only have 10 minutes a day every morning, you're going to have a great impact from that over the next 10 weeks or so. Or you know, I still do this years and years later and it's really powerful. Yeah.  But I get a lot of emails from people saying like, I'm too busy, you know, I don't have time. But yeah. Well, you know, we can be sympathetic to that. But when it comes to memory, you do have time. Yeah. Because you use your memory all day long. Yeah, it's just change how you think about your memory. Then you'll see that you can do memory exercise from sunup, sundown. Yeah. Yeah. And you can do it every day. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. Can you sort of to finish up here? Could you maybe give some tips on how to just general tips on how to improve memory and be able to recall things faster? Right. Well, in terms of just generally, yeah, let's start with the foundations. Okay. So sleep, better sleep, better diet, better hydration. Notice you're getting nice and hydrated there, which is policy and more fitness. If you just start with the body first, your brain is part of your body, it's physical, it's built of chemicals. And the more optimized that is, well, here's a couple of things. First, you're going to pay attention better, you're going to be more pain free, right? Especially if you're an older person, because pain is the way not paying attention to what's happening to you. If you're not paying attention to what's happening in the world, you're not going to remember it. And so that's the first thing with foundations. Then learn the memory palace technique. Make sure you learn it from someone who really knows what they're talking about because there's a lot of bad information about it out there that'll cause you lots of struggles with it. And then learn something called the major, sometimes you'll hear it called the major system. I call it the major method because it's not really a system until you build it as a system for yourself. Yeah. So understanding the methods and the principles, get those two things working together, you'll be able to remember anything you want very, very fast. These are skills. Sometimes you got to think of it like push ups. If you can't do a full push up from the floor, start from your knees. If you can't do a push up from the knees, start from the wall. There's no shame in it. The only shame is if you don't do it. And even then, you know, don't beat yourself up about it, but there's no free will, right? So but if you if you feel the calling to do it, just get the memory palace nailed and learn the major method and you will have so much more advantages than anyone else because you'll be able to memorize any number, any name, any foreign language vocabulary or phrase, anything that you want any list of instructions, but you need those two techniques as the foundation on top of better health. Yeah. That's really cool because I always say pretty much the same thing. It's a holistic approach with health, mind, sleep. It all works together because the body is intelligent and you give it what it needs. Who would have thought? You don't want a two legged stool, you want definitely that stool to sit normally, and you'll be able to be able to accomplish anything that you want. If you just surrender yourself, you know, my mentor or Tony Buzin from the UK there, he went and I trained with him and had dinner with him and he said something so impactful. It's just that the rules will set you free and the memory of every person works exactly the same according to fundamental rules that are in the brain structure in the brain chemistry. Yeah. You just understand what those rules are. You will be free to learn as fast as you want as much as you want. So that I pass on directly from him to you. Yeah, that's amazing. Cool. Thank you very much. I was going to say we are planning something special for how to do.com email subscribers.  You have actually got several courses, right? Yes. People that just they have no idea where to start, right? They just want to improve their memory, probably more towards dream recall. Where would you suggest they go? I'll put a link in the description. Yeah, well, follow that link that you're going to put there. And here's the thing. Avail yourself up the free training that you'll get and the material that you'll get because one of the things that makes the difference here is that you actually take it one sip at a time, which SIP stands for study the techniques, implement the techniques and practice the technique with information that's going to improve your life. Dreams will improve your life. The more you can remember your dreams, the more you'll be able to use them as tools of life improvement. And then go from there. If being able to study for your exam better means memorizing numbers better, then study the techniques, implement the techniques and practice the techniques with numbers or names and so forth. But just take it one sip at a time, SIP, and we'll hook you up with the material for that down in the link below. Cool. Yeah, guys, go and check out the link below. But more importantly, make sure you subscribe to the email list on howtolucid.com because we're going to be doing a special discount offer for you guys. It's going to be really exciting. There's going to be some giveaways and all sorts of stuff. So yeah, make sure you subscribe to that. I'll put the link for that in the description as well. And yeah, thank you very much, Anthony. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for the tips. Really appreciate the time and to everyone. Just get into this world because memory is so beautiful and the quality of your life really comes down to the quality of your memory.


NextCloud includes an excellent knowledge base app that helps you share manuals and documentation within your organization or team. With this release, many improvements were made. For example, you can now reorder pages and assign emojis to them. You can now also insert various files into a document, not just images. Another improvement is that you can now mention colleagues. These features also work in text. The distraction-free NextCloud editor for notes and thoughts. If you have a long document, you can see an outline to find what you're looking for. Of course, if the content you seek is in another document, you can use the universal search in NextCloud, which now searches also in the content of our knowledge base. We hope you will enjoy using the new and improved collectives.


Speaking of trades, we've seen this in years past. If a trade were to happen, a player could be traded for a draft pick on draft night or even draft day, depending on the round. Which players could be traded and find new NFL teams to play for in 2021? Seen it in years past. Last year, actually Trent Williams was traded from the Washington football teams at the San Francisco 49ers. Matt Breida was traded from the 49ers to the Dolphins. Also other notable names, Tavon Austin as well in years past has been traded on draft day. There's a lot of players that could be traded and they're not necessarily household names, but they're worthy enough of making some sort of impact on an NFL team. So we narrowed it down to four players that could be traded on draft day. First up, let's keep the lights orange in the back because we're gonna talk about David Ojoku of the Cleveland Browns. Is a candidate to be traded? Has been a candidate for a very long time after Austin Hooper had his breakout season for the Browns and Harrison Bryant was drafted last year by the Cleveland Browns as well to be a good secondary tied end. There's no need for Newjoku at this point. His contract has kind of come up to an end pretty soon. So you'd want to get rid of them. And the Browns asking price at this point is a third rounder. It's been a third rounder on the trade block for so many months at this point. But I don't think that any NFL team has budged because he's not worth a third rounder in their eyes. They believe that he's worth a fourth rounder or less. So if that were the case, if a team were to make a trade for David Ojoku, then it would be day three trade, rounds four through seven, because at this point his values is continuing to drop and the Browns at this point just want to get rid of them. So the Ojoku could be a trade candidate and one of some teams that could go after David Ojoku. Well, you've got the Arizona Cardinals, the Carolina Panthers, the Cincinnati Bengals and the Jacksonville Jaguars. So those are four teams that desperately need a tight end. The Cardinals don't have a third or fourth round pick. So it's got to be hard for them unless they make some moves in the NFL draft to acquire a third or fourth rounder to make a trade for David Ojoku. The Carolina Panthers, they could make a trade for him. But I feel like after that Sam Dornal trade, they already give us some draft picks for next year's draft. I don't feel like that they would really want to make a trade for David Ojoku. The Cincinnati Bengals couldn't make a trade for him, but depending on what happens in the top five, who knows, Kyle Pitts could fall to you and if you get Kyle Pitts, no need for him. The Jaguars make the most sense because you get a weapon for Trevor Lawrence. You keep on improving that offense. You have 10 picks in the NFL draft, like I mentioned, and getting Ojoku for a fourth rounder or fifth rounder because you have two of each would not be a bad move. So the Jaguars seem like the favorite to trade for David Ojoku, if that were to happen. But David Ojoku, trade target number one. Number two, going over to the Dallas Cowboys, they have some very good offensive weapons on that team, including a plethora of wide receivers that they don't necessarily need on their team. And that includes Amari Cooper, C.D. Lamb, and Michael Gallup. Out of those three, it's gonna be Michael Gallup that's gonna be a trade target on draft nights. Cowboys love him. They really do. But after last season with the emergence of C.D. Lamb with, yeah, Dak Prescott's injury had a lot to do with it, but Michael Gallup saw a dip in production and he went back to being the clear number three receiver in that Dallas Cowboys offense. So good player could make an impact, but if drafting C.D. Lamb means anything last year, it means that the Dallas Cowboys are content with Cooper and Lamb as one and two at wide receivers. So if you wanna use him as a good trade target to get more draft picks, you could. I feel like his value is he's gonna be a late day two to early day three trade target. So third round, fourth round, I wouldn't trade anything less than that or anything more than that either. I think that's his value as a third rounder or a fourth rounder to be traded from the Dallas Cowboys. But that could happen because he's also in a contract year as well. So you'd wanna get rid of him before you have to resign and might as well just get something out of it. What are some teams that could trade from? Again, we go back to the Jacksonville Jaguars. 10 picks in the NFL draft, that's very, very important. Could get another weapon to team up with Marvin Jones, LaVisca Chennault, DJ Chark in that wide receiver core. The New York Jets pair him up with Corey Davis, the Bengals, T. Hagan's title of board. The Dolphins have also been in the talks of getting some weapons, a complimentary of Will Fuller and Devonte Parker. The Eagles desperately need a weapon. The Lions, the Packers, there's just so many teams out there that could really use a good wide receiver. And Michael Gallup, if I was an NFL team, I'd be calling the Dallas Cowboys, be like, listen, I know he's on the decline. I know he's in a contract year.  What's the deal with Michael Gallup? Can we get him? With these teams, I mean, you could trade your draft picks for him. It's all dependent on what happens in the NFL draft. For instance, for the Miami Dolphins, if they draft Jamar Chase at number six, you probably aren't gonna make a trade for Michael Gallup. The Eagles, if you get Devonte Smith, Jalen Waddle at number 12, probably aren't gonna get Michael Gallup. The Lions, if they stay at number seven and they get Devonte Smith, probably not gonna get Gallup. So a lot of options for a lot of teams and a lot of things could happen, but keep in mind that Gallup could be a name that could be talked about as a trade candidate on draft nights. Another team that could be thinking about trading away an NFL player, the LA Rams, could be trading away a very good running back that is Darryl Henderson, who is now the running back to an LA. The smart thing for the Rams would be to keep Darryl Henderson. Okay, I don't think that Cam Akers is bad. I don't think that he's not capable of being a three-time back. I love Cam Akers, especially if you play fantasy football, we haven't done our draft rankings just yet. That's gonna be after the NFL draft, we're gonna be working on those. But Cam Akers is gonna be a very good player in the NFL. So he's gonna be a good player for the LA Rams, but Darryl Henderson would be a good compliment in case anything were to happen to Cam Akers. So it would be smart for the Rams to keep Darryl Henderson, but if you are getting a lot of offers for Henderson, who is capable of being a starting running back in the NFL, which he proved last year, then I would just listen to offers, at least hear them out, because you have teams like the Atlanta Falcons who need a running back. The New York Jets need a running back. The Pittsburgh Steelers need one. Those three teams should be calling about Darryl Henderson, who's now the number two back and probably will not be used a lot in the LA Rams offense unless something were to happen to Cam Akers. The reason I say it's not gonna be used a lot because last year was an indication of Sean McVeigh truly believes in the hot hand theory with the running back position. He doesn't believe in necessarily, maybe early on he believed in running back by committee approach, but once someone has the hot hand, he's gonna give them all the carries. Once Cam Akers emerged as the number one back in those games against the Arizona Cardinals against the New England Patriots, he was willing to feed the ball to him 25 to 30 times a game. So if Darryl Henderson wants any hope of continuing to be a good player in the NFL and getting a lot of carries in the NFL, then his best bet would be to be traded away from the LA Rams to someone like the Atlanta Falcons, the New York Jets or the Pittsburgh Steelers who could desperately need a running back of his caliber. So I feel like Darryl Henderson has a lot of value, a lot of stock. I see him as a day two trade candidate. So a second round pick or a third round pick, I would value Darryl Henderson to be a trade target. So keep that in mind. The last one, I know they're running back. Sonya Michelle used to be so good for the New England Patriots was drafted out of Georgia over Nick Chubb which debatable on if that was the right choice or not. But it just hasn't been working out with the Patriots and Sonya Michelle and the emergence of Damian Harris as the lead ground back, a New England proves that Sonya Michelle and his value is just continuing to dip that the Patriots would be happy for moving on with him. To put it in this perspective, I don't see Sonya Michelle continuing to be a New England Patriot for long. I feel like once this contract comes to an end, he's gonna be a free agent. He's not gonna resign. He's gonna go on with another NFL team and hopefully have a chance to prove that he's capable of being a starting running back in the NFL. So if that's the case and you have no sort of indication or agenda of resigning him, why not just get rid of him? Get rid of him and get something out of it while you can. There's a lot of NFL teams that can use him. For instance, the Atlanta Falcons, the New York Jets and the Pittsburgh Steelers could all talk about getting Sonya Michelle. Falcons, get back to that Georgia boy. Get Sonya Michelle, the Jets, pair him up with Tevin Coleman, the Steelers. Instead of getting Najee Harris, get Landon Dickerson in the first round and get Sonya Michelle as a good compliment, running back committee approach with Benny Snell. So those are some options. I think his value is just so low at this point just because of how the Patriots have been playing him is not the lead back anymore, has been a little bit on the decline. And I think his value at this point is a day three trade for Sonya Michelle. So to recap, those trade targets that we have in the NFL draft, David Ojoku, Michael Gallup, Darrell Henderson, and Sonya Michelle, all gonna be trade targets. Speaking of the Patriots and other trade targets, I don't know if you guys saw this picture that's been floating around. It was a picture of someone's desk. I don't know whether he worked for the Packers or the Patriots, but it was someone's desk with a piece of paper sticking out. And if you zoom in real quick, it shows a proposed trade from the Packers and the Patriots where the Packers would trade Jordan Love and some other draft picks for the Patriots and their draft picks. I don't know, could happen. I don't feel like that's really gonna happen just because Jordan Love is just too big of a name to be drafted or traded on draft night. I feel like the Packers would just wanna keep him for this point, but that could happen. Who knows?


Good morning everyone, my name is Rebecca Gonzalez. I'm a senior librarian with the San Jose Public Library and I'm also a member of the Pacific Library Partnership Staff Development Committee who put together the today's conference. It is wonderful to see you all for the first in-person conference that we've hosted since 2019. I think it goes without saying that we have all experienced a significant amount of change in that time, both personally and professionally. As we look to the future of libraries, we now have the opportunity to reflect on the past three years, share what we have learned and plan for a better tomorrow. This all leads us to today's theme, expanding your toolbox for a changing world. We've got a full and exciting lineup of speakers scheduled for today, but before I hand off the mic, I would like to cover a few in-house items. So restrooms, I know that's always first and foremost in people's minds. If you go out through the door, go straight, follow the signage, and then you'll be able to find the restrooms. There will be three breaks today, two 15-minute breaks as well as an hour and a half lunch. Masks are recommended at this venue, but they are not required. At this time, I would also like to take the opportunity to thank the San Francisco Public Library for hosting this event and the PLP executive leaders who have continued to provide their unwavering support and guidance throughout the planning process. This leads me to introduce you all to Carol Frost, CEO of the Pacific Library Partnership. Thank you, Carol. Good morning. Welcome to the 18th annual Future of Libraries Conference, 18 years. On behalf of the Pacific Library Partnership, I want to thank each of you for coming. PLP is one of the nine cooperatives throughout the state of California with 44 public and academic library jurisdictions in the Greater San Francisco Bay Area. Our staff development committee sponsors the Future of Libraries Conference each fall to bring you engaging new topics and presentations around the most important issues facing libraries with the hope that you will walk away with fresh perspectives and innovative approaches to the challenges that you face in your own organizations and by yourself. In addition to this conference, the committee also hosts a smaller brown bag training program that are reserved for PLP members throughout the year. We appreciate you being here. We have not met in person in the Coret auditorium since October 2nd, 2019. That conference theme was issues and challenges in the information age, little did we know that within just a few months our lives would be changed forever by a pandemic. During that time, we switched to online conferences because we felt like it was still very important for us to stay connected. In that online environment, we were able to expand our conference to two days to dive deeper and to discuss important topics. In 2020, our theme, focus on equity, anti-racism, and work in the new normal, addressed the quickly changing landscapes in our society as well as in our profession. In 2021, the theme, Caring, Engaged, and Equitable continued the conversation of equity and how we are called to personally grow and change and how our organizations can think about our programs and services through this lens. Today's theme, Expanding Your Toolbox for a Changing World, will help us look at some of the equity work that has manifested itself in our libraries. We will hear about confronting disinformation and book banning by cultivating critical thinking and empathy. Panels will discuss serving unhoused members in our communities, and I am pleased that there will be a panel on the Student Success Initiative. Some of you may not be aware of this, but that initiative started in 2016 with the PLP-LSTA grant in partnership with the NorthNet Library System. It became a statewide program with about half of the libraries statewide participating. So it will be great to hear an update from the libraries and how their programs have changed since their inception. I'm also very excited to hear about the control digital lending model which the Cabrillo Community College has implemented. I first heard about this at a MOBAC committee meeting and was so intrigued about how the community colleges are addressing inequity by scanning and loaning out textbooks. I know that changing cultures and systems is a slow, difficult work. Confronting the ways that our actions and institutions lead to differential treatment of individuals, even if done unintentionally, is only the first step in creating the change that is so necessary. We thank you for your willingness today to listen to the things that may make you uncomfortable and still remain present and open, and we hope that you will continue to ask yourselves as libraries and library professionals how can you strengthen your commitment to changing services for the better of our communities. It was a difficult decision for the PLP staff development committee to decide whether to continue online for this conference or to come back in person. Both options have their own unique benefits as well as limitations. We appreciate you making the effort to be here and hope that the organic connections and conversations that can happen at in-person events will serve you well today. There's plenty of room in this auditorium, so feel free to spread out as well as to find a space that works for you. Finally, I'd like to thank the speakers. I'd like to thank the San Francisco Public Library and the Pacific Library Partnership staff development committee for doing all of the work to develop, publicize and bring today's line-ups of amazing speakers to fruition. I'd like to especially give thanks to Tierney Alvarado and Chris Ota as well as Karen Engel and Aiden Kwan, the committee co-chairs and conference co-chairs for this year. They and all of the staff development committee put in a huge amount of effort to help transition the conference from online back to person. And there's three other people I wanna just recognize. Justin Wosterlain in the back is our new PLP assistant director. So if you haven't had a chance to say hello to him in person yet, please do that during the break. We also have Meg DePriest from the California State Library here. And coming later on today is Lisa Nolan from the California State Library and she is in charge of the Parks Pass program. So that should be very interesting to meet her during one of the breaks. So thank you very much and have a great conference. Thank you again, Carol. I would like to introduce next Katrin Raimular, chief of the Maine Library, San Francisco Public Library. Hi, welcome back to the Maine. We're really happy to have future of libraries here. As Rebecca said, I'm Katrin Raimular. I'm chief of the Maine Library. I am here in Michael Lambert Stead, our city librarian. Michael is presenting at the Internet Librarian Conference in Monterey. So it's great to be back in person. I have really missed that. I've missed it in meetings, conferences in the world and we are so happy to have you back and reopening our spaces for everybody to get together, to connect, to learn. I think in person is really, really meaningful and so I'm happy to see you all back. I wanna thank the Pacific Library Partnership and the Staff Development Committee for choosing to come back in person and for covering some topics we have all been thinking about and have concerns about from services to the unhoused, disinformation and banned books, equity in digital access and critical race theory. I think they're hitting on some really key issues today and it's gonna be a great conference. I would be remiss without thanking our San Francisco Public Library staff, custodial, security, our media services team right over here and our meeting room coordinator, Marciel. Without them we couldn't have made this possible opening up our space to you. So welcome and I hope you have a great conference. Believe I'm handing it back to Rebecca to introduce the keynote speakers.


As a southern organization, one of IID's hallmarks, even before COVID, were long-standing relationships which are equal, which seek to respond to demands that we make or identify challenges that they see which are coming our way. And as a trustee, you realize that that's quite a remarkable relationship. As soon as the sort of full extent of the pandemic started to reveal itself, it also became clear that people really didn't know how the pandemic was unfolding in informal settlements. We didn't really understand who was getting COVID. We didn't have an idea, any idea about what a lockdown might look like. So we started to set up weekly calls with our long-standing partners. Andy and the heads of the different departments would be in touch with us to check what we were doing, what were we finding. And you need relationships of trust here to be able to talk about the confusion, the dismay, the crisis that lockdown brings. People are keen to see some analysis of how communities were responding. We published a series of synthesis reports, which also provided a platform for marginalized groups to publish their experiences. Providing the opportunity for our partners to make short videos on the experience of refugees or displaced people in slums in Nairobi or for example, was an easier way for us to be able to convey the realities of what was going on on the ground given how quickly the situation was changing. So these kind of informal multimedia pieces and synthesis pieces were the beginning point for conversation. And from that, some of us went on to develop policy briefings for our partners to be able to engage with international agencies. We also welcome blogs from external contributors about how communities worldwide were responding, including one about community soup kitchens in Lima, a project that aims to strengthen food security among the urban poor. I saw that you have a dedicated series for COVID-19 response. And I thought this is a perfect space to share a lot of the things that are going on in my home country. And when I reached out, I was welcomed and it was a very positive response from the very beginning. I didn't really see any sort of discussion in an English language academic platform about these community-led soup kitchens. When it came out in Spanish, it was mostly for government, for community leaders. They felt heard, they felt seen. A lot of them shared the blog all throughout their social media. What this year showed was that regardless of these crises, the continuum of bringing local voices to global engagements, of allowing us to challenge global discourse, a lot of that can be seen in all the various events and activities and engagements that IID has taken up. In short, I would say that such challenges test the robustness of relationships. And I think in this, as a trustee, I feel very good that IID came up to that. Got it.


The Vice President, Yemi Oshiba-jo, S.A.N., has said that as a matter of urgency the Nigerian judiciary must address the issue of delays in processing cases through the courts. This is as he referred to the delays in the Nigerian judicial process as the elephant in the room, wondering what would happen to the country's legal profession in another 50 years given the gridlock in processing cases through the courts and the question of the integrity of the legal process. Now joining us to discuss this is legal practitioner Tunji Abdulameed. Thank you very much Mr. Abdulameed for joining us. Thank you. Every single time conversations like this come up, I look closely at the NJC, I look closely at those on the bench and of course the NBA in the role that they play in making sure that the judicial process, the wheels of it in itself is oiled. So that it can move faster but I want to go first to the issue that the Vice President raised talking about judicial reforms. I still know that the federal government is still fighting with states on the issue of judicial autonomy for local governments and even states. Let's start with that. Why is that still a problem in 2021? Yeah because we are in a country where people in authority disregard the law. The people in authority doesn't bother about what the law says. They only bother about what they want to do and what they think they should do. Because the issue of autonomy has been in the Constitution since 2010 or so and I don't know why it's not been implemented today. In fact, to the extent that the President even made an executive order, a superfluous order trying to enforce the profession of the Constitution. Yes, we have not had anything about it. So I think it's a confirmation of the kind of country we are. We are in a country where we don't care about law and as far as those in authority, they ignore the law when it does not suit them and they follow the law when it suits them. That's why we are having the problem in this regard. It is clear in the Constitution. Section 121 says that the judicial system must be autonomous but today we are still begging them to have it because there won't be any consequences and they will continue to do that. I'm going to come back to the consequences part but let's look at the reforms.  You work in the system. You have frustrations and when we talk about reforms, what are the basic or the front-burnet reforms that we as a country need to make to better the processes in our judicial system? I think the major ones are these. One, we need to look at the mood of appointment of judges. That is one of them. We have just talked about autonomy. It's also part of it because lack of autonomy is entering the capacity of the judiciary to the extent because when the judiciary believes that for them to get the needed finance, they must go and come to the executive. They will do the bidding of the executive and therefore the home be justice. They will only do what the executive wants them to do. So autonomy is one of the major reforms that we need to do. We need to ensure that this issue of reform is complied with and the state gives the judiciary the required autonomy. The appointment, as I said again, is another aspect of it. Today, the appointment of judges are based on not no longer. It's based on the relationship. It's based on the influence. What sort of relationships are you talking about? If you look at the judiciary today, if you see the name of the people being appointed, you will realize that they are later either a sitting judge, an entire judge, a person in the position of authority in the country, and that is not the kind of people you see in the position of authority as judges. Most of them don't merit it because they don't know what the law is. We do respect. But how come they are still sitting there?  Nobody's contesting it. Because we're in Nigeria. But why do the lawyers complain if they have not contested it? I'm sorry. In one breath, many have accused Mr. President of not bringing Marito Creci into his appointment. But then we see the same thing happening in our judicial system. And the judges or the lawyers, everybody on the bench takes it sitting down. So I'm wondering, what are you saying if you're complaining about it and doing nothing about it then? What's the essence? The appointment is done by the governor. That is in the case of the states. But can't it be contested? Hello? Can it not be contested by the... That's what I'm saying. That's the kind of reform that we need now. We need a situation whereby the appointment of judges will be taken out of the governor, at the hands of the governor and the presidents. The president appoints or approves those who are who will be appointed as the court of appeal and the Supreme Court judges. So subject to the convention by NGC. So if you take away that from the executive and give it directly to maybe a body or whatever, NGC or somebody to solely be responsible for the appointment of judges, then there won't be any need for those individually to be suffocated. Because you know we have three arms of government in this country. Most times we see the judiciary as the baby of the heart. They are all as far as I'm concerned. I don't believe Mr. President should be number one. We have three number one cities in this country. The executive, the head of executive is number one. The head of the state should be number one. The head of the judiciary should be number one. In fact, to the extent that the judiciary today is behind the senior president, is behind the deputy state president, probably I'm not too sure whether he's also not behind the deputy speaker or speaker of the House of Representatives. So a head of the government is now made number five or number four in the country. You can see the injustice in that regard. So what I'm saying is that look, we need to take away a permit of judges from the governors. The governor should not be responsible for appointing the judges. Because he will pay the, he will pay the pipers. So in another one, when you know that you appoint men, you don't have anything to do with the executive. You will be both, you will be, you will be, you will be, you will be both to attack or not, or do the right thing without any, any, any, any fear or faithful from those governments. Because the situation went back where in this country today, where governors who are now donate cars to the, to the, to the executive, to the judiciary, and they will do as if they are, they are, they are dashing them the car or they are, they are just doing them in favor. That is not a favor. It should be, it's not be, it's not be the responsibility of the, of the governor, buying cars for the judiciary. When you buy car to the judiciary, then you are indirectly buying them. Whenever you need them, they will, they will have to budge. And that's what we're having here. So a permit is one of the, the, the, the issue we need to look into. And then majorly again, we need to improve our infrastructure. The courts are not, are not what it is. The system, the, the situation in the court is bad. If you enter some court, court room, you will think you are in the, in the markets. And then it will, it will look like most times when there's no lights, there's no work. But our judges see right in longer, at this, at this age. So we need to improve on technology as well to ensure that look, things move faster in this country. We need to upon people with integrity, people who can, who can stand on their own to, to, to, to, to, to be in the judiciary. And we, most importantly, we need to look for people who knows the law, who are, who need a word, merits should be major consideration for appointing a judge, not your leniency with the, with the, with the, with the people in authority. Because like I said again, I repeat it again. Look at the name of judges you see in the country. The new one being appointed. Not, I'm not talking about the higher courts. I'm talking about the high court, for instance. You'll see mostly they are related to those in authority or those in the judiciary. In other words, either they are the court of appeal, supreme court, high court, or former, former judges or former governors, former present governors. Those are the, those are the people, the kind of people you see in, in, in, in bench. And I, but when they get to the, to the place, the, the, the, the work becomes a effort for them and they won't be able to do anything. I, I want to refer to something that happens in the U.S. I know we don't use the same constitution and the modus operandi for Nigeria and the U.S. is different. But we see that the people who run for district attorneys, they've run for it like it's an office. So they're elected to, into those offices as district attorneys. But because we do not necessarily have district attorneys and, and our, our system of governments is different. I'm thinking, why can these people who are running for judges or who want to be in those seats do the same thing? Can we not adjust the constitution to favour that processing? And again, the reason why I asked that question earlier, if, why the members of the judiciary are a bit silent on this issue is, I remember some time ago when the president, Mr. President, was at the NBA, I think it was a year ago or so, at the NBA conference. And, and he did say something about the fact that the rule of law can take, you know, a seat while national security, it should be the major issue. And the people who were there applauded the president. So again, the judiciary, all of you, including the NBA, the bench, every single person, can I say that you're all complicit. And that's, and, and that's why what is happening is happening. And that's why you're also taking the back bench in the nation's, you know, process. Not, not all of us were clapping. Few people who are trying to please the president, you know, even the president, if we cough, some people clap. And yeah, some people are just, are just like that. They just want to satisfy and just see themselves as a, we are, we like the president. We are following it for, for sentiment purposes and then for purpose of a, I don't want to use that adjective. I won't be, it won't be as if I'm abusing anybody. But like I said, it's not everybody. If we, if we follow that trend that they're after, most lawyer criticize that particular comment. And it was highly, highly widely criticized by the judge or the lawyers, that are respected lawyers, not, not, not cycle fans. Like those who are clapping at that time. Most, most time, apparently, most people don't, they're not even clapping. They not even hear what he said. We're just clapping. Because when the Nigeria were just like that, people just want to, to be, to be in the good book of those in authority. Whether it's doing the right thing or wrong thing. And that's one of the major problems in this country. Other than tell them the truth, they just want to be clapping for them to see as, to say they are, they are doing well, they are doing well. So it is, it's not about see people are not talking. People are talking. You can see the, the dissent. Just like what you did, your last discussion regarding the infection of a, just it's all the latest errors. People are talking about this. People have, people have been talking. The, it is, and that was not the first time. It happened the other time and nothing happened. So it's, it's, the problem we're having in this country is that executive sees them, sees them self as the alpha and omega and they can do and not do. Because they control all the security apparatus. They control the money. They control everything. So the other people are, are subservient to them. And that's why they are able to do whatever they are doing in that regard. It's not as if the people are not talking. We are talking, the people are not eating, the talk is not eating results. We have been complaining. We have been talking about this. We have been even talking about this apartment of judges that look, use merit, add an influence. Then nobody is listening to us. And nothing can be happened. Because it's Nigeria and it can happen. And it goes. Finally, before I let you go, Fermi Faruna of course was at that event where the vice president was and he spoke about the issue of governors appointing judges and that having to be stopped. He also said something, and I'd like to quote him directly. He noted that the customary courts had been completely abandoned. He also added that the customary courts are courts that handle majority of the cases for the poor. Again, there's this saying that we have in Nigeria that the judiciary is the last hope of the common person. If the hope of the common person is being jettisoned, where does that leave the average Nigerian? I don't like you. Today in our country, judiciary is not the last hope of the common man. The judiciary is about those who have influence.  Because if you have influence, if you have money, you can, it's about, it's, I'm sorry to say, I'm sorry to say, it's not a cash and carry. Some people are just a once, that's why we are seeing so many conflicting judgments. Because it's no longer based on position of law. It's based on personal interests, sentiments, and all those things. So as far as I'm concerned, the hope of common man, as far as the judiciary is concerned, I think it's rather losing its value. And I'm not sure today the common man has seen anything. They don't even have any hope in judiciary as far as I'm concerned. Because they see it as, there's a lot of issues. There is a delay. There's no proper justice delivery. There is, you know, they say delay, delay, what's it called? Justice delay. It's not justice, it's not. When you try justice, then you are like, you are like nine people justice. So as far as I'm concerned, it's sad that people are losing, the masses are losing hope on the judiciary. And it's high time. Is there hope for the customary court to be revived again? Because this is a very important court system. For those that are customary courts. It's only about customary court. It's about everywhere, everything. You know, Nigeria, it's only, these issues we are talking about. It's not about usually alone. It's a general issue in Thailand, in the country. The system is generally, it's not, it's not, it's not working. And that's why we are, that's why usually it's not accepted from that, from that situation. If the system is working generally, usually we will also, we will also be forced to work because it's not working. Everything goes wrong. We have customary court that are working in some area. It will, like what we call share share court in the sub-parts of the country. It's, it's, it's customary court. And today, most people are, people have abandoned it. They see it as a, you know, it's not a court of records. Most of them are not court of records.  If they want them, if they want people to also participate, participate in a customary court as part of the good system, they must improve in their jurisdiction and give them more power to be able to do more job that have been done by the high court and the other courts. Well, Tungi Abdulameed is a legal practitioner. Thank you so much for joining us and being part of the conversation. Thank you for having me. All right. My pleasure. Well, I want to thank you all for being part of the conversation tonight, but I will leave you with a round-up of all of the conversations we've had from Monday to today. I am Marianne Akon. See you on Monday. What is the core responsibility of the army? The army is meant to word of external aggression. All I want to have in Nigeria today is to have all around Nigeria, where you have such as coming out from the barracks and taking on the responsibility of internal security. For me, it is totally unacceptable. This policy is in the real sense when it comes to removal of subsidy, which I don't even think the issue is about subsidy. It's about an attempt by the presidency because we have more of the presidency than the president. There's an attempt by the presidency and NNPC alongside the international collaborators to ensure that the people in the Nigerian economy are okay with this policy. Honestly, if we hear from like in every setting enough for the people we've got, there will always be disaffection, there will always be complaints. There will always be people who will seek attention. There will always be people that are just probably satisfied. There will be people who just want to rub on the back, rub on the back, rub on the head. So I think that Congress that it is illegal is as strong as they are. So you have the police, policing the population, but nobody is policing the police. And that's the problem. So until the police have this commission, for instance, takes that job seriously of policing the police and holding them accountable for their actions, they will not want to see much changes. How? Can we have peace without justice? Is that ever possible? Now you are the answer to that question. Can you have peace without justice? After all the report we do, they're not hallucinating. We want to know what happened. Who are the people responsible? Why did it have to happen? They're busy. They are saying that the report is rubbish. Anybody who wants to follow them go mad. No problem. But me, I know that all of this is just simply booking, playing to the gal again. It's master's voice. And I don't want to be a part of all that shenanigans. The force is the issue of referencing and cross-referencing, whether those things we are done properly. Because the issue of cross-referencing is very, very germane to the bill. The moment you do improper cross-referencing, it has very serious implications. Especially when we have election petitions. The second issue we are looking at is the issue of topographical errors. Whether there are topographical errors that can just be the third issue is whether any of the provisions of the bill violates the core internment of the constitution. Because as you are aware, the constitution is the fundamental law of the land. Now the fourth issue we are looking at is whether there are issues of proper sequencing, especially in relation to the days and you know, in relation to the work of the commission, dates are very, very important. Then we are also looking at whether there are also provisions in the bill that are difficult to implement. We need to date the president if there are provisions that are difficult to implement. Then we have to put the beside by side with the existing legal framework, with the existing electoral act and see whether there are provisions that have been deleted and needs to be restored or whether there are provisions that need to be reworked on. So those are the things that the president asks us to look at and the commission has looked at it and will respond to the president within the timeframe the president gives to the commission to respond. I think it really boils down to two things. One, trust and accountability. So these reports are really important because they start to build trust back between the government and between the people through these recommendations, through these reforms. I think that it's really, really important to... You have to build that trust back through actions of the state, actions of the federal government. But at the same time, you have to hold people accountable for those that committed crimes, for those that broke the law, for those that did things that were counter to the democratic principles, they have to be held accountable. And that also builds trust. When you hold people accountable for their actions when they break the law, that will also build trust between the government and between the people. And indeed, our ambassador said this just today. As our secretary said, when he was here in November as well.