Good afternoon, everyone. It is Thursday, April 8th at 2 p.m. This is Senate education. We apologize for the late start we had a Scheduling misunderstanding on our end as we know the house has sent us two bills. What we've been working on which is this School construction bill the other bill that they sent us is on community schools a pilot project pilot program that would now our schools to Access dollars S or dollars and put a community school director in schools to help To help really provide the the resources that so many of our students need so Not sure whose phone is ringing, but Mr. Francis if you wouldn't mind turning that off. I did. Oh, thank you. I think Going to Okay, go ahead. Sorry. We're going to start with Mr. Racine who's joining us? Okay Thanks for joining us appreciate your patience as you know, we are talking about community schools something that you're very interested in and Looking forward to hearing from you. So the floor is yours. Great. Well, thank you and For your record Doug Racine former area of agency of human services former lieutenant governor and seven term member of the the Senate Including time on the health and welfare committee with senator Lions and I also appreciate the fact that as we go into this issue H106 it seems we have a quorum of the health and welfare committee With us today as as well So I think that's that's really helpful because I see H106 as being as much a Human services issue and perhaps even more so than an education issue As I really appreciated listening in with secretary French a lot of what he said is very consistent with The thinking that is behind H106 community schools bill a couple of points that he made is we really need systems Built around around our schools and our and our students to help with the issues that are Barriers to children getting good education and he talked at the end of his remarks a lot about equal opportunity And the state's responsibility and I I think we all understand right now and see that equal opportunity is not something that exists throughout the state of Vermont and primarily children who have come from a low income Homes poverty homes with a lot of poverty and a lot of dysfunction Those are the kids who we are failing and giving an opportunity for for a good education H106 to me could be one of the most significant pieces of legislation past this year outside of the COVID legislation In that it's an opportunity to build back better Which I think is the the mantra coming out of just about everybody in state government and outside of state government as well to me it's an opportunity to make sure that We are using our schools and our human services effectively To help every child succeed and have that opportunity for the American dream that that I enjoyed Growing up, and I think most of us here have enjoyed When I was secretary of the agency of human services, it was painfully obvious to me It was probably just as obvious when I was serving in the Senate of that Poverty is related to most of the issues that the agency of human services deals with Certainly the DCF but also corrections I think it's well over 90% of those folks incarcerated do not have a high school diploma Which tells us something about the lasting some of the lasting impacts of poverty if we aren't if we aren't dealing with it But it's also the achievement gap or the opportunity gaps. I've been called both things over time We use different words at different different times But that's some that Achievement gap has existed for since we started doing or it's been recognized since we started doing standardized testing Is the case every secretary or commissioner of education talks about The need to help those kids who are living in poverty those who are The measure we use those who are eligible for free and reduced lunches But again my experience is the mental the mental health issues the achievement gap issues a lot of special End costs are are related to poverty and then later on in life substance abuse problems The the poor poor physical health our Medicaid budget Some child abuse it goes on and on and on and the way to get at prevention of a lot of these problems is to help kids Succeed in school and for kids to succeed in school. They need the supports that H106 Promises them. I don't know how much you've heard from experts about the community schools concept But it is an opportunity to bring the services That should be available the kids into the school building So they're readily accessible and Senator Campion you pointed out that I've been interested in this. I was there helping Summa Gawair as much as I possibly could Down in the Molly Stark elementary school and in your community of Bennington But building that very model Bringing in all sorts of services and she did it on her own. There wasn't anybody at the state helping her Or nobody's the then the Department of Education She was pulling it all together in a very entrepreneurial way But she recognized that kids needed a lot of a lot of additional supports if she was going to be successful in helping them get Get a good education and all of these issues have become even more Apparent and more severe With the pandemic lots of studies out there right now. I read one just the other day. They came from McKinsey, which is a large management Company that talks about the how much students have lost in their learning Since the pandemic began and it's obviously worse for those kids who are living in poverty and it takes on all the racial Issues as well that other areas of the country experience even more than we do I think there are a lot of good reasons to support this bill, which I hope you will obviously It's as I said, it's an opportunity to address the lasting impacts of poverty those things that get in the way even if President Biden is successful in reducing childhood poverty by 50% Which is an admirable goal There's still the 50% that are going to be living in poverty and those who have started in poverty I'm going to experience some of those lasting impacts of The childhood traumas that can get in the way It's an opportunity for better provision of agency of human services programs as former secretary I see this as an opportunity to bring a lot of human services programs into Into the schools where they are most needed and the programs aimed at children are by and large offered outside of the schools Well, where do you get where can you get this the children? Most easily where can you get them? It's obviously in in the schools so I see an opportunity for better provision more effectiveness of those services and Frankly more cost effectiveness of those services as well I Seeds I the vision I see in H106 is a central place for for services You know the last since last March a lot of state employees in the agency of human services, particularly in the economic services Arena have been operating out of their homes. There's no reason why they can't be operating out of their schools And when parents dropping their kids off at school picking their kids up at school Are coming to the school for teacher meetings. They could be filling out their forms and meeting with their case managers and Getting the services there particularly in rural areas where transportation is is a major issue for people to to receive services It allows us to tear down silos if you build programs or try to build programs around the children rather than for bureaucratic convenience That the school is an ideal place to bring all the various people who are involved in a child's a Child's life the parents the providers The therapists and everyone else associated bring them all together and in one place The other thing I really like about this is the the other opportunities that are ancillary But I think you have tremendous promise using our community assets our school buildings for Other services behind besides just education and as we're seeing a lot of pressure to close smaller rural schools The here's an opportunity to keep those schools open Even though the perhaps the number of students might be declining The state could actually pay rent to the schools school districts to use those buildings for the provision of Various services you cut down on the number of offices needed for that state uses in their state office buildings And instead of paying the money for the rent as as we do in a lot of those buildings We could be paying school districts as a way of keeping those those school buildings open We talk a lot about broadband and attracting young families into Vermont and live in our rural areas They aren't coming if they don't have if there aren't schools in their communities for their kids You're not going to get somebody to move into a town Even if it's got great broadband to work online all over you know Connecting with people all over the world if every morning they put their six and seven-year-old children on a school bus for an hour It's just not going to happen. So let's let's use this as an opportunity Defined more creative and entrepreneurial ways to keep our schools our small schools Viable, but it's a it's a it's an idea that works in her in the more urbanized areas of the state as well as the more rural areas It recognizes that Same time it recognizes that we've been and I think secretary French talked about this We've been providing education for essentially the same way for for several generations now It's it's not working as well as it should This is an opportunity to sort of re-envision how education is provided It's an opportunity to to be had our schools our school systems be more adaptive Not only do I have a political and government background I have a business background and I got to tell you and I think anybody's been in business knows if you aren't adapting to To changes going on around you in technology and knowledge You're not going to survive and we have not been very adaptive in how we provide Services to our children in our schools or in our in our human services services programs I Have a few suggestions on the bill which I think is a good bill as it is But I think there are a few things that could be done to make it even stronger and reflect some of the ideas that I just I just talked about One of the things that occurred to me while secretary French was talking with you was The bill is aimed at either school individual schools or school districts And you might consider make aiming this as school districts to build those kinds of systems that he was talking about That would instead of just aiming it one school with a principal as he as he knows come very recognized Can come and go over time Building it into the system of a larger administrative unit. I think would be could be an improvement in that bill and make it more likely make it more likely to succeed. He talked about multi tiered support systems. I kind of like that idea. It sounds kind of bureaucratic, but I think it reflects the reality of what is needed in our schools. The other thing I would recommend and I did with a house committee and they sort of ran out of time with crossover deadline. But I think there needs to be a very clear and specific link in this legislation to the agency of human services. As I said, I think this is primarily human services bill. We're talking about the mental health services that are needed. Some of the economic services that are needed physical health services that that kids need to succeed. Those are all in there in the scene center lines nodding your head. They're all in the Purview of the Committee on health and welfare. So I think a really clear link to that make them part of the planning process part of the grant making process. There are great opportunities there. You know, the state signs contracts every year with our our local mental health agencies, for example. There's no reason why the state couldn't write into those contracts that some of the services they are that states paying for will be provided in our school buildings Directly to to the kids in those schools, the employees of the mental health agencies could be in small schools, they could be rotating from school to school and within a district or they could in some of our larger schools, they could just be embedded Inside that school system right now, teachers who are encountering kids with some mental health issues might hear. Well, It's got to leave every Wednesday afternoon for mental health counseling down in Burlington or Rutland or Bennington or or have you Have been those services right there in the schools having that be an expectation of the contracts with our mental health agencies is one possibility, but Explore those possibilities. I think there needs to be a very clear connection and responsibility for the agency of education to be working with the agency of human services and I even have a suggestion for you. A bill that passed a couple of years ago created a director of trauma prevention and resilience development in the agency. Yes, Senator Lyons Within the secretary's office in the agency of human services and it talks about things like the responsibilities collaborate with both community and state partners, including the agency of education. It's right, you know, it's right there that That connection is envisioned in that trauma coordinator. So just in the sub be the director shall add it as another one that that that person shall coordinate within the agency of the people in the agency of education to put these plans together and help school districts realize the full potentials of our human services programs. You might also sort of a side thought here. There might even be an agency of administration link as well. If you start thinking about the possibilities of using our schools. As community hubs community centers, not just for education human services, but there's no reason why there couldn't be circuit riders out of the department of motor vehicles to help people get their licenses. In an unused room in a in a school building, they could bring their cameras and all of their computers in and provide services closer to people in Vermont, rather than having to stand in line for two hours at the department of motor vehicles in Montpelier. Another thing I think is really important and Secretary French actually mentioned this while not in response or connection with this bill. He asked that he says we're staffed okay but don't ask us to do anything new. H106 is something new when you look at what's required. They're going to put plans together. They got to put grant applications together. They've got to evaluate grant applications. They got to monitor the grants. They got to write reports. That can't be done by the Secretary of Education. I think a dedicated position would be really important. He might come back at you and say he doesn't need it. He'll fit it in. He'll figure out how to do it. Because having worked in the executive branch, that's what you that's what secretaries and commissioners here. When somebody in the legislature says can you do this without any new positions they say we were told and I was one of the way. Sure we can do it without any new positions will figure it out. It's not real and for this to work effectively if you want to this to be an effective program. I believe there needs to be a position created you can create a temporary position. This is a three year demonstration program created temporary position. But but don't just hand it to the secretary and say you figure it out because without a dedicated person on this it's not going to to be a successful. The other thing is, if I don't know who else is listening in on this but you can't put it this in legislation but that needs to be talked about. This will not happen successfully without the active leadership of our school boards, our superintendents and our principals and Senator Campion I think you know what happened. Down in Molly start it was the principal who who made this happen she was absolutely committed to making making it happen. So there definitely needs to be a way to reach out to the associations of school boards superintendents and principals to find ways to get them fully on board. So that they can make this happen because sadly, I've encountered some around the state and for many years I traveled around the state and I visited a lot of schools. I encountered a lot of administrators at least 10 years ago, who quite bluntly said these issues are not school issues. They don't they want anything to do with it. They just said we're here to teach the ABCs and what happens outside the school is outside the school is not with it not our responsibility. I once had a superintendent suggest to me that so long as the dropout rate in their school was below the state average that was acceptable. Ignoring the couple of dozen of kids who dropped out every year so well just long as the statistics are good. So that's not that's that's not the kind of leadership that we need to make something like this very effective and the last thing and I'll stop is when the bill was originally drafted to use the Education Fund. And I suggested and I think others suggested that we try to use some of the federal money that's out there right now. There's a temptation to use the Education Fund as a way of avoiding using general fund money. And that's been done a whole lot over the years and I think it's been overdone, quite frankly, and I will claim my share of credit for it because I was there when a lot of these things that were shifted. But these are, these are human services issues these are the mental health issues that kids are facing the physical health issues. The burden should not be placed on property tax payers who when they feel that kind of direct pressure or pushing school districts to cut these kinds of services so I think it's important for the legislature and the governor if you're if if this bill is to be backed on similar bills is to put the responsibility on human the agency of human services and the funding that comes through the general fund and other state taxes but not but not the property tax. So anyway I'll just end by saying I think it's great bill is very exciting I think it's a public. It creates the possibility of providing education and human services. More effectively modernize the management of these programs of our of our schools and in the bottom line will be much more effective in helping our kids achieve that promise of the American dream. I thank you for listening. All right, thank you. And if you wouldn't mind forwarding that testimony to our committee assistant that would be really helpful Senator. I'll be happy to write it because I just talk. Yes, I from notes so I will I will try to write it up as I be true to what I just said to you. Yeah, thank you. I'm wondering. So, I mean again it's a demonstration program two things are coming to my mind. And this is where Sue McGuire from Molly Stark will also be helpful. You know, how do we measure whether or not this was successful. You know we've been talking a lot about, you know, these are these are great ideas how do we look back and say, you know, we met certain certain goals whatever they might be. And then how does this not end up on the, you know, again it's a pilot program so we're trying to prove that this kind of idea works. I appreciate what you said about federal funds, but federal funds are going to quickly run out at the end of these three years so why do it if we know that there is no additional funding after three years, why go through this this process if you will, just to, I mean I feel like in a way or we set people up for disappointment. We often do that I was never a fan of demo when I was secretary I was never a fan of demonstration projects and, and pilot programs for just that reason, right, the news that if I, if I ever win the lottery.  Yes, help them pay for in the year four or five and six and so on. It's a fair question. First, I think there's some folks were really expert in in this concept. The House Committee heard from many of them so you could check with with some of them, but there's something called a learning policy Institute out there that has done research on this and talks about the effectiveness and has looked at the, the outcomes from these programs and other school districts, and it might be worthwhile to engage with one of them, the legislature engaged so you're doing your own independent review of this, but put somebody like this on under a small contract to, to set some parameters and that you can measure why to just to make your own determination after one or two or three years whether this has been effective. As far as funding goes. I can't I couldn't guarantee this as a former secretary, but I think the agency could actually save money by providing services in these ways. It's an opportunity. This gets into a bigger issue that I've been beating on for years as Senator Lions knows because she's listened to me. Many times talk about this, but the agency of human services is not structured and not structured and managed in an efficient way. It's managed through in silos, and every program is works in its silo. It's very effective in providing their individual services but they don't fit together very effectively. Somebody working with a reach up client, for example, does not know whether that, whether that person or that members of that person's family are receiving mental health services so they never can really are substance abuse services or there's some family member restrictions because the computers don't talk to each other we don't build our services around around individuals and families we build our services, but I could say for bureaucratic convenience. And I think there's potential for tremendous savings, and by re envisioning how we provide services and providing some of those services in our schools, and building teams around around those individuals who are receiving mental health services. I think we could be more effective and more efficient. It's not a great answer for your senator because, but no I appreciate the honestly and you know I will we'll dig into this a little bit more I'm just looking at our clock and we would love to have you continue but any pressing questions for Senator Racine or comments before we move on. I think we have about 345 at the latest to take this center alliance. I can't resist making a comment, but you know as usual, I agree with with Lieutenant Governor senator secretary, whatever. Yeah, so well, you know, and the, the reason that we put the trauma position into the secretary's office in the first place was to was to build trauma informed culture within the agency and that is one of the reasons why I actually asked the secretary today about building a trauma informed culture in schools. A very somewhat satisfactory but not completely satisfactory answer and then the other position you mentioned, which is our chief prevention officer in the office of the administration and the governor's office is is someone who does work to break down silos and so I couldn't agree with you more but we all understand that when we invest in prevention. We understand the difficulty of measuring the benefit and it takes years to do that so having a short term pilot program may not be the provide the benefit that we would like but something has to happen I think you're absolutely right something has to happen. I do have a question for you actually so it kind of a paradox, because you mentioned not using education resources, but it is a responsibility of schools to provide that human culture for students success so I know their tensions around this all the time and we hear about it all the time schools are not the place for or can't do all of the mental health and social service work that we would like and yet we demand that they pay for it so that that that's a paradox that's all. I'm not sure how much of a response to that because you don't have to know but but but but you're right. But what's happened with that x 60 is what the opponents of x 60 said at the time which is once the state gets its hands on the property tax, it will be used for other other services as well. The rise of the property is driving up our property tax which is, even though it's income based for a lot of people it's still a regressive tax, and it's a tax when the let when when state government assigns more responsibilities to our school districts. So it's doing so without taking responsibility for the tax increase that goes along with it and just shifts it to the local level. And I think we all know because we all go to our school board meetings and we all hear from our school board so constantly that they are under incredible property taxes down. And what happens is a lot of programs for low income kids get cut in in the process. So I think it's I think it's incumbent upon state government to provide the funding for those services that are really human services and I'm thinking mostly mostly in the mental health arena and and the health arena you and I understand that you know child with a toothache is not going to get to be able to learn anything that particular day and if there's a dentist that comes by the school once a week that's going to be that's going to be really helpful but that's not an education service so it is a paradox Senator I just I just feel that there needs to be some recognition that these are these are programs that should be funded through the agency of human services. So and I couldn't agree with you more, but we need to be able to integrate those without detracting from all of the community services that we're facing right now as well just a really big area of concern. It's a tough tough area most of what agency of human services and partners to deal with people in crisis we do not do a whole lot in the area of prevention. And that's especially true or the years and children's mental health services. We, you know when the child's in crisis then their services available but we haven't put a whole lot into prevention. And, you know, look at the discussion of mental health right now what's what are we talking about most is building another very expensive to build an expensive to operate state hospital for 50 or extension of it for 50 people. And that takes money away from the prevention of get people are prevention programs that keep people out of the state hospital we're always spending money on the crisis and not on the prevention so this is, it's hard to make investments Governor Snelling way back when said we don't have enough money in the budget to prevent all the problems and save all the money that prevention could could could give us but I think we need to try. That we're going to have is your closing line I'm afraid Mr Secretary because I move us along we have about 15 minutes left on this topic thanks for coming in. And I will look forward to your additional testimony. Mr Francis, Mr Glawski. Mr Nichols and Mr Robinson I am sorry that we are tight on the calendar because we have a lift for appropriations coming up at 345 with the sack, and then we are returning to s 100 and I know a number of individuals have a pre five o'clock deadline so I'm hoping we can get through everyone. If not, we will reschedule so keep that in mind as you are giving your testimony if you could give us new information. We don't need to hear anything else if you agree with Secretary Racine, but new information and concerns and edits I would say so with that Mr Francis the floor is yours. Thank you I'm going to speak for one minute only. I supported h 106 as it emerged from the house continue to support it. I think three key words are community replicability and innovation and for that reason I think a simpler bill is better the bill that the house sent to you is pretty streamlined. The goal here is to use school districts as centers of innovation in serving communities in a holistic way, and there's a lot of ways to do that in the house. We testified that the title of the bill should change from pilot to demonstration, because really what we're trying to do is induce districts to bring themselves into the community mindset much the way sent. Lieutenant Governor Racine I didn't know what to call him Lieutenant Governor Racine spoke with you about so my urging would be don't make too many changes to the bill if any let it get go into play and allow school districts to respond. Thank you. Thank you very much. Very helpful. Mr Nichols. Oh echo with Senator Racine icon Senator Racine was Senator Racine said, also, you know what Jeff said we did testimony together our organizations along with the Vermont Council special education administrators in the house said we work closely with representative James on the bill. And I sent Jeannie earlier today our shared testimony that she can share with each of you that you can look at and see you know the feedback that we gave the house and relationship to the original bill as introduced the changes they made related to that. And as Jeff said we support the bill. And again we don't think there needs to be a lot of changes. It's a demonstration project let's let it play out and see what happens and again, we think it's a step in the right direction. So Mr Nichols you do have a few suggestions that the VPA will have a few suggestions. Is that what you're saying. No I don't think we know the way it is right now we would be happy with it being implemented the way that it is right now. Okay terrific. Mr glowski. Good to see you. Thank you very much. We also support the bill as passed by the house, and I'll leave it at that thank you. Mr Robinson. Hi everybody Colin Robinson from Vermont NEA it's been a while since I've been here. So, very excited that you all are taking up this bill, we've been working with represent James since back in the fall of 2019 on this concept. Our members have been deeply engaged in trying to figure out how to support students, social emotional health for for a long time. So, there are a couple specific adjustments that we think would be useful to consider and encourage and hope that your committee would look at one is recognizing kind of zooming back. The community schools model is a national model they're about 5000 community schools across the nation, and there are specific things that have been shown to be effective and really critical for the success that that we that we know that we all want in this demonstration project. And part of that's really centering it in community. So, one that's already in the bill is having a dedicated person to do this work the community schools coordinator. One thing that was in the original bills introduced, but was streamlined out of it that we think would actually be critical to put back in is some type of site based leadership team or school based leadership team. The idea here is that that is a team of parents, students, community members, other stakeholders, local agencies that the community schools coordinator be working with to develop the plan that's going to be best for their community. I think is as Jeff Francis just pointed out, what is the part of the promise and excitement of this model is that no one community school is the same, because they are responsive to the needs of the students and communities in which they reside. And in order for community schools, director or coordinator to come up with that plan effectively and have deep community buy in both within the school building as well as outside the school building, having a site based or leadership team established that has a broad cross section of the community is really we think integral to add back in. So my written testimony has some specific recommendations about a definition and where that could be included, specifically, including it in section 3D one and a around grant uses, and ensuring that the community schools coordinator works with the team that is defined in the testimony in the development and execute execution of these demonstration pilots. So that would be the one, one very specific recommendation. The second one is about sort of a needs and asset assessment, and this is also another one of those components of the community schools model that is critical to the sort of fidelity, as well as making sure that it actually is reflective of the needs of the community. So that would be something that could also go into the use of grant funding section section 3D, and specifically one, and, and making sure that there is a needs assessment done in order, and before the sort of project. I don't want to say before the project begins, but as the project is beginning as a deep part of the planning process, as this is deployed into the school districts that are choosing to apply for this program. And so and I specifically mentioned in one D because in one in sorry D D one in D to it talks about it if you're hiring a new coordinator, but in D one it's talks about if you're kind of repurposing an existing staff person, and we still think that the planning process, this sort of needs assessment process is really critical to get it right, because if you're talking about dealing with all these complex issues that we're, we're talking about having stakeholder buy in, and having that needs assessment as a basis is really critical, however the school district is stepping into this work. So those specific recommendations are outlined in my written testimony. The final thing I want to lift up. And this is something I believe represent James spoke to and in her testimony before your committee is making sure there's, there's an equity lens brought into this obviously your committee spoken about that and other ways and in spaces, and the community nationwide has been really used as a way to make sure they're culturally relevant curriculum that issues that are impacting our BIPOC community are effectively addressed. And also, I think you heard it in other testimony is as well perhaps from represent James about also overlaying that in the actual application review process to make sure it's not just the communities that have the resources to put together really great grant application, not that they might not have great need for it, but making sure that it's also districts and schools that are interested in stepping into this exciting innovative work are able to step into it as well. So for that, I would actually encourage you to hear from the folks at voices for Vermont's children they spoke, they testified briefly in house education on this, and they had some recommendations that I think it would be good to for the committee to hear from. Finally, for more global view, New Mexico just passed a law on community schools in 2019. And obviously, you know, New Mexico and Vermont are different but there is morality in common common between the two. And there's a fellow Dave Greenberg out of New Mexico, who has been deeply involved in not only the passage of the law but also the implementation of it. And I think it might be interesting for the, the committee to hear from him he's aware of what we're doing here in Vermont. As, as you continue to work through this, and as we attended governor secretary former senator we're seeing spoke to the Learning Policy Institute is also another really really great resource. So I know we're short on time. My specific recommendations are in my written testimony, but the top lines are we're very excited about this, about this project to make sure that we're meeting the needs of all students so they can actually access their learning. But you would agree that it's just meeting the needs of students in the pilot program. Correct. Yes. Okay, so not all of our students but those that are get into this pilot program. Questions for Mr. Robinson or others before we take a pause and then move on to Mr. Giles. Okay committee. Thank you all. Thank you to our witnesses will continue on this topic and may have some of you back to answer additional questions but I think it's a bill without a doubt that this committee is is enthusiastic about and just trying to find our way in and see if maybe we might make a few suggestions before advancing it. Okay committee, let's come back a little, take a five minute break we've been at it for a while.


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So, without further ado, let me introduce Nate. I'm, first of all, I should introduce myself. I'm Matthew Battles. I'm Associate Director of MetaLab at Harvard, which is a project headquartered at the Berkman Client Center. And my familiarity with Nate and his work dates from the time that I started at MetaLab because both of us were involved early on with activity around the Digital Public Library of America. Nate in his role as a kind of instigator, impresario, design thinker about libraries and the communities they activate was a very early supporter of activities around the Digital Public Library of America, hosting hackathons and encouraging the institutions he was a part of to participate and contribute to the birth of that new institutional form. But Nate's engagement with the library world goes well beyond that. He's been a librarian and a leader at a number of major metropolitan libraries around the country, Brooklyn Public Library, the Chattanooga Public Library, where he headed a remarkable program called the Fourth Floor, which was an emptied out old book storage space. It was big enough to like land an airplane in. I mean, it was an amazing space and Nate and his colleagues animated it with all kinds of activity, design and making and community is a really remarkable place. Nate also brought a familiarity with Silicon Valley to his work at the San Jose Public Libraries. And now is animating the library community in the Metropolitan New York area through his work at the Metropolitan Library Council of New York, which is going to be the focus of his talk today. What Nate is doing there, Nate and his colleagues, is very exciting. Nate's own background incorporates art and design in a way that makes the connection to MetaLab very kind of salient and rich for all of us. And I think you'll see that in the programming and the activities that he's instigating at Metro 599, there is the spirit of play and possibility that animates the arts, design and technology. So without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to my friend Nate Hill. Thanks. That is so kind of you. Thank you so much. Hey, I am really excited to be here and get to talk with all of you today. Before I get into anything about the presentation and about the work that I'm up to, I think that given yesterday hearing once again a horrible budget proposal that slashes IMLS, NEH and NEA, I'm just going to say and a lot of other things that everybody in this room obviously cares about that a lot. And if you like any of the stuff that I'm going to talk about in the next 20, 25 minutes, you should be speaking out about that nastiness. So again, thanks. I'm really psyched to be here. What I want to do is explain to you this sort of crazy organization that I'm wrangling and the various projects and programs that are going on there and sort of explain just my thoughts around all of it and really I'm seeking input from everybody else in this room. So the Metropolitan New York Library Council, I'm going to give you a little bit of background because these places are hard to explain. In New York state, we have a whole lot of library infrastructure. We have public library systems, which will help a region of public libraries all work together, collaborate in some way. School library systems, which do the same thing regionally for the schools. And then these things called the reference and research library councils. We are one of those. They are divided up like this. And so what the heck is that, right? 1966, these things were formed. And the point was to help different kinds of knowledge organizations, share resources and work together, collaborate in all of these different ways. So in 1966, you can imagine that that was largely about interlibrary loan and book delivery services and things like that. Pretty traditional library consortia types of activities. You can see we have, as you look to the state, we have this kind of tiny but really dense region that we serve. I have 250 plus or minus a few libraries, archives and museums that are members of our network as well as individuals who can join as well. We are funded through the state library for the most part. It's sort of a combination of money that's coming from the state library. Grants that we seek as well and membership dues. So we're an interesting sort of agile nonprofit organization working in the library space. It really differentiates us from others in a kind of fun way. We also all work together. As a group, all of these councils make something called the Empire State Library Network. So you're going to start to feel as I go through this sort of like an EAM style, like powers of 10 thing, where you can see these like giant structures that go all the way down to like the microscopic. And that's definitely like a recurrent theme with this kind of infrastructure. Does that all make sense? Just in terms of what this is as of thus far. And so this is us, yes. Was this set up by the legislature? Yes, it's state education law in 1966. And you can go, if you like want to dig deep into that, you can go to the state library page and there's all the stuff that you could ever want. But this is us, the Metropolitan York Library Council. And I like to use this as like my first metaphor for what we're all about. Have any of you seen the Herman Grid illusion before? All right, so if you stare at this for long enough, you end up seeing those like dark little spots that show up between things. And we are very much the institution that's doing the work between the other things. The sort of sweet spot for us is whenever we're able to knit together the projects and the ideas and the values of the member organizations. So while we occasionally have programs that engage like a single institution or a group of single institutions, we really try to fit into these spaces. So when I arrived at Metro two and a half years ago or something like that, it was an organization that was already in transition. But I knew that I had an opportunity to kind of grow it into a new direction. And so I want to go through sort of like my change management model as a chronology that will help you kind of understand what's going on there. So I've split this up into three sections, sort of the platform, adjusting like all of the basics of this place, right? Our own policies, our own bylaws, our own infrastructure, our sort of space. And then from there, I can go into the programs and the way that we start to talk about ourselves and the presentation. So I arrived at Metro two and a half years ago. We had been in the space for like 25 years or something like that, down near Union Square. And while the location was killer in a lot of ways, it was also the rent was about to skyrocket. We had three years left on the lease. And in the first few weeks that I was there, I was getting calls from real estate agents saying, hey, we heard that you're going to need to move. So would you like to talk to us? And we're like, I just took this job. But it turned out to be like an incredible blessing because we were able to negotiate a buyout with the landlord, start looking at other spaces and really think from scratch, what does it mean to design a space in the middle of New York City that is a place that brings together all of these different kinds of organizations and helps level up their staff in all these different ways. And so this is some of the early construction pictures of when we moved over to 11th Avenue at 45th Street, north of the Hudson Yards Project, right in Hell's Kitchen, in a kind of amazing, gritty New York neighborhood there. We have about 6,000 square feet of space where we began to build out this studio. This is the floor plan that we came up with. I was lucky I got to work with Marble Fairbanks Architects, who are absolutely wonderful, have done the Schomburg Center with NYPL, they're working on the Greenpoint Branch Library in Brooklyn and the Glen Oaks Branch out in Queens. So some really experienced architects that I could work with to figure out what's the ideal layout for something like this. And so we split it up in this way, literally in thirds of a stage, a studio and staff, but then this kitchen, which is actually a really important kind of heart of the place as well. And this is what it's kind of come together as, right? This is our motto, this is what we're trying to do in the space. And you can see that it's like, it's got a pretty good open vibe to it, right? It's a place that you feel like you can come in, you can make a little bit of a mess, you can experiment with a thing or two, and you'll see as the programs unfold what that looks like. So that's the platform, really. I won't speak about all of our boring policy stuff that we've had to adjust, that's stuff that you just have to do. Any questions about the space and all of that before I move it on? Cool, all right. So the programs are incredibly diverse. One of the things we did to kind of kickstart the change and the transition was launch our own fellowship program.  You reach out and you find the problems of practice all across the network of organizations. So very much like the way one of the night news challenges would work, we created a platform and we reached out to everyone and we said, do you think that you have some kind of problem of practice that is similar and useful across other kinds of organizations? And if so, publish it here so that the fellows have something that they can respond to. We launched a fantastic fellowship, had three people do amazing projects and you'll hear about some of them as they go. But it was the beginning of us sort of signaling this transition toward really taking this laser focus on the space between different organizations. I have a program manager that named Davis Aaron Anderson whose title is Program Manager for Libraries, Technology and Culture, which is a lot of stuff, right? And she's sort of grabbed on to one big chunk of our work and is wrangling it. We had a grant that we were working on with the Institute, with IMLS to do web literacy training for librarians all across New York City. In addition to sort of creating cohorts of folks and like working with them in our own space, we started producing educational events that we would then send out to the different locations. So this is in the Duak Auditorium at the Brooklyn Public Library. Doing, I don't know if any of you have seen any of their curriculum, but it's really fun engaging ways for library workers to think about how the web works. Davis is also now leading a really important and large initiative. We received funding from the City of New York to start digital safety, privacy and security training with the goal that one person from every library location in New York City is going to be trained in this space. It's a big set of partnerships. We're working with some folks from Tandem, which was formerly research action design to design some of the curriculum. We're pulling things from the data privacy project, the library freedom project and a lot of the other resources that are out there to create this. And we'll deliver it in a bunch of different ways. There'll be online modules because you can imagine it's very difficult for busy library workers to come to these things sometimes. So there'll be modules that they can participate in online and then a series of different events so that we can help level people up in different ways from there. So we're in the middle of that and that's really gonna kick off this summer and very exciting and something that I wanna make sure that I communicate to all of you in case you end up in New York. There will be a final convening for this project in October of 2018. We're really looking at involving artists and having a big exhibit component to this as well as presentation. So kind of keep an eye out for that because in October there will be a big blowout privacy fest of some sort. We've also worked on, and this is sort of a model that we've used for a bunch of different things. We've worked with the MetaLab and with the folks from the Open Curriculum Explorer to host these sort of ideation type events. The idea of funds are a moment where somebody's got a product that they're working on understanding and so you build kind of a charrette around it and you bring our network in to help inform what that product can be. And so we've done this with a few different things but one of the beautiful things about having the network that we do is if somebody's thinking about building some kind of reader's advisory tool, we can pull in representatives from Brooklyn Public, from Queens Library, from New York Public, and have them be part of the conversation so that people aren't designing products without any kind of feedback loop. And so we've served as a center for this. We also had folks from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Polling Data at Cornell come in as they're thinking about how could they bring that as a resource to public libraries and others. So we're definitely sort of an ideation space for a lot of different projects. Our studio is, when you saw that floor plan really at the center of this whole place, I'm not gonna speak about every single module within the studio, but basically what we're trying to do with our studio is have something like a maker space but for digital libraries. What are the tools that you need access to so that you can come and participate, read and write to the web in meaningful ways. And so there's a variety of different things in here. One thing that has really taken off because one of our fellows dove into podcasting headfirst is our audio facility, which people can come and they can book time in. You can attend classes of all different sorts and take part in that. Her podcast, which you should all subscribe to, The Library Byte Geist, which is all stories of people doing really amazing things in libraries and archives around New York City. Her podcast is great but it also led her to something that we're like just now announcing. She received support from the Mellon Foundation to do work around preserving podcasts because it's kind of crazy. There's all of this content out there that's being made and there's really no great preservation strategy for podcasters. So that is just now beginning to launch and it's exciting and it's very meta because it'll be a podcast about preserving podcasts, right? It's really fun. Molly also wrangles our partnership with the Transfer Collective, who are an amazing group of sort of archivist activists around New York City who have been and beyond New York City, who have made a priority of identifying obsolete media formats, particularly of communities that are just not going to find a good way to preserve their story one way or another. And then they offer an opportunity for people to learn how to deal with this. And so they have been setting up previously all over New York and like artist lofts, these different media migration racks. We knew that this was the kind of work that we wanted to do in 599, but we didn't know how we could possibly staff it. So going and creating an MOU with a collective, a loose collective like this and saying, help us set up this rack, help us create the documentation around this, help us identify people who need access to these tools. It's been really successful. And so what's interesting and sort of happening on the fly is we're finding that some of the modules in the studio become little like business models and like little revenue generators that helps import themselves. And then something like this becomes more like a co-op in which everybody's contributing. And so we're still sort of prototyping all of these things. And it's fascinating to watch. We also have a whole software development team. When I say that, it's a few people. It's not like a massive software development team. There are 15 of us, by the way, I should add. And a few years ago, we started as the service hub for New York State for the DPLA, which looks a little different in every state, obviously, but it's kind of interesting the way that it has worked in New York because we have that macro level, all of the different councils. And what we do is we reach out via all of them to find collecting institutions across the state and we're the service hub, right? We just aggregate the metadata, clean it up, and then shoot it upstream to DPLA. What's become a big priority for me is starting to launch a better consortial repository service. You would think that the cultural organizations around New York, as rich and robust as they are, would all have something in place, but they totally don't. And so we're working on building out a product right now that I think will be really helpful. We've always had sort of a consortial repository service called the Digital Culture of Metropolitan New York. We've got something much more exciting in the works. We have exhibit space. This is an image of a woman named Leah Meisterlin, who's actually on our board, who created these images along with a historian using the digitized fire insurance atlases from NYPL to create these amazing rich visualizations of how New York was organizing before zoning laws. I can't speak to it in great detail, but it's something that you can really get lost in. And so we're trying to get a steady rotation of these kinds of exhibits, because what happens is then you come into the studio and you're doing one thing and you run into someone else doing something else, and then you explore the thing on the wall and a kind of magical thing starts to happen that way. So we're trying to really animate things to a certain extent. This is our classroom space. It's heavily used. It's heavily used both by us and by our membership, but we also generate revenue by renting these spaces out to others. And I try very hard to keep that sort of within our mission so that we have a lot of like-minded folks, but really you can also be anybody and rent these spaces because we need money. But it's a great spot and it's funny, I don't have my like program notes up, but I had three different events that are coming up in the next month that I wanted to read you all the titles to, but if you go to metro.org slash events, you'll get a sense of the kind of things that are going on. I mean, we've got a big, we're doing a bunch with New York City's Open Data Week. There's just a bunch of cool stuff going on. And then there's this like notion that we could be a deployment network for all different kinds of interesting projects that are going on in library lands. There are a lot of these kind of like labs that pop up. The library innovation lab is a fantastic thing that's going on here. And this is a project that came out of the library innovation lab. So the idea that we have this network of real life situations in which you can deploy these projects, these tools, these things that you've been working on is something that I really want to focus on and create a pattern for. So I've been having a lot of fun talking to Matt Phillips about this. We just purchased one of these spaces and we'll be working on setting it up in the next couple of months. And it becomes something that people can come and it's almost like we're a showroom for these different kinds of projects so that people can figure out, would this work back in my library, back in my archive? I don't know. And then this is really important. This is why I put smoked fish in the name of the presentation which you probably saw and were like, what? The kitchen is a really important center for us. These are images of our staff but one of the things we do is try to open it up to people if they want to come and like make macaroni and cheese and use that as kind of a binding agent. That's kind of a gross way to put it. As something to bring together a crowd, that's totally okay. I mean, we know that food brings community together and so we really invested in having like a big spacious kitchen that feels open and inviting in that way. And we did have smoked fish. Kyle, our general manager who is amazing brought in a fish smoker and did that in the space. It's unbelievable. And so, all right, getting into presentation. And this is where it's gonna start to get a little fuzzy because I'm gonna start talking about the stuff that I don't fully understand but I'm trying to explore as I figure out how to move the complexity of all of this forward, right? Because you can imagine that having like the MoMA Library and Columbia University Libraries and NYPL as members and then having like the Joseph Poluski Institute in Greenpoint with like two people working at it, like it's very hard to figure out how to pull these different kinds of types of organizations together. So I've been using this Herman grid as the metaphor but it turns out that it's like, it's too simple and I've been trying to learn more from ecosystems and ecology thinking and systems thinking in general. So bear with me as I point to some of the things that I'm exploring and I would really love to get input from people on these thoughts because they're young thoughts at this point. There's this notion of patch dynamics shifting mosaics and disturbance regimes which sounds kind of fancy and exciting and I'll try to explain what some of that is with the coming slides. So when you get to this idea of mosaics, the way that in ecology people have been thinking about ecosystems is that you have a mosaic of the different kinds of sort of static ecosystems, right? You have your pond, you have your riparian system, you have your meadows and such and then there are these edges in which they interact and that's totally analogous to what goes on at Metro, right? We have academic libraries and they organize, there's ACRL New York, we have art libraries and they organize because there's Arliss New York and you can go on with the archivists, have the Society of Archivists in New York. They're all of these different sort of sub-communities and what's interesting is figuring out where the overlap is because we don't just serve institutions, it turns out that we're serving individuals as well and it's the people that work at those institutions that work like the edges and create this sort of dynamic shift so that when something happens in the environment, then all of a sudden the activities kind of move around, right? And the map changes, the mosaic changes and so what I'm trying to do is figure out how to map this sort of ecological theory to the organizational theory of what's going on at Metro and so this notion of a disturbance regime is kind of like, we're in that, right? There's no doubt about it. In ecology, this is when you're saying, oh, there's a wildfire, right? It plows through and it changes the environment and then the different things regenerate in different ways at the edges, right? And for us, I mean, I think it's fair to say that we're in the midst of a pretty great shift. There's a lot of stuff going on. So for me as a leader to figure out how I can possibly plan for it, how I can anticipate the ways that people are gonna move because it becomes about the people. It becomes about the individuals at these places and the way that they start to drift and it's usually value-based because you find that there are a lot of cross-cutting values across academic libraries, public libraries, archives and such and there's this shift and so what I'm hoping to do is find ways to understand and anticipate that shift better and this is sort of a close-up of the way the way that I've been thinking about this. So again, young thoughts, intense organization with a whole lot of stuff going on, I really welcome any input people have about this sort of complex environment and figuring out how to plan for it and anticipate change. I think that that's the thank you slide. So thank you. I would love to get tons of questions from everybody here and feedback and input open to anything. Yeah. Oh, we gotta get the mic all the way to you. In your, maybe just like a very simple question, my name is Boaz, I'm an affiliate here at Berkman. Are you like mapping individual names of people at these organizations and like trying to model how people might, can you go more into how you're thinking about navigating a disturbance regime and what it means to follow or map out these systems? So practically. I mean, how far can I go into it? Not terribly far at this point. I mean, certainly we collect the typical data from our programs and things like that and we watch the popularity of different meetups and we do our best to have sort of an understanding of who's coming from where to those things. But again, we haven't really particularly formalized it at this point and I should point out that like one of the key things about this place is that a lot of things hadn't been formalized yet, right? And so even just having sort of a CRM style approach to thinking about all of this, it just wasn't in place yet. So I guess I would say, yeah, we're working on that. I mean, I could see, I work on web standards and web browsers, I could see sort of how this way of modeling systems and groups could map onto like these bigger agendas we have for how we want to move the web platform forward even when like architects of standards and engineers move between different browser engine companies, for example. So I'm super excited to hear you say that and would love to talk to you more about that because there is a hope and it's not just like the abstract nature of the slides but there is a hope that this is abstracted in the sense that this way of thinking could be applied to different kinds of groups other than just the one I was speaking of. So we should talk more about that. Or right now if you want, I don't know. Yeah, we can connect, okay, yeah. Hi. Hey. I was wondering if you could talk about your efforts and or advice you might have for how you're dealing with a library that's let's say out on Long Island versus in Manhattan, a library that is academic versus public library, et cetera. A library in the medical space? Yeah. Medical like a medical school and also a library that's part of a consortium in the sense that, and I have one specific one in mind at Hofstra Medical School which is part of a whole consortium unto itself. So Hofstra Medical School, new medical school created to link up with Northwell Health, which is, for those of you in this area, is a medical consortium that includes hospitals and groups, whatever, in Long Island, Manhattan, Northern, in the Bronx and Westchester, et cetera. So, and the core of their library is digital. In other words, all their journals are online, people accessing through the internet, a large part of what the library does is deal with intellectual property rights issues with monopolistic suppliers, et cetera, et cetera. I'm glad you asked that question. So, excuse me, and this is indicative again of the complexity, we have an entire program that I didn't even mention, our hospital library services program, which we receive significant funding from New York State for, and it's based on the number of hospital beds within our service region. There's a complicated formula that's used to determine how much money it is. And then we have a hospital library services coordinator who is only part-time right now. I'd love to see this grow because it's a really interesting space. We offer collection development grants to the hospitals. We offer technology grants as well. And it's a shifting landscape because of all of the hospital mergers. And because every time that the hospital library services group kind of gets together, there's a lot of concern that their libraries are not sort of seen in the same way that they used to be. And they don't feel valued at times in the way they used to be. And so we're working on figuring out how to do more with that program, quite frankly. All of the other councils do this as well. And so in April, all of those hospital library services coordinators are coming together for one of these sort of like brainstorms around these issues. I won't be able to speak in great detail to the specifics of it. Unfortunately, that's kind of the nature of my job is that there are so many different programs. Once it goes too deep, I have to go to the program manager. But I'm glad you brought it up because it's actually a really important service that comes through the council that again, it's hard to speak to all of them. Yeah. Yeah. If you use the microphone, there's people out there in audience. Oh, yeah. New York State, New York City is pushing entrepreneurialism, including medical entrepreneurialism. So how are you dealing with helping people create businesses or stuff like that? So this gets into that interesting space where we don't serve the direct public. We serve all of these organizations and where I totally believe in libraries as engines of economic development and sort of democratic access to what you need in order to be an entrepreneur. What we have to do is be one step removed and think, okay, what are the things that we need to provide for each of these organizations or this cluster of organizations? And then interestingly, there's also the element of maybe they think they've already got it figured out, right? And that's always an interesting thing to navigate is when do people want your help versus when do they want your support? It's that when to lead, when to partner. So it's sort of an ongoing puzzle. I would say that the most direct thing that we do thinking in terms of entrepreneurism is I'd like to inspire that kind of spirit in more knowledge workers. One of the things that I really want to have happen when people come and do anything at Metro is I want them to come and feel like they gained something while they were there that means they can go back and alter and change the environment that they work in in one way or another. And that's a very sort of entrepreneurial approach and creative approach to librarianism that I think is key. Okay, I'm Mary Minow. Thanks for coming. For those who don't know, Nate's one of the, if you haven't figured it out, one of the most creative people in our profession. And one of my favorites is Scan Jose where you can take an app and walk around the city of San Jose and with through virtual reality, it'll pull up pictures from the picture file and the library, what the building that you're looking at used to look like which is super cool. Despite my being in these interstices places in my work in libraries, I've never thought about it in terms of an ecological system and I think that's fascinating. And what has sparked in me just now is another analogy is a biological system of the connective tissue that holds all our muscles in place, the myofascial tissue and what happens when that's cut and that would be another thing to explore. Definitely. And I was just talking to Matthew this morning a little bit about the power of metaphor and how useful it can be to find these different ways of sort of playfully or really, and really thoughtfully comparing your work across different fields, across different sort of ways of thinking so I welcome metaphor and simile in any situation, it's useful. Thanks. And thanks, that's nice to say. It's always, it's funny when someone references like a much older project because you end up being like, and that was kind of bad, but it wasn't, it was fine. It was just like a different time, right? So it's funny. I thank you for your talk. I am a fellow at Berkman Klein Center. I very much liked that you used this ecology metaphor. I tried to sell it two times last year to NSF. They said that it's all outdated, but I am less liked it anyway. I think one of the interesting things when you use this ecology metaphor is that, especially if you think about innovation, there are bigger entities in an ecology that they are not very agile, but they have a lot of capabilities. But you have smaller players who are agile but do not have those capabilities. And it's great if those bigger players can pass some of their capabilities to smaller players to innovate. An example is that you have massive academic libraries in New York with a lot of infrastructure, and you have smaller players, they do not have that infrastructure. If some of these capabilities can move between them, they can create a lot of, and I think your position is fantastic in this regard. My question is, are you doing some of this facilitation of moving in these capabilities between these institutions? Definitely. And the fellowship was really aimed at that quite a bit. But it's cool, that's what actually ends up happening at the individual level. So you'll have some of these big organizations with a great deal of capacity, great deal of talent and resources. And you end up with people who work at them who are experts in one thing or another who then feel obliged as part of the network to come and teach. And so I should have mentioned that one of the key things about the way our events and classes and such work is that anybody can pitch an event. You fill out a form, you pitch an event, we pay $100 an hour, and you can come and we only charge as much as we need to in order to cover the costs and essentially break even. So we end up sort of using mechanics like that in order to balance the network in that way, which is a ton of fun. And again, all of these things, there's an informality to all of it. I think you're catching that is both super important to kind of the culture, but it's also really important to figure out how to formalize more of it so that it can be replicable. Thanks, that's a great question. Hey, thanks for your talk. I'm wondering if you could speak a bit about the pros and the cons and the relevance of a regional membership model when, as you mentioned, the world of libraries and the way that we connect across state lines or across municipal lines is very different from 60, 70 years ago. Also, maybe related to that, just thinking about library budgets in general, I find a lot like things like the night news challenge and there's a lot of sort of one-off patches to sort of imbue new sorts of programming in libraries. But fundamentally, I find that a lot of libraries I work with, their budgets and the sort of the main buckets of we spend this much money on content each year, we spend this much money on professional development. Those sort of big buckets haven't changed very much. And so just going forward, I'd love to hear a bit of your thinking around how libraries spend money to sort of catch up to or align with the sort of mission and vision that a lot of people are now shaping for them in this century. Multiple questions in there, so as I answer, remind me of the pieces that I'm missing. One of the, so I've just, again, because of colleagues here have gotten sucked into Open Field, the project out of the Walker Art Center, that was a three year long commons that had all kinds of different community projects in this sort of open commons. And one of the criticisms of it in the book is the notion that like, okay, it was three years long and like that an experiment that is like a commons that has a beginning and end isn't really a commons, right? And so actually I think that's one of the exciting things about these regional consortia is that, you know, there is durability to it, right, that we last. And again, this gets to an ecosystem approach because I think it's really important to have pop-up labs of different sorts that generate ideas, but the notion that there could be infrastructure for consistency and durability is really important. But on the notion of being regional and whether or not that is a model that can and should persist, it's important to remember that as I talk about all these fun new projects and things that are going on, one of the key things that we do is operate a delivery courier service that we just redid the RFP. We have a new vendor. Our members absolutely depend on being able to like plug that into their interlibrary loan and move stuff around the city. So this, you know, it's key and you build things on top of those different layers. It's like an archeology experiment of some sort. So there are things that bind us together regionally in that sense. There are things that don't and I will say that as we do the repository services work and as I've grown sort of like the software developer talent, we're doing some work with San Diego State University. We are totally allowed to work outside of our region as long as we're serving our region. And definitely with the digital services, you find that there are more and more opportunities for that. Does that answer, yeah. Hi. So I'm just thinking about these, these serve closer, right? Okay. So in this world, right? Where nobody trusts anybody when they do surveys of professions, librarians or the people you trust. Yeah. And I'm just wondering, you know, if there's any way in which you can incorporate this as some, you know, huge kind of resource that we've got because the more divided we are, seems like the librarians could be in some way, you know, serve a valuable community. I totally agree. I think that's why the work that we're doing with the city around, you know, individual privacy and understanding you and how you relate to all of your online activity that you invite or don't invite is incredibly important. And so if people start to think of their neighborhood branch library as a place that they can go and that trust has been extended to an understanding of the sort of online environment, that is, that's really important. And so we're pursuing it pretty actively. And I think it's also key not to think of that just as people coming in and asking questions at the library. It seems like everybody wants to immediately apply it to like the reference interview kind of situation where like, oh, the librarian is the trusted source. That is true, but I think that the more that we can do to push programming and events and activities and exhibits in the public sphere, the better because it's another way to have a more lasting engagement in some ways in that sort of trust-building relationship. Because when you and I just have a conversation and you ask me a question, like it's a moment, it's gone and hopefully I got it right, right? But if we have something more robust around it, I think that can be exciting.  I'm wondering, so you use metaphor and I'm wondering about simile. Who do you compare your, who do you look to for inspiration? You mentioned the open fields project just to sort of so I can better understand where you're at headed. Yeah, it's a good question. It's a different answer kind of every day to one of the things that is difficult about running Metro is that there are not a lot of other organizations in our country that are tasked with the same set of things that we are. So I mean, so I'm constantly looking to other projects and components of them, right? Because nothing maps perfectly. I mean, you brought open field to me and there's a lot that sort of happens in the art space and the activist space and I wish that there was like an immediate simile that came to mind, but maybe that's part of our fabric is that we don't have something exactly like us. It's picking and choosing the right things from the different places. Hi, Linda Rosen at the Harvard Kennedy School Library. Hi. So I had a couple questions. David Beard is a friend of mine and I don't know if you know him. He's just written an article in The Atlantic about libraries as newsrooms. So I'd like to connect you to on that. He was a fellow at the Shorenstein Center recently. So talking about libraries as creating a space for people to report the news, places that are news deserts at this point, which Metropolitan New York is probably not. But the Empire State Network might be more interested as you get up toward Northern New York. So that was one thing was thinking about libraries newsroom. And then the other question was just about your repository. And if you could say a little bit more about that, if you're building that in-house or if you're using outside help to put that together. So as far as newsrooms, I would love to talk to that individual absolutely. And that's the kind of thing where, if I can find a way to bring someone like that in to do one of our guest talks and like do, we end up drawing a great audience for these things.  And then all of the different types of interested parties come and engage in whatever way is appropriate for them. So awesome, thank you. The repository service we are building in-house right now. The plan is we're using Islandora, which is a nice complex stack of open source projects all mushed together. And when I arrived, we had been working with Islandora previously with a vendor. We kind of cut loose of that. And I decided if we're going to go with this technology, then we have to go all in, as you kind of have to do with open source work. So I pulled a really brilliant developer in all the way from Chile. And we're building away. I can talk to you more about it offline if you'd like, but we've been working with the New York Historical Society to build a system for them. And what's a little bit different with us than with like sort of a typical vendor, particularly when you're talking about within the metropolitan New York area, we want to hand over everything. Our goal is to help build a system with you, but also to train you completely and give you access to every last bit of it. So there's like zero proprietary anything. And the goal being like strengthening an open source community. And that feels in line with our sort of larger mission as well. I'd love to talk to you more about it if you want. Yeah. You got a lot going. When you go to a funding agency, what's your elevator pitch? How do you sum up what you're doing? I didn't get the pithy point. Yeah, I mean, frankly, still working on it. One of the interesting things when it's about talking to funding agencies is I find, whereas in my old roles, I would always do that myself and go with that elevator pitch. I'm really about empowering a platform of individuals who are program managers that work with me that are smarter than me and are specified, have specific knowledge in these areas. And so they will have individual sort of pitches. I mean, my like general pitch is just like, we are a space that is bringing together librarians, archivists, museum workers, knowledge workers in general. And we try to level them up and we try to build this field. We try to make them stronger and then they can go back and make their organization stronger. But the nature of this sort of sprawling organization requires a lot of trust in my brilliant staff. And they really are amazing people. You can give me money if you want. Is that a good pitch? All right. This is just kind of a curiosity question. You talked about, is this better? You talked about archivist activists. And I've never heard of them before. And so I was wondering, are these independent volunteers, who are these people and what are some examples of some of the projects they are working on? I think, so I'm not an archivist. I can't speak with great expertise on this, but I will say that one of the things that's really interesting that is going on with just accelerated culture and the ability for everybody to participate in everything all the time is that the ideas and the values behind archiving things are no longer sort of confined to organizing old folders and like sepia-toned photographs and such. It's like you need to archive in the moment what's going on, because it's going to disappear and this is all the endangered data week stuff and there are so many like relevant like immediate things for archivists to plug into that it requires kind of an activist approach, right? You have to get out there and have an active role in the conversation. So it's a great shift. I actually think it's a really, really important and strong place to be coming from for librarians and archivists because this notion that it's just about preserving old stories, it's not as compelling as being like in the moment, so yeah, or maybe it is. Yeah, just a follow up to that. I'm thinking of the people who went around and collected the posters from the women's marches. You know, that's a perfect example, I think, of some of the kinds of things you can do to sort of preserve that and I think that's a great role to be playing. Couldn't agree more and again, a lot of that stuff, like it's a sweet spot for us as an organization to support and facilitate that kind of activity because it's not necessarily always associated with a single institution. It's probably a couple of people who work at that institution, work at another institution and so I just, yeah, I think it's really important work with you. Well, I think we have time for one last question. Does anybody have a question that they haven't had a chance to get to yet? Okay, well, then thank you very much, Nate. It's been really robust conversation. Yeah, thanks again. Thank you all.


The first vessel that used Ukraine's Black Sea corridor is crossing through Turkey's Bosphorus Strait, Reuters footage showed on August 18. The Hong Kong flagged Joseph Schultz container ship that left the Russian-blocked Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odessa earlier this week had been in the port since February 23, 2022, the day before the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine last week announced a humanitarian corridor in the Black Sea to release cargo ships that have been trapped in its ports after the termination of the main grain export deal last month. Moscow has not indicated whether it would respect the shipping corridor and shipping and insurance sources have expressed concerns about safety. Local broadcasters have said the ship will anchor at Ambarli port in the south of Istanbul.