This talk is, in some way, complementary with La Infance talk of yesterday. La Infance presented something about prefixes, and I'm going to talk about suffixes. How does evidence from languages with conservative morphology in a scientific family, to what extent are these relevant to studying Chinese? Before I start, let me say a few words about methodology. I think that in a scientific family, the two groups, among the 30 uncontroversable subgroups of the family, that have the most complex morphology of gyarungik on the one hand that Infance has been talking about yesterday, and gyarungik on the other hand. There is evidence that I cannot go into too much today that these languages present archaic features that some of these morphologies are, to some extent, ancient and cognate between these two families. And although the number of cognates between gyarungik, gyarungik, and Chinese is very limited, in the Infance presentation he tried to put together all the cognates, and we have less than 200 cognates between gyarungik and Chinese. So these languages are not so useful to reconstruct actual clusters, for instance, or confirm many hypothesis about clusters in all Chinese because common vocabulary is so limited. On the other hand, the rich morphology of these languages can be a guide to at least create hypotheses to interpret the morphology of all Chinese. I believe that when studying a language whose morphology has been eroded, it becomes impossible to really recover the meaning of the lost affixes only on a language internal basis. I think when we look at it in European, for instance, if you study a language like Albanian or Armenian, you can know the entire literature by heart. You will never be able to etymology any word if you don't have knowledge of Sanskrit and Greek. You always need to understand the basic morphological structure of total language and try to recover the traces of it. You can find in languages that have less conservative morphology, even if they are not closely related in Stambas. So I'm going to talk about one topic, the S suffix, because it's the most conspicuous suffix in all Chinese. I think there are several distance suffixes, actually, that correspond to two sum. I hope I can be forgiven not to present the exhaustive references on this topic. For instance, I didn't quote Sun Yubin. I was aware of its existence thanks to Kampungshu, but I will just use Downer's study of the topic. So more than 50 years ago, Downer collected examples of derivation by Tchushan Tung. He found eight different types, with widely distinct semantic properties, as you can see in section two. And his interpretation of this diversity in the meaning of the suffix is that the Tchushan Tung derivation, as he calls it, was not really the trace of a new factual system, but simply a way to create new words, as you can say in the quote taken from his article. And this view has been related by several other authors. I think that this view at the time was perfectly legitimate, that with 50 years later, as you see, of course, to criticize the previous authors, but I think that such a view, if you hold a view like that, then that's it. You can't go any further. And basically you say that any study of trace morphology is pointless. I mean, I think that's a view then, in some way it's nowhere. At least we should try to interpret the remnants of morphology in Chinese using our knowledge of more conservative narratives. And that's what I'm going to try to do. Of course, the comparison I'm going to present in this paper are not... I make no claim that they are all true. I'm just presenting a series of possibilities. And I leave it up to the time specialist to determine to what extent they can be accepted a lot. So, Dana found eight times. I'm not aware of... Since I haven't read in detail someone's book, I don't know if more recent work on this topic has discovered new types of... new meanings for this derivation. But in any case, the types that Dana has proposed are all quite well-attested. Derivation from verb to noun. So it's implicit that there are various types of nouns actually. Like you have to be hard and high, so it's an abstract noun. Be at the place. But in some cases, it's the object of a transitive void may correspond to the only argument of an intransitive. So it seems to be used to derive various types of nouns. It doesn't have a very specific meaning. You can derive a verb from a noun. There are also many examples of it. So the exact opposite of previous one. And the meaning of the verb is also quite varied. Sometimes you use an implement as you have in this period. You have many examples of causative. In the case of by and cell, it's not really causative, but in any case, many languages in the world use causative, more case to derive words like cell or borrow from by. That's a well-known situation. And you have a few examples, like hard and high, to like to be good, which are not really causative. They are more like what I have called using the Arabic tradition, tropeative. So to consider something to be good. And there is evidence, for instance, in general language that causative can also be used in some cases with a tropeative meaning. There are examples of applicative. So applicative, by applicative, I mean you take an intransitive verb and you derive a transitive verb from it. And unlike in the case of a causative. In a causative, you should take an intransitive verb and you causativeize it. The object of the transitive verb, the causie, corresponds to the subject of the transitive verb. So sit, I sit. To make someone sit, the person who sits is the object of the second, of the causative verb. In the case of applicative, the argument that you add with the derivation is the object. It can refer to and the subject of the derived verb corresponds to the subject of the original verb. I will show you more concrete cases using living languages to explain what I mean by applicative for those of you who are not familiar with it. Let's give the example of taking a run in the outrun. Yeah, but you have a few lexicolised applicative like verbs in English, German, you have a few examples of that. It's not productive in any European language, but in some language family it's quite productive. Five, you have this restricted meaning kind of a category which appears to be a casual for various things and I won't attend to discuss it more. You have passive. So passive would be the exact opposite of the causative. And you have quite a few examples. And you also have, German did not use this word because it wasn't invented when he wrote his article, anti-passive. What is anti-passive? Anti-passive is to derive an intransitive verb from a transitive one. But unlike the passive verb, the only argument of the intransitive verb corresponds to the patient of the transitive verb. In the case of an anti-passive, the only argument of the intransitive verb corresponds to the subject. So to put it bluntly, simply like in French, in French you have use of the reflexive in an anti-passive like fashion with some verb like bat. To beat someone. So bat. To fight. Which is intransitive. Which works intransitively. In French, you only have very few examples like that with the reflexive use to create this anti-passive construction. But again, some languages have productive ways of making anti-passive. In European languages, you don't have anti-passive for one reason because nearly all European languages have widespread agent preserving abilities. So basically most transitive verbs, whether in English, French, you can omit the object. And it's interpreted as meaning an unspecified object.  But in languages that in most languages of the world actually, if you omit the object, it will mean it's with a specified object. And you need to have an anti-passive marker to indicate that you have an unspecified object. So just to, you have a few examples of anti-passive in Chinese. Then you have derivation, very few examples. Just a three or four. And a forming of a compound. So you have in some cases the first or the second element of a compound with an attution added. Okay, so indeed, at first glance, it looks like what Dardan says. It's just a big mess and you'll never be able to solve anything. And let's do something else. I'm just going to try to propose a series of etymologies in other languages. So the previous colleagues have already pointed out some of them. The first of them, following Audrey Gouin, was a discovery of the the tushon comes from an S suffix. It comes from an S. It was a forest and of course there are other scholars have built on that idea. Before I go any further, I will propose I will start by proposing a sound law. Potential sound and you're free to criticize and to comment that. In Tibetan, I first start with a typological example. In Tibetan, it's well known that in the present, whether it's proper or not to call it this way, I want to argue. We have some transitive verbs. Have a conjugation either an S or a final D. And all people who have worked on Tibetan internal reconstruction agree that you have a sound law which tells you that can we have a sound law? Is there something to write on the book there? Oh, can you just have it in there? Yeah. So if you look at these two examples, you have in this, the tap to plant or this is what has many meanings. And so when you have a verb ending with root and with perma girl and very few others, you end up with S. So let's say this was from something like n da d. So you have a verb ending for the maybe whatever. And the verb R changes to A. When you have a verb ending in a vowel, you still get the front ending of R to A, but it remains the same. So you have nid patas to chase. So it comes from n da and it stays in the something like that. So these would be the rough photoforms for the present tense forms that I wrote here. And thus we have some more in Tibetan telling you that pta pta pta nid ta et cetera change to psa ksa msa It's a fact that you don't have clusters in anywhere in Tibetan. The only possible final clusters we have in Tibetan well I won't talk about the ta ta with these consonants are with S. So let's start from a moment that since in Chinese the only final cluster we can reconstruct involves consonant plus S and there are many of them. I mean it's striking that in any reconstruction of Chinese you get S's everywhere. You get also R's everywhere. I think this is a problem I think for all reconstruction of Chinese not specifically Laurent's or Schuessler's or anyone else's the communist opinion of the present reconstructions reconstruct I think too many R's and too many S's. My view is that maybe the present reconstruction don't make enough distinctions and one of the reasons is that consonants different from S and R have merged with original R's and S's and from the present data it's not always possible to distinguish between them. Let's accept for the time being that T could change to S when it occurs as the element of final cluster. At least maybe not after all consonants we have evidence in some languages of the family especially curanty for the existence of cluster like that. So it's not illegitimate to suppose that it may have any case. If we do that then we are entitled to compare the final S in Chinese not only with S suffixes but also with T suffixes in other languages and that's what I'm going to try to do and you will decide for yourself whether you believe it's reliable or not. So let's go one by one I won't discuss all the downers categories, I won't discuss the restricted minimum but most of the other ones. The first most obvious that was discovered is the nominalization issue because it's not productive anymore but we have a big series of nouns derived from S suffixes. I think this is completely un-controversial and there are even a few examples that are probably connected to Chinese. Actually there is a type of middle Chinese of cloth because there is no IJ it's simply I. Oh yeah, I didn't include the old Chinese, it's just out of laziness I should have added it in the eventual version I will add them but I think you can try to figure out for yourself. I use a slightly modified version of middle Chinese of Baxi's middle Chinese. So I won't dwell too much on minimalization S minimalization because I think it's quite un-controversial. I will talk a little more on the causative applicative. Ok, so for the causative applicative there is quite there is good evidence who are the scientific family of T suffixes that derive applicative or causative verbs in various languages. It's mainly in Chinese languages that you have a lot of them but you get a few examples in many unrelated branches including jargon and languages. In Tibetan there are many good examples but so libu is probably the language that has the best cases of because it distinguishes very clearly an S causative and an S applicative. So here taking beta from Boyd Mikhailovsky so these are the root forms it's not the actual way these forms are pronounced because they always occur with suffixes and I won't go into the morphophonology of it, it's 111 to represent a talk. You have an intranstive verb hap to weep you can derive from it causative verb haps with an S suffix to cause to weep and an applicative verb here you see the difference weep mon foe in the case of cause to weep the person who weeps is the patient corresponds to the subject of the intranstive verb in the second case the applicative derivation the person who weeps is the agent corresponding to the subject of the intranstive verb so you see the different relations between causative and applicative derivations in this language. It's difficult to claim that it's productive in any Quiranti languages in the sense that you cannot as far as I know apply to long words but in some way the Quiranti languages you have to understand that in Quiranti verbs are a closed clause but you only have 700 or 800 verbs and you cannot create new ones you barely can borrow verbs so you can borrow few but it's really it's completely different from Guarani where anything can be turned into a verb so the fact that we don't have example for instance Blippali verbs to which these are added is not really does not really indicate that these derivations are died so outside of Quiranti we don't have nice example so I'm going to in order to make you understand the meaning of these suffixes I'm going to show you a few more from Kali so here are example of applicative in Kali so for instance you have Bur to score to be able to add some a root a root double T a root a root a root that's again a root form it's not something else like that it's going to dry if you use it in a suffix and a root actually it may be a cognate with the to bark I don't know whatever the R is so basically these verbs either the recipient of something or the stimulus of a feeling to be frustrated from something so either it's a feeling and you have the experiencer which corresponds to this subject and you add it with these suffixes you add the the stimulus the causative T can also be used in Kali to express causative so you have examples like Bur to run P calm P to dream this one is interesting because you have the only verb with a T applicative in gyarnic from we and it's completely this one so this is the evidence that this derivation has some degree of antiquity now in Chinese the only proposal for a T applicative was by Laurent I won't dwell too much I think I think that one possibility to explain some of the causative applicatives if you accept the sound law I proposed would be the following at some stage you have this sound law ok five minutes of estimating my time sorry but that does not matter so you have this sound law you had quite a lot of pairs between verbs with S suffix expressing applicative and in transitive verbs and then since you also had a causative suffix S the distinction between applicative and causative is already quite tiny even in language data where this derivation is quite productive it became blurred and the S causative was general the meaning the causative applicative meaning of what was extended to a context outside of the application of this sound law and that's why you also have the S suffix expressing applicative or causative with verbs in open syllable for the passive and anti-passive I think now we can propose a different comparison in chiranti languages and also in various languages with relative conservative morphology like Toulon and like Maga we have a C suffix or SHI suffix that expresses reflexive this reflexive has it's the basic meaning but it has many additional meanings it can be used for impersonal subject in some of the cases it's used for anti-passive you have example 7 and 8 l'opée grande and discussed by witches I feel disgusted so here you see that the subject of the reflexive corresponds to the direct of the transitive it also has so so I think that one possibility for the for the use of Cheuchon to express both the passive and anti-passive would be comparison with this with this reflexive suffix for the remainder for the denominal use of S I think that this is somehow of a problem for scientific comparison the art to the extent of my analysis no good example of S suffixes deriving verb from nouns so whatever the explanation must be for Chinese I think that gyaronic or chiranti evidence for the relation of adverbs one possibility is the the use of an S suffix which appears to be all because it's shared by gyaronic and chiranti languages to whose original meaning must have been locative it's used in Tibetan it appears as element in case markers various case markers including the adjective and the additive in gyaronic languages it's used mainly for locative with motion and I think that this can potentially be compared with the use of S suffix of the S suffix in Chinese with the as an as a derivation so yeah for the other ones I don't think I have good comparisons but I hope that the comparison I proposed today I have to stress that there is some degree of speculation here I am not claiming that they are necessarily related to Chinese but at least I think it's better to explore how the meaning of the derivation we observe in Chinese might be linked to living languages rather than speculate from a Chinese internal perspective and I hope that can comment on the proposal I made thank you


Hi, everyone. I'm Akshay Raan and I'm going to talk about traceable secret sharing and applications. This is based on joint work with Vipul Goyal and EFAN song. Let's consider the following scenario. Alice has some secret data and she wishes to store this data on the cloud. To enhance privacy, Alice chooses n cloud service providers, secret shares the data using a t out of n secret sharing scheme and stores the shares on the servers. However, there is an adversary who is interested in learning about Alice's secret data and in fact, the adversary is willing to pay the servers in order to learn this information. So the adversary approaches one of the servers and promises to pay a certain amount if the server sends the share it received from Alice to this adversary. Even though this offer is pretty enticing, the server is wary of the following possibility. If Alice somehow finds out that the server cheated by sending the share it received to an external party, then Alice could show the server in the court of law. Specifically, the share that Alice sent to each of these servers could have some identifying information embedded inside and this information could help Alice win the case against the server. And if Alice wins the case, then it could not only result in a big loss of reputation for the server, but it would also result in bankruptcy due to the service agreement it had with Alice. So learning about the server's hesitancy, the adversary comes up with a pretty clever cryptographic scheme. So this scheme has the following components. It has n functions f1 up to fn, which are called as the collector functions, as well as a reconstruction box rex star. And all that the servers now have to do is to apply these collector functions on the shares and give it to the adversary. And the adversary now pays the servers with monetary reward that it promised. So these functions could be cleverly designed so that they could remove all the identifying information inside the shares, leaving only the essence of the share intact. And the adversary in fact promises the following. So even if Alice gets hold of these collector functions f1 up to fn, as well as these shares that the server sent, fi of share, or call this collected shares, as well as the reconstruction box, then Alice will not be able to prove in the court of law that one of the servers indeed cheated. In other words, there is no way that Alice could trace a cheating server. On examining this scheme closely, the server is indeed convinced that there is no way for Alice to implicate it for cheating behavior. And in fact, any rational server would send fi of share i and collect the monetary reward. And if the adversary is able to convince at least t of these servers to send the shares, then it can learn information about the secrets. So to prevent such a scenario, Alice seeks the help of the cryptographic community. So the specific question we are interested in is the following. So can we construct a secret sharing scheme that allows Alice to trace a cheating server? So we are interested in not only tracing, but also extracting an evidence against this cheating server, which could be examined in a court of law. And in order to help Alice with this task, we introduce a new primitive called a traceable secret sharing scheme or TSS in short. So let me first describe the syntax of a traceable secret sharing. So just like any other secret sharing scheme, a traceable secret sharing consists of a sharing phase where you take a secret from the dealer or Alice in this case and split it into n shares, SH1 to SHn, which are sent to the servers. There is also a reconstruction phase, which takes an at least t shares that was given to the servers and reconstructs the secret. For privacy, we require that any of these t-1 shares reveal no information about the underlying secret. So in addition to the sharing and the reconstruction phase of a secret sharing scheme, there are two additional components of a traceable secret sharing. Namely, there is a special algorithm called as the trace algorithm and there is another algorithm called as the judge algorithm. So this trace algorithm takes in these collector functions f1 up to fn, the set of collected shares, fi on share i for some subset c, which is at least t, the reconstruction box x star and outputs an identity of a cheating server and an evidence pi i. And this evidence is examined by the judge algorithm, which pronounces whether the i-th server is guilty or not guilty. So we need a traceable secret sharing scheme to satisfy the following two properties. The first property is the traceability requirement, which states the following. For any two secrets s0 and s1, if the reconstruction box x star on input the collected shares can distinguish between the sharing of s0 and s1 with some non-negligible advantage, then trace is required to output the identity of a traitor along with the valid evidence that is accepted by the judge algorithm with non-negligible probability. So here we require a very big property on the reconstruction box. All that it requires is to distinguish between shares of two secrets with some non-negligible advantage. And even in this case, the trace should be able to output the identity of a traitor along with some valid evidence. The second property is the non-intuitability property, which roughly protects an honest server from a malicious dealer or else. So this requires that any malicious dealer cannot provide a valid evidence against a honest server. And this should hold even if the dealer colludes with every other server. Okay, so these are the two properties that we require a traceable secret sharing to satisfy. So in this work, we formally define a traceable secret sharing scheme. So unlike the related notion of traitor tracing in a broadcast encryption scheme, traceable secret sharing is not revealed to construct even if we ignore the efficiency aspects. We call that the traitor tracing scheme can be trivially constructed from any public key encryption if we allow the public keys and the ciphertext to grow with the number of users. However, this is not the case for traceable secret sharing scheme. And our main contribution is a construction of a traceable secret sharing, assuming the existence of a secure multi-party computation protocol. And we also consider a couple of extensions to this notion. So the first extension we consider is tracing more than one trader. And recall that it's not possible to trace more than T-traders because a reconstruction box could just ignore the other shares and concentrate on some subset of T-shares. So here we can do almost optimally and can trace up to T-minus one traders. We also consider a scenario where servers could collude with each other before sending the collector shares to the to the adversary. And here if we allow more than T server collusions, then there is no hope of tracing because the the servers could reconstruct the secret and send it to the adversary. So here we do the best possible thing where we allow up to T-minus one server collusions. We also consider an application of traceable secret sharing to traceable delegation of computation. So here we give a protocol that works in the offline online setting. So the offline setting grows with the circuit size of the function that we want to delegate. And the online setting, online cost is pretty efficient wherein the cost grows only with the the input and the output limit. In the rest of the talk I'll mainly focus on a construction of traceable secret sharing. In the minimal setting where there are no server collusions and we are required to trace only a single trader. So before we move on to our construction, let me explain the key challenges involved in constructing a traceable secret sharing scheme. So let's start with the basic question on whether Shami secret sharing is already a traceable secret sharing. Unfortunately, Shami secret sharing does not satisfy the non-imputability property. So this is because the dealer knows all the shares that are sent to each of the servers and hence it's easy for the dealer to accuse an honest server of cheating. So to mitigate this, we consider the following natural attempt wherein we run a multi-party computation protocol between the servers and the dealer. So this functionality which is computed by via the MPC protocol takes in the secret S from the dealer, generates the share and sends the shares to the servers. So this can be shown to satisfy non-imputability via the security of the MPC protocol. But unfortunately, there is no way that we could trace a cheating server because the dealer does not have any information available with it. So the key idea behind that construction is the following. In order to achieve traceability, we must ensure that the dealer has some secret information which is unknown to all the servers. And in order to achieve non-imputability, we must ensure that each server has some secret information that is unknown to the dealer. So the key challenge that we face here is that how to balance this information available to the dealer and available to the servers so that we can satisfy both traceability and non-imputability. So this brings us to our construction. So our construction also follows the template that we discussed before wherein we run an MPC protocol between the dealer and the servers to generate the secret shares. However, the key idea behind the construction is carefully designing the function that is computed by the MPC protocol so that we can achieve both traceability and non-imputability. So let's consider the function that is being computed by the MPC protocol. So as a first step, the MPC functionality takes in the secret S from the dealer and generates the Shamil sharing SS1 up to SSN. So this is just a T out of N, Shamil secret sharing of the secret. Let's assume that each of these shares are lambda bits long. The next step done by this function is the following. For each J in the set 1 to lambda, it chooses a uniform random string RJ which is lambda bits long. Now the next step is the following. For each party I, you choose a uniform string LIJ from the set of lambda bit strings such that the inner product of LIJ with this RJ is the jth bit of the Shamil share of this party. So specifically for the first party, we choose a random string LIJ L1J such that the inner product of L1J with RJ is the jth bit of the first Shamil share. Similarly for the second party, we choose another random string L2J such that the inner product of L2J with RJ is the jth bit of the second Shamil share and so on. So once we choose all these LIJs, the next step that is done by the functionality is to take this RJ for each J and secret share it using Shamil secret sharing to generate N shares. And the share of a party I is the set of all LIJs and RJs for each J in 1 to lambda. So the share of the first party is the set of all L1Js and R1Js. And similarly the share of the end party is the set of all LNJs and RNJs. Okay, so now what is the secret that is available to the dealer which is output by the NPC functionality? The dealer secrets consist of the following. So it consists of the set of all LIJs but not in the clear but as an image of a one-way function applied on these LIJs. It also consists of the Shamil shares SS1 up to SSN and it also consists of the set RIJ for each I in 1 to N and for each J in 1 to lambda. So these are the dealer secrets. And what is the judge algorithm? The judge algorithm takes in some proof by eye and an identity of her cheating server and it checks the following. It checks whether there exists some J in the set 1 to lambda such that the one-way function applied on Pi I is equal to the one-way function on LIJ which is available as part of the dealer secret. So essentially the dealer has to invert this one-way function in order to prove that a server has cheated. And what is the secret that is available with the servers? It is these LIJs which are the secrets available with the server. Okay, so given this construction, let's see why it satisfies the non-imputability and the traceability properties and let's start with the non-imputability property. So recall that in order to prove that a server had cheated, the dealer has to produce a pre-image of this one-way function. And from the security of the multi-party computation, we can ensure that the only information that the dealer gets about the server secrets are these one-way function applied on the server secrets which are these LIJs. So in order to implicate an honest server, the dealer has to invert this one-way function and the non-imputability just follows from the one-wayness of OWF. So the more interesting property is the traceability. And recall that for tracing, we have access to a reconstruction box, RICS-STAR, and the guarantee that is satisfied by the RICS-STAR is that given the collected shares of some secret S0 and the collected shares of some secret S1, this reconstruction box can distinguish between these two secrets with some non-negligible advantage. Now we need to use this reconstruction box and extract some evidence against the cheating server. So in order to do this, we actually define a sequence of n minus 1 hybrids between the collected shares of S0 and the collected shares of S1. So specifically, the i-th hybrid in the sequence is defined as follows. We fix the i-th share and f i on share i, which is the collected share. And we sample the other shares in a way that SH1 to SHi are the first i-shares of a secret sharing of the secret S1. And we sample SHi plus 1 to SHn in such a way that these form the last n minus 1 shares of a secret sharing of S0. So once we sample all these shares, we apply the collector functions on these shares and run the reconstruction box on these collected shares. So note that high 0 according to this definition is identically distributed to a collected shares of the secret S0. Similarly, high n in the sequence is distributed identically to the collected shares of the secret S1. So via a standard hybrid argument, there exist two intermediate hybrids in the sequence such that the reconstruction box can distinguish between these two hybrids with some non-negligible advantage. So once we find such a hybrid pair, then we can immediately conclude that server high is the prater. Why? Because if server high added submitted at share, then these two hybrids are identically distributed. However, since the reconstruction box can distinguish between these two hybrids with some non-negligible advantage, it now follows that server high is the prater. So for those who are familiar with the prater tracing literature, this is actually pretty similar to the concept of private linear broadcast encryption that is used as a building box towards constructing prater tracing schemes. However, for a traceable secret sharing, it's not only sufficient to identify a cheating server, we must also extract an evidence that is accepted by the judge of God. So for this purpose, we do the following. So we consider these two hybrids high by minus 1 and high by, which can be distinguished by the reconstruction box with some non-negligible advantage. And we consider a sequence of lambda minus 1 intermediate hybrids between these two distributions. Specifically, in each of these intermediate hybrids, we change the IH share from a share of the secret S0 to a share of secret S1. So we do this one bit at a time. Again, via a standard hybrid argument, we conclude that there exist two hybrids, intermediate hybrids in the sequence high i minus 1, j minus 1 and high i minus 1, j that can be distinguished by this reconstruction box with some non-negligible advantage. So once we find these two hybrids, we do the following. So we take this reconstruction box that can distinguish between these two hybrids with non-negligible advantage and use this box to actually predict the inner product of LIJ and some RJ with probability that is greater than half plus some non-negligible property. So once we construct such a predictor of inner product of LIJ with a uniformly chosen RJ, we can use the Goldrich-Levin decoder to extract the evidence LIJ. Now this evidence LIJ can be given to the judge algorithm and this will be accepted. So this is the main idea behind extracting the evidence using the reconstruction box. Of course, I have swept a lot of details under the rug and I encourage you to look into the paper for all the details. So to conclude, we defined a notion called as traceable secret sharing and provided a construction using any secure multi-party computation protocol. We also considered extensions to tracing multiple traders and also considered collusion between the servers and I would encourage you to look into the paper for these extensions. So we also provided an application to constructing a traceable delegation of computation in the offline online setting. Again, you can refer the paper for the details and there are many interesting open questions from our work. So the main open question is extension to stronger adversarial models. So here we considered a setting where the adversary provides some collective functions and the servers have to apply these functions on the shares and send it to the adversary. But it's possible to consider stronger adversarial settings where the servers and the adversary could get involved in a multi-party protocol and which provides information to the adversary. So our construction does not extend to these settings and it's interesting to see if there are construction that can be shown to be traceable even against such stronger adversarial models. There's also this very interesting question of extending a traceable delegation to constructing traceable multi-party computation protocols. And finally, are there other applications of traceable secret sharing schemes and how does it connect to other primitives in cryptography? And that's it. Thank you for your attention and you can find the full version of our paper on here.


think tech away civil engagement lives here. Good morning my name is Ray Tsuchiyama another program all about leadership I have today a guest all the way from an island called Maui where my father was born and raised and we met in 2011 in fact the same year when I relocated from Tokyo to Maui and he is with the mathematics department of UH Maui college his name is Amir Hossein I'm a Zalani and he's been working on teaching mathematics teaching all kinds of subjects in an innovative way and we're going to talk about that and but first off I want to say welcome to the show thanks for having me it's my pleasure to be here well let's go back in time Amir and where were you born and raised I was born and raised in Tehran Iran 40 years ago almost and so I actually got my high school diploma my bachelor's and my master's degrees all back home I got my bachelor's and master's in electrical engineering control systems then after that do you want to ask a question or should I continue let me be the host but before we go into your graduate studies when can you say that in your in your schooling or teacher or something that says wow I'm passionate about numbers and mathematics when did that happen? Well a couple of things first of all culturally in Middle East in general and in Iran in particular you're successful or at least you are considered successful if you're a doctor an engineer or a lawyer so there is some sort of pressure on you to succeed at least scientifically and go as far as you can because of that there is some sort of well mostly healthy sometimes not so healthy competition among students to get accepted to better institutions to go as far as they can and so we really took science education and math education among other things seriously was there a teacher that you remember? Yes yes we had good teachers but also we because we were serious about because the path to success for us was studying and it was sort of establishing our minds so it was internal I mean students like you came to class wanting to learn math and science exactly and that was I mean the path to success as I would know would be that I would love to learn more about mathematics more about physics more about science in order to succeed later so there was a hunger it was hunger exactly and your classes were they very large small I mean relatively large I mean in comparison with say classes at UH Maui College I sometimes have 10 to 15 students we were like 30 30 something in high school all right for about university depending on the course if it was a core course like calculus or something 120 in a lecture hall but then for more specialized courses fewer like 15 20 now for your graduate school you went to of course you got a masters in in Iran but you went for your PhD in Canada am I correct where was that it was in a city called London Ontario University of Western Ontario a very good university I started there as a student in electrical engineering but then and that was the thing I've been always interested in the theory behind engineering why things work as they do okay and of course you have to know about the mathematics behind it the science behind it and that was too strong for me I guess so I decided to switch to applied mathematics which is you know it's practically engineering minus the design part because you work with computers you design techniques everything semiconductors and coding and so it is everywhere exactly you can simulate all these things like I said even if you like you can go further and design it right right but you were interested in product you was interested in how does it work yeah what is the foundation for how products are how can we tweak things to make things better no that's amazing that's amazing and and this led you to teaching yes well in general well my personality is such that I like teaching I like research I well I guess I consider myself a lifelong learner so I always love to learn and of course you've been publishing papers research peer review journals over you continue to do that but but today we're here to really discuss your passion about about an area in in in education and what what did you talk about that and how you care or your early interaction with a problem-based learning in Canada that led you to today sure well as a PhD student back in I want to say 2004 2005 I got accepted to a program called IPSW industrial problem solving workshop it was a two-week program for graduate student and postdocs where the first week was a dry run someone with a problem that they had already solved would be the mentor of I mean let's say we are 40 students divided into five groups of eight for example so five mentors each with a already and already solved problem right but they pretended to be an open problem and they would give it to us and we would be working on that for one week that was the preparation for the second week when we had an authentic real life open in the problem safe for example from Shell from some cancer research institutes from the private sector yes private sector they were interested in seeing how people from the outside in academia would approach this problem and well we had really good results sometimes they would otherwise have spent like millions of dollars to address the same problem that got solved for them in a week and sometimes the answer was no there was no solution so they wouldn't invest right and it's better sometimes because you save money and direct your funds on another research topic and let me tell you it was a win-win-win situation for everyone as a grad student I got exposed to real-life applications of mathematics it was a great opportunity for instructors for faculty members to recruit grad students postdocs among those participants it was a great opportunity for those companies so higher right right right after graduation so it was and of course it was a great opportunity scientifically for everyone working on a real-life problem practicing what you've seen so it's a really a bridge between the private sector research right students instructors it's really a kind of ecosystem that you develop working together so that you really have a really you know a mathematical foundation to problems but you're approaching problems from the real life from the exactly and because you're in a group for one thing a good thing about that is there's no competition you all have the same goal addressing the problem solving the problem and the problems are interesting problem well yeah you mentioned that it first originated in the medical community problem the idea okay so here's the thing after a couple of years I got hired to run this program which was a great opportunity as part of my postdoc and back then I was amazed by how well it works how effective it was but I couldn't explain it and my background was not education so I talked to some of my colleagues from college of education back then at University of Calgary in Canada and they told me that the best way to explain this would be problem-based learning and so that's how I got exposed to the idea of problem-based learning which I continued okay and and so you you really were exposed to this world called problem-based learning back in Canada and you land here at the UH Maui College back in 2011 and and you must have seen Maui as a grand experiment for your ideas that you had honed you know leading these groups on Maui but Maui of course is different because there aren't many universities and postdocs in part of it what what changes did you make to the model on Maui well as you said the first and foremost thing would be scaling down because we do not have it's not like it back in Canada it was a nationwide thing and you had there were always enough students more than enough students grad students postdoc here on Maui there are not very many grad students to begin with and so we decided to make it something a program for high school and early college students to begin with and what I did was I sort of looked for people who might be interested in the idea fortunately back then the director of our Upward Bound program which is part of Trio something funded by DOE I believe right and she was really supportive of the idea so we piloted this at that level for three years three summers when did it start all right I want to say the first one was 2013 or 14 yes yes and then after three years so the first one I'm going to explain that later if you want but the first one was a problem so again we did not necessarily have access to Shell right I mean there are companies on Maui and also cultural sites and things like that so we approached the CoEAEA fish bond and asked them to supply a central problem because for problem-based learning you you need an authentic central problem and that problem came from the fish bond and where is this fish bond can you give me in key hey all right and and it's way up more towards McKenna am I correct yes and and it's been there for hundreds of years yes and it used to be a great and amazing source of food for the entire Maui so it's related to history yes culture the culture also to well sustainability they were they were growing fish to sustain themselves to feed the entire island without having to rely on any external support right so it's a brilliant use of the ocean for their to feed the community and now this is an interesting problem because of course you have major hotels nearby residential key hey is of course one of the most populated areas on Maui now and also how to preserve and how do sustain such a project when you know you've lost a lot of those traditional kinds of learning since since before well we're going to get back to more in depth on that but I think you know what I'm learning is that it's is that it's interdisciplinary I think I think that that's one of the major things I'm learning from you it's not like it's all about math it's it's math is part of that and we'll get back to how the students use math from after we take this break we're back with my guest Amir Hossain Amizlani from UH Maui College an old friend and we've been talking about problem-based learning and how to really attack problems and we're talking about a fish pond in Kihei that I'm quite aware of and how what kind of students and and and what happened during this project what was the outcome well not the outcome but how did the students use the tools and resources and what was the outcome of this project well let me explain a little bit about the theory behind problem-based learning why it works the way it does it's based on two main theories in education constructionism and situated learning let's put it this way if you are working on something that is near and dear to your heart the problem from your community from your city from your country right so your goal is to solve that problem right and then it happens that you need some mathematics in order to solve that problem you need some physics some science of course yeah you actually welcome that mathematics that physics you learn without noticing you learn what you're enjoying because your goal is not just learning mathematics through possibly dry lectures or physics you own the learning process and it's important for the teacher which we should call actually a mentor in this case to refrain from lecturing it's it's about being a team working on a problem it can go in any direction we have to recognize that there may be several solutions to the same problem depending on how you look at it so from execution standpoint there's a lot of frontload preparation for that we have to interpret the problem correctly we have to make sure that we've sort of anticipated the scenarios that may come out the type of questions that students may ask and we need to have resources ready that's why there's a lot of teacher preparation yes in that sense and that's why we have a training for trainers professional development thing for the teachers instructors of this program but it's important to note that it has to be a teamwork everyone must enjoy what's happening and for that to happen we need to select the problems really carefully they need to be authentic related to your community your city so the fish pond fits all those categories yes given that a high percentage of the participants were from native Hawaiian background it was really a great experience for them they loved it they worked on it they even learned about things like say double integration high school kids before even entering college which is something they would see in calculus three or four they just saw how they would find the volume of the pond using strings and push prints for example and measuring the depth some random points inside the meshes that they had created and they added up and with a good accuracy they got the volume of the pond which is technically what we know as double integration now one could show them the same thing through limit and sigma and I don't know taking the limit something x n goes to infinity and things like that which is great I mean I'm not saying that it shouldn't happen that way but when you've done this before and you've seen this in action you can relate way better another thing that I would like to highlight here is that and I guess you mentioned as well it's not really right to say that I teach calculus through problem-based learning or I teach physics it's not about one subject or one class we're talking about I mean if you really want to change the curriculum it has to be one semester or one year revolving around one central problem so then you are ready to expose them to the physics of it right so the ideal case would be a super class for learning community of sorts where the physics instructor is there the math instructor is there the chemistry biology so the physics instructor says f equals m times a at the same time the math teacher can say something about this is the secondary for example and this is how we solve this part of the problem using this knowledge but of course there's other parts of puzzle or the problem dealing with politics with the neighborhood dealing with people cultural issues so you're correct that in real life things are not neat and clean in three or four months it might dribble and then kind of accumulate and then stops and goes over a year or more and that's real life and that's what our job is about in project management in Google or AOL or many companies I work for it's that it's not very clean but again you know what you get to know what you don't know also and try to get the experts and resources or find out on yourself and so you actually are learning as you proceed on your project exactly and that's why when we train the trainers we expose them to the same problems that they would be working on with their students in the summertime first of all then we make sure that we have one teacher from natural sciences background one from physical sciences in its broad sense and one helping them with technical writing and cultural aspects because culture is important because again that's about situated learning if the question if the problem the central problem is related to your culture right you feel better tackling the problem now we were talking about this before the show that you felt that the students on Maui are the same anywhere but what they lack sometimes is confidence exactly and what is the confidence is it themselves in their community what is the confidence well I believe and maybe I'm wrong but that's based on my observation they think that no one expects that much that high of them they sell themselves short I mean in the sense that they can do great things if they want to and we've had some really great examples of successful students studying coming from Maui high schools we know one of them right CRQ University we have MIT students we have UCLA student and so it's possible for them they need to be challenged and they need to gain confidence that they can do exactly as any other student everywhere and of course thanks to technology nowadays they don't really need to go to any particular class they don't need to physically attend a class to succeed to learn things now your efforts in this area has been rewarded recently by the by the government the NSF Greg can you tell us something about how you're kind of moving this idea forward throughout the state yes so like I said we piloted this problem-based learning through or Upward Bound program just on Maui after three years fortunately we got an NSF grant over one million dollars for three years and now we have three sites UH Hilo Upward Bound Winboard Community College Upward Bound and UH Maui College Upward Bound so over the course of these three years we hopefully work with 90 students per year so 270 students it will take and also we train teachers because part of this program is a professional development and it's a good opportunity to advertise it for STEM teachers across the state of Hawaii so you're evangelizing other teachers to also pick this project-based learning also in other areas of the community yes yes I mean we're not forcing them necessarily to choose that but this is a great idea and we need to create a culture that is acceptable to that for example let's say assessment if you train kids using this method it's not fair to give them the same test that you would give to students that are taught to the test well it's not fair because right but here we are trying to address these through this three-year implementation or let's say research phase hopefully after that we would like to go for a five-year implementation phase as well if this becomes successful but time constraints because one thing is like I said if we can make the entire curriculum of the year revolve around a central problem that would be awesome but what we have only five weeks right but this is a great concept that's what you're trying to prove a concept and perhaps in the future the university and colleges could also be revolving so that they would be attacking a problem through one year two years or more throughout their college career and applying tools and resources exactly that's the plan I mean that would be your idea for us well thank you so much we're at the end of the show but I think what you're driving toward and I hope you're evangelizing will foster a whole new generation of instructors we'll take this forward and as you know upper bound economically challenged you know young people from communities like Kali Hiplama where I'm from too and but as you as you rightly pointed out if you're passionate about the problem you will learn anything exactly solve it if you can relate to the problem at hand nothing really seems impossible to you you won't get bored you keep working you keep trying and you succeed thank you so much thank you this is Ray Tuchiyama all of our leadership and I hope you enjoyed the show


Hi, you guys. Lindsay here. Welcome back to my channel, Inside to Him. I am so excited to share one of my latest craft projects. My sewing themed wreath.  The wreath itself came from Hobby Lobby last January after all the decor went on sale for basically 100% off. Each of the ornaments was made on my Cricut Maker using their 2mm chipboard and the knife blade. I was able to cut out these really detailed shapes. The knife blade is basically an exacto knife that makes shallow cuts into the chipboard. The machine cuts into the chipboard a little bit at a time passing over the images again and again until it cuts through the entire thickness of the chipboard. I was using a brand new knife blade and found that if the software was going to make 24 passes, I really only needed to do half of that so I could cancel the cut basically halfway through. So that also means though that this is not one of those Cricut projects that you can just set and forget. You really need to stay close by and start checking to see if the chipboard is cut through when you're getting too close to that halfway mark of the cutting process. But once it's done the shapes just pop out and you can use a little all to get the itty bitty parts out. The sewing machine design actually came from one of my favorite bloggers C. Kate So. She posted about these ornaments earlier this year and I stored that little idea away until now. In addition to Kate's sewing machine ornaments I also found some other sewing related images in Cricut's design space. A thimble, a needle and thread spool, and a button. I made all the ornaments in two sizes for a little bit of variety. To make it easy for you guys I have made my design public so you can get started on your ornaments in just a few clicks. The link to the design is in the description box along with links to all the products I have used to make my wreath. So once everything was cut out I took some basic acrylic paint and painted both sides of each piece of the ornaments. Then I took a little bit of gold acrylic and ran that just along the edges just to give it a little bit of dimension and a little bit of sparkle. For the sewing machine I painted the knobs of the machine in contrast colors so that they would stand out a little bit and for the button I simply just tied some twine around the holes of the button to make it look like it was a threaded button. To finish up this wreath I made some thread spool ornaments. The wooden spools can be found at any craft store. I took some wood stain to deepen the color a little bit and then wrapped some fabric scraps around each one with a hot glue gun so easy. To top it all off I sewed this bow by taking a long strip of scrap fabric folding it right sides together and stitching all three sides leaving a small opening in the longest side for turning. Then I just turned it and pressed it and tied it into a bow around a piece of the garland. And there you have it it really is that easy to make your own wreath and these little sewing themed ornaments really just speak to my heart. I love mine so much it might stay up past Christmas I mean nothing about it maybe the garland is overtly Christmas so why not right? But that's going to do it for me today if you enjoyed this video please give it a thumbs up and if you're not already please subscribe I post DIY fun craft projects like this all the time. But thanks for watching this one and be sure to tag me in your photos if you make the wreath or any of the ornaments obviously these ornaments can go on your regular Christmas tree as well they're not just for a wreath. I just love seeing how you guys are inspired by my projects but again thanks so much for watching I'll see you all very soon bye.


All right, welcome everybody. Thank you so much for being here. This is our presentation, Reaching Out by Reaching In, Outreach as Community Building, Inside and Outside the Library. OK, so quick intros. My name is Steph Yoon. I'm a PPT library aide. I work in the teen zone at our main branch in Oakland. And my pronouns are they, them, theirs. My name is Andrea Guzman. I'm a library assistant in the community relations office of the Oakland Public Library and currently an MLIS student. Hi, my name is Peggy Simmons. I am a permanent part-time library assistant working for Teen Services for the Oakland Public Library. My main task, but not my only task, is running the Oakland Youth Po-Lawyer program. OK, so real quick, just kind of thinking to yourselves, we want to do a role called Who's in the Room? So librarians, paraprofessionals, public, academics, supervisors, managers, the places that you work. We imagine maybe a lot of librarians in the room, but thinking about who do we want in these spaces and who has access to being able to come to a really cool conference like this. So just think about that, especially as you send folks off to professional development opportunities. Kind of keep that with you throughout the presentation.  Real quick. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Woo. See you. Glad to see so many. And our librarians, where are you at? Yeah, showing up. OK. OK. So we get a sense of who's in the room right now. So we're talking about outreach. And we're thinking that, as demonstrated by this gift, maybe your outreach looks like this. You give someone a flyer. Maybe they're not super juiced about it. And that's the end of your day, a mission accomplished, right? Maybe not. So we want to talk about outreach, not just as giving out flyers and kind of measuring numbers of how many people we've reached, but really building relationships and being able to kind of keep outreach not only sustainable for you and your staff, but also figuring out how you can build those relationships in community and how that will come back to you quantified in different ways that might not be as easily measured, but will really come back to benefit your community and the library as an institution. OK. So yeah. I mean, we're all in a rush. And we're all kind of trying to get things done. And there isn't all the hours in the day to build those relationships with people if you're just handing out flyers really frantically. And that's kind of the job. So really, we want to talk about how are ways that you can spend more time and energy into getting to know the people that come to your libraries and to know the people that work with you, especially your non-librarian staff who most likely represent the communities that you're serving and also have lots of skills and relationships that maybe they might not be as tapped into as they could be and making sure it's also like an equitable and sustainable and fair relationship to your non-librarian staff as well. So I know that lots of us work really hard on our annual reports. The data is very important. However, pleasing just the stakeholders or the folks who may not even come or use your library. And putting pictures of brown kids, great. Like all the optics are fine. But ultimately, it's really corny if you're not actually being authentic about their relationships that you're building, right? So the good data is gonna come from good relationship building. So it's really important for us not to just focus on those numbers, right? But the actual relationships that we're building. So we're gonna give you two different examples of programs that might not have been considered outreach but are really wonderful outreach programs that are run at the Oakland Public Library and they have been run in large part, not completely, but in large part by paraprofessional staff. I'm gonna interject right here too that I just want you all to know that we first prepared this presentation for CLA. Last year, maybe some of you saw it and we had 90 minutes and so now we're getting 90 minutes into 20 minutes. So excuse me if I start to talk really fast. All of us. So the Oakland Youth Poet Laureate program started in 2012. Steph didn't mention it before but Steph is actually Oakland's first Youth Poet Laureate. They are the 2012 Poet Laureate. We'll be starting to look for our ninth Youth Poet Laureate in January. It's for ages 13 to 18, Youth in Oakland and all kinds of kids, all kinds of poets come to the program and we're developing the program very purposefully now to be more of a community of young poets supporting each other rather than one winner who gets a $5,000 scholarship. We really naturally developed that way but we're doing it much more purposefully now or figuring out how to do it much more purposefully. But over those seven, eight years, the program has grown enormously. The 2018 Youth Poet Laureate, Leila Motley, she, so she was Laureate for one year, she had a video made of one of her poems by YR Media that got 91,000 views just on Facebook. When was the last time you did a program that reached 91,000 people? So that was huge. She performed all kinds of places. We don't have a great count but she definitely in that year was in front of more than 2,000 people. This year we have 10 finalists so we're working with this group of finalists. They were named in April and in the past six months since they were named, they have been at 21 different events around town and in addition to those 21 events, the Laureates themselves were in front of 12 more, were in 12 more events, performed at 12 more events. And so that was 33 different events just in the past six months that these young people performed at. And that was at schools, business events, churches, senior centers, street fairs, museum events, et cetera. These young people got to speak their truth, their beauty, their stories in front of all kinds of people and the hundreds of people in the past six months. So I mean when you're talking, and the library's behind all of that, I'm gonna talk a little bit more about that in a second but Steph's gonna say a couple of things about. Yeah, so something I really would love to speak to you about the program is that like especially in this time and age where I hear it all the time with people, they're like, oh, what relevance does libraries have? Don't they just have books and that's it? Don't they still use the card system? And this is one way in which you can show folks, like having programs like these show folks that like, no, the library's a lot more than just books, like the books are really important. Yeah, and all the information you can get is really important, but it's also a community hub in general and us being able to go out into the community and not trying to show people into our branches, which we'd like them to go there eventually, but like trying to get that first point of contact, that interaction is really, really important. And for me, like the Oakland Youth Poet Laureate Program was my first like real kind of thought and like folding into library work because I've been in the libraries like as a kid and I like used it pretty regularly, but like seeing the kind of work that they were doing, seeing them support a program like this, I kind of thought more about like, I could see myself working and wanting to support that kind of work because it's in alignment with what I wanna do. So being able to show your patrons and community, like there's so much more that's available at the library that they might not already know about that you're already doing and whatever like programs and awesome things that you plan to do in the future. And especially getting their input is really important. So that's the piece I wanna mention. Great. So the Oakland Youth Poet Laureate Program that the library is running is developing opportunities, skills, communication, peer support, et cetera for these young people. That's a wonderful program for the young people. We are massively elevating the voices of these young people and again, very different young people from different parts of Oakland. We're partnering with each one of those events, those 33 events that was 33 people organizing events who now we have relationships with, some better than others, but that's an amazing way to partner with people. We're reaching new people all the time and we're building community. If again, if you think about outreach as building community, this program is absolutely doing it on all different kinds of levels. All kinds of people are hearing these young people's voices and they are out there making friends and talking about interesting things and talking about the things that they're passionate about. That's a lot of what community is about. So we're not saying, hey, this is a library event, but the library's behind all of it. And so at the same time, the library is building an amazing reputation. We're not doing it to gain, we're not running the Oakland Youth Poet Laureate Program so the library will be like, hey, the library is fantastic. But by running the Oakland Youth Poet Laureate Program, the library is building a really wonderful reputation. The young people say wonderful things about the library and the program. And so by building community, we are also at the same time enriching the library. All right, on to Ready Set Connect. Program I was running a few years ago. So Ready Set Connect is a youth development, tech focused youth professional development program. And really with the goal of bridging the digital divide. So we would work on soft skills with young people and they would also get exposure to the tech industry, get some work, experience, really great program. I was actually introduced to the program as an intern, so I was one of the youth in it. And kind of like Stephanie, I kind of fell in love with the library world. I ended up running the program, getting hired as a permanent staff and now in my MLIS program to hopefully become a librarian soon. So this is just from 2017 to 2018, so just one year. We had over 650 hours that were dedicated on one-on-one help with patrons to bridging the digital literacy divide. And we had over 1200 sessions in nine different branches. So what this does is you're both having young people talk about the library, be a part of the library, maybe even getting hired by the library because we hired a lot of the young people who were in that program to be library A's, library assistants. But in addition to that, you're also building connections with the community. They're seeing friendly faces. Folks are learning the digital literacy skills at the library, which we know is a really huge issue that we're grappling with now. And yeah, so essentially what we're trying to tell you is, so both of those programs were run by paraprofessionals, right? The whole thing. So we know that librarianship, librarians are not super diverse for the most part. I know it's a little different in the Bay Area, but we know the stats, it doesn't look great.  And so we must ask you to really examine your institution and ask yourself, who makes up your staff? Yeah, so let's talk about the D word, which is diversity. It's a big hot buzzword. I think it's great to see different organizations in different realms of the workforce and the public really catching up. But we really also want to emphasize and examine, what does diversity mean? What does it look like? How do you know your staff is actually diverse? And in the context of a library system, does your library value your paraprofessional staff? Do you recognize and really think about the different skills that they bring, especially given the rich life experiences that you have a lot of thinking about where especially the racial and ethnic diversity, where is it concentrated in your staff? Is it primarily your paraprofessionals? Are they coming up to the librarians as well? And thinking about how do you measure that and how do you know you're not just potentially using people for optics? Even if you don't intend to, look at how diverse our staff is, but really looking at them as full people to develop, folks that you can go to who have knowledge, who have wisdom, and really folding them into the planning and work processes sooner. Not like, oh, can you help me hand out more flyers? But thinking about what perspectives they bring. So how do you know that your staff is diverse? How can you measure it? Who shares your views? How do you value them and making sure that those folks feel supported as well? And it's a reciprocal relationship and not potentially using them at opportune moments. So yeah, and how do you know that they find their work meaningful? And not just like, oh, I like my job, but whatever they're bringing to the table is fully recognized that you see them as a whole person. And that, especially, I work as an aide and a lot of the things can be clerical and that's part of the job duty, sure. But it's really exciting when people ask me about other opportunities that align with my interests and skills and areas in which I have expertise, but are we asking that question to everyone even if people don't know about me? Are you asking that of all your staff and really thinking about, do I know who my staff is? Do I know them as people outside of the library? So there's a diversity of your staff because I hear it all the time. Oh, our library is so diverse, it's so diverse. But where is the diversity concentrated? Is it that all of the lesser paid folks is that where the diversity is and all the folks who have full compensation, less diversity there? Thanks to ask. And something we hear all the time, not just in tech, but also for librarians, it's a pipeline issue. Is it really? So some things, again, to ask or push or advocate for, do you provide mentorship? So OPL has informal mentorship opportunities for people who are interested in the MLIS and that's been a huge source of help. Hassan, I see, helps to run that. Do you allow for flexible scheduling for students, right, students who are embarking in the MLIS degree? Do you have money to make that happen? Because money is obviously also a racial in class issue who gets to have wealth and not. And do you have job shadowing opportunities? And then if I could mention one thing that all three of us talked about in our CLA presentation, but each one of us had also people in our corner, like people to support us, not just in these very specific, like library specific ways, but like folks we knew would have our back that we could talk to, that we could troubleshoot, that we could like vent to and like being that person for your non-library and staff has been really key, it can be really key, especially for retaining your staff, for keeping them in the work, for keeping them happy and just, you know, knowing where folks are at. So again, to point out, are there real chances for development? And the reason that we're focusing along the prayer professional staff is because a lot of that stuff belongs to the community that you serve, right? A lot of times they're local to that neighborhood, local to that city and oftentimes the librarians are not. So this is why this is the focus. And so, yep. Oh, is that me? So, like Steph was saying, there was always somebody who got us into this work that we have loved and developed. In 2012, when the Oakland Youth Poet Laureate program started, I was volunteering for it because I had been working with young people for decades and I had been working, doing community writing workshops in Oakland for years and so I jumped on the bandwagon and was doing this even not as an employee. And it would have been kind of crazy to, as opportunities developed, to not plug me into them. It would have not been taking advantage of my skills and my network. And but we need to be doing that in a way that's not just to put a name on, like if you're doing a project with, I'm just gonna throw it out there. Let's talk about, no. If you're gonna try to go back to something that was said this morning, but I think I want, if you're developing a program, for example, there's a lot of Guatemalans in your community and you wanna be doing a program with Guatemalans, if you invite somebody from Guatemala to come to the program, but you're not developing that program with them, then it's gonna be hard to get it right and to really look at what those folks need. I was just throwing an example out there. And so me, as somebody from the writing community being a part of this program, it made sense, but you don't wanna tokenize anybody either. It's not just to look good. It's not just as Steph said earlier, the optics of it. So really looking at if you're tokenizing or exploiting your paraprofessional staff, I think we can. Compensation is a big one, just putting that out there. So how do you know the depth and diversity and skills of your paraprofessional colleagues? Again, like Steph said earlier, there was a couple people who really advocated for me. Librarians who were like, Peggy needs to be doing this and with a lot of patience on all of our parts, we made it happen. And so eventually I was running the program or mostly running the program. So acknowledge skills and experience of your paraprofessional staff, honor their input experience and perspective. You have to know them in order to do that and recognize and credit their efforts always. And again, not just by tokenizing them so you can say, oh, yeah, I asked my aide about that, but really see what that person has to offer. And this includes, it's not just paraprofessionals, librarians of color have to deal with this all the time. So for white librarians, please also be very mindful about the ideas that you're stealing from people and not crediting or supporting fully. Cause that's a big one.  Again, so opportunities, the whole purpose really is like, is it meaningful or folks are actually developing in their positions? Yes, we have mundane, everyone has mundane work that they have to do, but we have to be extremely mindful about how folks are developing because if they're not really developing, they're not gonna talk great about the workplace and that's gonna reflect on the community, especially considering if the bulk of your paraprofessionals are from the community that you're serving, people aren't quite when they don't like their jobs, they vent and that does not reflect very well because those peoples, moms, kids, sisters, brothers come to the library. Yeah, I think it's, if we could go back one slide real quick, it's also important to recognize that while we want more opportunities to offer professional development to folks, if they're also not down with it, then you gotta kind of leave it at that too. Like respecting if they decline, like cause there's so many different factors on like why they, it might not be a good fit or why they don't want it and like, I can speak from experience, it's really hard to manage up.  So don't make any assumptions about what they want or what they need, but don't make assumptions also about their backgrounds and experiences too. Like this is why it's really key, not just building relationships outside the community, but within your community and the community of the library, your staff, your team that you see every day. So we recommend both uplifting and collaborating with your paraprofessional staff, setting up support systems. Everybody needs somebody to be advocating for them and listening to them and advocating them. Just, you know, again, one individual can make a huge difference, advocate for paraprofessionals, especially if they're usually part of the communities that you are aiming to serve. Yeah, and to speak on the point of setting up support systems, again, like you want to be able to get input from those folks, have them part of the conversation and making sure that even if you have a system in place, it's not inaccessible, it's not hard to get to, it's not hard to approach and that people feel like they can go to it. Like it doesn't mean much if you have something in place and no one feels empowered to use it, you know? So for those of you who are lucky enough to grab a zine and sense lots of your librarians, you can know how to make a zine or you can look it up. This is a zine. We have some, this is basically these two slides that we're not gonna go through are basically some hard questions to ask yourself when you're designing a program or serving a particular community and for those who want a PDF, please email me because I can do that. Oh, oh, we have time, okay, cool. Oh, I mean, that was really... Well, we're gonna do questions. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So again, thank you so much. Thanks for having us. Yeah, just, I guess I'll... Please email us if you have questions. Again, if you want copies of the PDF, the zine as a PDF, you know, strongly recommend it. Yeah, and I guess a little more context for this amazing zine that Andrea put together and it's really cute. It's an asset recognition exercise that we had in a previous version of this presentation that we can't go over in depth today, but you can take it home with you, fold it up.  Not the scissors, just the zine. Not the scissors, the zine template. And there are also postcards in the back kind of talking about the Open Youth Polaroid Program. Peggy and I also can tell you more about it, mostly Peggy, because she's like running the program. Yeah. Because ultimately, community is the asset, right? Without community, without folks actually believing what we do, libraries are nothing. They're just a bunch of people working in a building feeling really great about themselves. So we have to be real loving and also very critical about how we conduct our business. Yeah. We got questions. Yeah, Q and A. Two questions. So there was something in the, an early slide that said outcomes or experiences, not outcomes or something.  Yeah, you're not doing that next year. Like, is this measured and how do you measure it? Because I find like a lot of times with outreach events it's like, well, did you issue new cards? Well, did that person come into the library? Did they check out a big old stack of books? And that's how they measure outcomes. Do you have a way of measuring your outcomes or? Yes, so that's a hard one. I work at the community relations office and that's something that we think about all the time. But again, it's having to make the case that the relationships are what's gonna pay off in the end. But I know that can be very difficult to make because people do look at the numbers. So I mean, I think that's why a lot of folks rely on a lot of them, the qualitative data, whatever stories that you can get from people, especially if you do evaluations and folks say something or if you can find a way to ask a question that highlights kind of the work that you're doing. But ultimately, again, the more you focus on those relationships, it takes time, right? But that's how you're gonna get more people through the doors and that's how you're gonna see, really build that trust with the community. I think another thing to mention too is giving out flyers being present and available and visible at events is still really important but we don't want people to fall into the trap of that's the only type of outreach we're gonna do, the only ones that we can measure because again, you don't know whatever's going on outside of that moment of you giving them the flyer or like a lot of things in my experience and others that I've talked to is through word of mouth. Like even just me working at the library and me telling all my friends and family, like look at all this stuff we have, none of us knew about it, I didn't know about it before I started working there and they've been telling all their friends, it's amazing how much information travels through the community but we couldn't exactly capture that but knowing that there are ways in which it'll come back to you and at least having a good reputation and being like in good standing with your community, like there's isn't much of a way to really quantify that in my opinion. Yeah, let me piggyback on that real quickly. With the two examples that we gave you, the goal was not outreach, right? The outcome is outreach but not the goal and so it's not really being measured in that way either but at the same time you can see how many people we reach but if you think about outreach as a relationship building that signing up people for library cards shouldn't be so much about how many library cards, it's what kind of interaction did you have when you were signing them up? Did you start developing a relationship? Did you get to know that person? Did that person get to know anything about the library in that process? It's about that opportunity to engage with them in my opinion, much more than it is about them walking away at the library card that they may or may not use if they don't feel something new and exciting about the library and feel welcome there. Good question though. Hi, great presentation. My name is Magdi and I'm a library aide at Oakham Public Library and I'm wondering how do you, as a lesser paid person in this library how do you work with that while also doing extra labor and having that on your shoulders as maybe being the only person of color in your branch and having all these great ideas but they're not really reciprocated and then also where do you find your inspiration or are there people that you follow online where you get creativity ideas and things like that? I know you work with the community as well but what kind of online communities do you work with to get inspired? That's really good. That was a lot. That's a great question. I actually, I struggle with this all the time, a lot because I do a lot. I think a lot of the onus is like how making the right kind of partnerships within the library especially as a person of color is really crucial. So like joining committees or going to people outside of like your specific bubble getting involved with your union. Things like this can really help because if you are like in a certain case where you are a little bit more isolated it's really hard to do that especially if you're the only person of color the likelihood of your labor being exploited is extremely high. And so going out of your way to really reach out to folks who you don't already know especially other librarians of color because there are far and few and librarians of color are the ones who have been helping me for example like make it through and help me advocate for myself and figure out like what's appropriate for me to do what's appropriate for me not to do and where do we draw those lines? Where is it going to be beneficial to me as much as I want to do everything for the library I also want to be compensated for the work that I do and if I'm doing more than some of my peers who get paid way more than I do it gets to the point where it's like so we have to also always analyze that it's like how much am I gaining how is it going to help me in the long run obviously also helping the community that I'm serving but I mean making those connections especially with other people of color is kind of like at least in my personal experience super crucial. Yeah something that I kind of want to bring back to is like having folks in your corner and like knowing who you can go to as well and this will serve like in multiple ways whether it's like I have ideas for things that I want to do and maybe they're not being super well received where I'm at but knowing maybe there's other folks than go to and then yeah being able to just get the experience of like I just figuring out how you can say no to things and like what supports and what systems and just how it operates in place where out of time it looks like but definitely just having those folks that you trust and you can come to and they have other resources and other folks that can connect you to is really vital. Twitter and Facebook have lots of real snarky great groups full of really loud people who have lots of inspiration and programs. I'm happy to share some of that with you yeah. Oh yes thank you again so much for having us. Thank you.


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