Original subtitles

My foundation,

the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science,

is actually trying to raise consciousness

that there are many, many more people

who are not religious in America

than many people realize, including politicians realize.

So you'll see politicians on television

in their so-called debates

sucking up to the religious lobby

and forgetting that the non-religious lobby

is at least 20% in America,

which is as large as any particular religion,

and yet it gets ignored because it's not vocal enough.

And so we have, my foundation,

the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science,

has a campaign called Openly Secular,

which is an attempt to raise consciousness

of the fact that there are lots and lots

of non-religious people in America,

far more than politicians realize

and far more than each other realizes.

In an interview recently, you said,

quote, "I don't think I'd call myself combative.

I think I'd call myself a lover of truth."

And I'm wondering, what is your truth?

When I appear to be combative

and strident and shrill,

which I'm often accused of,

the reason is that I'm stating simple facts,

and sometimes simple facts are disagreeable to people.

For example, a few years ago... About 20 years ago, actually...

In The New York Times,

I wrote, "Anybody who claims to be a young Earth creationist

is either stupid, ignorant, or insane."

Now, that is a simple statement of fact.

That's not a polemical statement.

But you said, which I like...

But it sounds... It sounds polemical

because we've all got so used to thinking

that you just don't say things like that about, about religion.

And I must add at that point, of course,

that sensible religious people have no problem with evolution.

It's just, it's just the fundamentalists, and for them,

the problem is usually not actually insanity or stupidity,

it's usually actually ignorance.

And ignorance is no crime.

We're all ignorant of all kinds of things.

So there's no crime to be ignorant

of evolution,

but you just shouldn't be quite so loud-mouthed about it.

You also said this thing,

which I want to sort of go into,

which is, "Science is the poetry of reality."

Which is a beautiful way of putting it,

and I'm wondering if you could

just talk about that further.

I mean, just, you write in a very poetic way.

You're influenced by music.

You're a lover of literature

and then also, just as a science.

I mean, there are so many things

feeding into that idea, I guess.

I suppose I would take the ideal role model for this,

somebody like Carl Sagan,

or his modern-day successor, Neil deGrasse Tyson,

or Carolyn Porco,

who see, look out at the cosmos,

look out at the universe, as poets.

And why not?

I mean, who could not be moved poetically

by the sheer size and scale of the universe,

the sheer number of stars?

The same thing happens in biology, in my own field,

when you think

about the prodigious, stupefying complexity

of a single living cell,

let alone a body consisting of trillions of cells,

when you think that we now understand

where all that complexity came from.

We now understand that it came

from gradual process,

incremental natural selection,

lasting over hundreds of millions of years,

culminating

in creatures like us,

with brains big enough to understand the whole process.

And we in the 21st century

are privileged to live after Darwin,

after Newton, after Einstein.

And therefore we are privileged to get that into our heads

in a way that our ancestors couldn't.

Who could not be moved poetically by that?

Good morning, thanks for calling Ask NYPL.

How can I help?

Oh, the Gutenberg Bible

is temporarily unavailable for viewing.

I see you've got one book on hold

called Working with Bereavement.

I believe that the issue

is that you are very close to the limit of 50.

Yes.

We still do have old books

showing coats of arms from Europe

and things like that.

So let me go through the list again.

You have Is There All... Is That All There Is?,

Washington, DC,

Plants of Power, The Meaning of Life,

The Marriage Benefit, Between Panic and Desire...

Okay, it's about the geography and geology of New York City

back in the earliest, before... Before the Dutch arrival,

okay, in the early 17th century.

So you can return your books

to any branch of Manhattan, the Bronx, or Staten Island.

You cannot... you can't return your material

to Brooklyn or Queens.

A unicorn is actually an imaginary animal, okay?

He's not, it's not a creature that ever existed.

No, I don't speak Spanish.

You need someone who speaks Spanish?

Hold on.

The first appearance I have of it

is in the year 1225, okay?

And it's got the opinion of one ancient monk that...

I'll sort of have to translate this

from Middle English,

which I'm a little poor in.

But he's sort of saying that man is a wolf on the outside,

but inside himself, he's a unicorn.

And they spell it with an E.

What you have is a question that you want to answer.

You want to basically find

the place of origin for Hermann Herzog.

What town, because...

Where did he come from in Austria?

Right, because I've connected

in the Jewish genealogy group, JewishGen,

with the person

who does all the Jewish Herzogs in Austria.

Sure, uh-huh.

She just needed a town.

She just needed a town, okay.

So she's, she's... Because she's a Herzog,

she has actually found all of the Herzogs.

That's her specialty.

Mmm, oh, okay... oh.

So I was, like, I just...

So you just needed a little...

to narrow it down to which one.

What I'm going to say we should do

is take a look at the 1910 census...

Okay.

And get that information

about immigration and naturalization.

What I would do next is,

is do a complete document sweep

and get everything you can find

that might give you clues as to where, when he came in.

If you can find those naturalization papers,

if he's accurately remembered and described

when he immigrated...

Mm-hmm.

You might be able to then go back to Ancestry

or Ellis Island... the same lists...

Right.

And then browse by the ship.

Check the dates of the ships coming in

and see if you can find him in there.

Would I have to go through a whole year's worth of ships?

No, because hopefully he's remembered

the correct date when he came in.

This is the right year, because you know, the census,

they just ask whoever answers the door.

But I'm, I'm hoping in the naturalization record,

he may have correctly remembered the date he came in...

And the town...

The day and, you know, the day and month.

Okay.

And I mean, there's probably...

In the naturalization papers,

the place of origin might be in there, as well.

So it's...

I can't see naturalization papers online, though, right?

Ancestry has some.

We have a database called Fold3.

Oh, right.

I'm going to put you on Fold3 next...

Okay.

And see if you can pull something up.

It was Andrew Carnegie

who invented for this institution,

and I think, more broadly,

the idea of public-private partnership.

Indeed, this institution,

despite the word "public" in its title,

is the quintessential public-private partnership.

Literally half the funding of the New York Public Library

comes from the public, particularly the city,

and half comes from private sources,

including people in this room.

And it's private philanthropy

that launched the pilots that we then assess,

again, using private sources,

and look, and look

for other private associations to partner with.

And what's been fascinating to watch

is the way in which those private investments...

Hi, Alberta...

Those private investments have now inspired the city,

as public funder,

to provide the largest single increase in city funding

to the public libraries in history.

So, and, and one of the things that you're going to see is,

now with the city back in in full strength,

or close enough,

that will also inspire more private philanthropy

to keep that cycle going.

That's one example.

A second example is on the issue of internet connectivity.

Three million New Yorkers are not connected at home.

They are in the digital dark.

We could have all the content in the world,

but if you don't have connection to it, it does you no good.

And this is how people are learning and engaging

in the 21st century.

So again, we went,

we found private philanthropy.

We started a 10,000-household lend of internet

into people's homes,

and that has in turn inspired

the White House and the FCC to consider

moving billions of federal dollars

through the FCC to get at the digital divide problems

which keep 60 to 70 million Americans

in the digital dark.

So, again, an example of the way

in which private philanthropy can move public investment.

Lastly, last example.

I've already said

you could have all the content in the world,

but if you don't have connectivity,

it does you not much good.

We do not yet have all the content,

all the quality content

that this institution represents.

We do not yet have it all available.

The vast majority of the books,

archives, images in this building

and throughout our system,

and indeed throughout all libraries,

is not available online.

That is the Holy Grail of the 21st century.

It's what this technology wants to make possible.

It means we have to digitize our collections.

It means we have to make deals with publishers and authors

to pay fair compensation

for use of copyrighted materials.

It means we need to create a platform

that would enable people in New York,

in the United States,

or, thinking about Paul Farmer's great work,

anywhere in the world

to be able to get access to this content.

Private philanthropy will make that possible.

When we're talking about philanthropy

in the 21st century,

at this moment in history,

inequality is the elephant in the room.

I believe that education, the access to information,

is the fundamental solution over time

to inequality.

And I think its power

cannot be underestimated.

Okay, let me see how yours turned out.

I think mine...

Oh, it worked, look.

Now let's add some color in there.

So what are you going to write in yours?

I hardly ever write in mine.

What are you supposed to write in this?

This one says 70 divided by one.

What do you get?

70.

Good.

So press "okay."

Want to read about the monkeys?

Okay, let me see how yours turned out.

I think mine...

Oh, it worked, look.

Okay, let's add some stuff in there.

Eight?

You stopped at 39, right?

How many... so this is 39, how many fingers are here?

Five.

Mm-hmm.

Five?

Let's see.

Oh!

How's it going, Ravi?

You like the book? Yeah.

Awesome. When you're done with that book,

we've got to do an activity, okay?

This is... you know, this is every day

I give you the paper with the activity, right?

You mean like that?

Yes, like that.

Take your time, finish reading.

The most famous

crime-fighting dog in the country.

Country. Good job.

How did he fight the crime?

What made the burglars pass out?

The breath. Good.

So you can put that they fought in the war.

So you can write about that.

Thank you.

But I don't have enough space.

You're going to have space, don't worry.

And you can always just turn

and write on this side, right?

So just start.

Write that sentence that you just told me.

F-I-...

No, no, F-R-I-E-N-D.

D-S, not D-E-S.

So you need to erase that and write that over, please.

Ted got a red rock at the pet store.

What do you get at the pet store?

What is a pet store for?

A fish.

Okay, so that makes better sense, right?

One, two, three, four, no?

This one.

Are you guessing?

Yes.

Should we be guessing? No.

And one of the things I really found fascinating

about your book is the way

that you delineate a kind of attention

between princes and clerics.

Ah, right.

Right? And there's a kind of a,

a sense that some of the... friction

between political leaders who are slightly more secular

or secularly oriented towards the accumulation

of material power, wealth, military power,

and the way that that ends up

being in conflict with religious leaders

in the region.

These are two groups of people that,

for the most part,

by the middle of the 18th century,

cannot stand one another.

Okay?

Ruling political authorities and clerical elites

are at odds with one another, and this is in part

because at the end of the 17th century,

there was a revolutionary movement

directed by clerics that sought to end

the Atlantic slave trade at that point in time.

And when the... the ruling hereditary kings

were able to successfully make common cause

with the French slave traders in the region,

and expel those clerics that wanted

to end the slave trade,

those kings, they visited a painful retribution

upon all of the clerics

that had been involved in the uprising.

And they violated centuries-old taboos

about not enslaving holy people.

So they had, you know,

people that were Koran memorizers,

religious scholars, and they,

they rounded these people up

and they sold them off into slavery,

and you've got accounts that come, you know,

from French slave traders like Jean Barbot in 1681

where he says, "I think there was somebody like this

on one of the ships that I filled in Gorée."

He said, "This black priest was aboard, was aboard my boat

"for two months before he spoke a word,

"so deep was his sorrow.

I sold him in the American islands."

So the... the clerics weren't used to this sort of treatment.

Kings violated, you know, traditional protocols

by enslaving clerics en masse, and so this leads

to really heightened tension in the 18th century,

but it also leads to a situation in the 18th century

where the clerics are politically weak.

And it's part of the reason why the slave trade

becomes so extensive from the region. Right.

And there's all kinds of critiques that come

from the clerical class now about this,

essentially that their rulers in this society

who are people that call themselves Muslims,

they don't identify with any other religion,

but they're trading their own citizens, Muslims,

for rum, and guns, and nice cloth.

And that's the kind of thing

that is going to lead to a really powerful

and bitter critique on the part of the clerics.

This is a notion which is very pervasive

in a lot of the scholarship,

that slavery and Islam somehow go together.

Yeah.

Either that there is a, there is something

in the faith that licenses it,

that with the spread of Islam

goes the spread of slavery.

There's your local story,

but I also get the sense

that you're telling a much bigger story

about how we think about Islam,

how we think about slavery,

and what their relationship is to each other.

So, the short answer is that we were told a lie

by late 19th- and early 20th-century orientalists

who suggested that... that slavery and Islam

were coterminous, and this was part

of a very motivated attempt both to denigrate

African societies and Muslim societies.

And, and to monopolize claims on freedom

and emancipatory thought within a Western post-enlightenment tradition.

So that Islam and African society

become coterminous with slavery and despotism,

and the white people are to be given credit

for everything that was ever liberatory

or emancipatory in human thought.

And so the way in which we approached

the question of the relationship

between slavery and Islam was not historical.

It was polemical, and people refer

to particular canonical text,

not the Koran itself,

almost never the Koran itself,

but to later legal text

to paint a portrait of an Islamic law

that was accepting of slavery.

Whereas once you start to scratch the surface

of the actual legal opinions,

you realize that nobody agreed about anything,

and there were people that never accepted the idea

that any enslavement could happen

beyond the time of the original wars

that the prophet himself directed.

And that he himself had freed any person

that he had ever owned during his life

before he died,

and that there was a very powerful

thread of antislavery thought within Islam that was being

systematically downplayed.

So what I was doing is trying to tell a historical story

that gave expression

to some of that intellectual ambivalence

about slavery within Muslim societies

and to see that people actually found resources

to think against slavery

within conventional Islamic thought.

This revolution in the Senegal River Valley

was framed by a series

of conspicuous incidences of enslavement

of prominent clerics that increasingly

radicalized the society.

Clerics traditionally in this region were people

who never held political power,

they were generally forbidden to bear arms

and they did so anyway.

They taught themselves to do it, because they said,

"If these are the kings that we've got, then no more kings."

They not only tried to abolish the...

first the slave trade,

then the institution of slavery itself,

but they also abolished monarchy

and introduced a kind of form of clerical republicanism,

and that's where the first

Atlantic revolution idea comes in,

is that this is not just a revolution

that is about defining the bounds of liberty

in the same way that the American revolution

or the Haitian revolution or the French revolution

is trying to define what liberty is.

Even if we end up selling out pretty hard

on the whole slavery thing, in this particular country.

But it's also one that, that is seeking

to put an end to monarchy.

This is an Atlantic revolution

because some of its agents and lieutenants

get exported as slaves, and they end up

spreading word of this revolution

in slave barracks.

But it's particularly regrettable

insofar as this story

demonstrates that some of the genealogies

of the values of liberty and emancipatory thought

that we hold dear,

were articulated not just by the, the ancestors

- of the European population in this country,

But by the ancestors of the African population as well.

And that they were articulated in terms

that were thought through with respect

to the Koran rather than the Bible.

They were thought through with respect

to the Atlantic experience

of being the victim of the slave trade,

rather than the Atlantic experience

of being the progenitors of the slave trade.

When groups come to power that are opposed

to the Atlantic slave trade,

the Europeans, while they might not be able to go in

and force of the slave trade, they're perfectly

capable of arming and providing

logistical support and providing gunboats

and soldiers to parties who are interested

in continuing the trade.

And that's what they do.

Clarkson refers to this

in his letters on the slave trade.

He said the policy of Europeans in Africa

is to... is to make, is to subvert

the just principles of government

and turn kings into wolves

instead of shepherds amongst their people.

And so the... if you want to just

think about it in a word, the European policy

in Africa is "feed the wolves, starve the shepherds."

This is a really special library.

This library is

part of Lincoln Center.

So, we share its mission

of presenting artistic excellence

of the highest caliber.

We're also part of the New York Public Library,

so we share the library's mission

of being a warm, welcoming place

that's committed to education and committed to nurturing

everyone's individual passions and curiosity.

And we like to think that

we're a great marriage of those two missions,

the mission of Lincoln Center

and the mission of the New York Public Library.

And this recital tonight

really represents that well, in my opinion.

We have some wonderful pieces of music,

especially terrific work

by the amazing composer Ned Rorem.

Carolyn is an incredible pianist, a great artist.

She's performed in many of the...

our city's great performance halls,

and she's also, I think, a wonderful embodiment

of that welcoming, generous spirit

that the Library tries to embody as well.

We are here today so we can offer jobs

to 17 to 35 qualified individuals.

Um, you know, basically, you all know what we do.

We do defend the country.

I'm here for active Army and Army Reserve, 17 to 35.

We are always hiring at Morris Heights Health Center,

and we always have opportunities,

whether it's for administration, whether it's for marketing,

whether it's for healthcare, customer service, clerical,

you name it, we've got it at Morris Heights.

We do have a table

where we're providing free screenings today.

We're checking the blood pressure,

we're checking the sugar, and we're also

doing rapid H.I.V. testing today, completely free.

Did you hear that? Free.

The idea of Gotcha Techs

has been to help the community in ways that we are here

working with the public library.

So, don't think because you don't have skills currently

that you can't attain those skills.

Because we also work with and promote

the library's program,

which is the TechConnect program here at the library.

It does a lot of training to help lift your skillset.

So we're going to pause for a minute.

We've got people who are working right now

who are not job-ready.

The trend is, people are getting jobs

based on who you know.

So, one of the things I want to do is

I want to continue

to add value to people.

It doesn't matter what kind of jobs you've had,

what kind of experience.

If you're eager to work, I can work with you.

Hey, you might have the education,

you might have the experience.

But the question is, are you going to be

a good fit to work here?

They're looking at your personality.

And the first five minutes of your interview

will determine whether you get the job or not.

Now you need to synchronize

your responses with your body language.

"Are you a people-person, Ms. Rodriguez?"

"Yes, I'm a people person."

"Mr. Torres, why should we hire you?"

"You should hire me because I have...

I'm very enthusiastic and I have passion."

That's what we want.

We want your transferable skills

to be transparent, so people can see that passion.

What are your top three assets?

You need to bring that out in an interview, okay?

Otherwise, they won't see that.

You know, an interview's like

a cat-and-mouse game, right?

"Tell me about yourself."

"Well, I'm only going to give you limited stuff."

It's a cat-and-mouse game.

No, you've got to be brutally transparent.

You want that job?

You've got nothing to lose.

Be transparent, be honest.

Right?

What have you got to lose?

We are in a transformation of our branches

from the wonderful but passive

repositories and spaces to education centers.

Repositories and spaces to education centers.

Right?

That was my commitment to the board.

The other commitment I made to the board is...

And we will do this to the extent

that we can find the resources to do it,

we will not steal resources

from elsewhere in the system to do this,

I'm sticking to those commitments.

The... what I, the way I read that, it says,

we have to maximize how much money

we can get or use from the city to do the middle band,

so the... not just drop-in, but not as intensive...

Right. Yeah.

And the most intensive band, even if that means

changing our model of delivery...

Right.

To fit RFP

and the city's agenda. Yeah.

Right? Yeah.

If we want to do more than that,

it will be dependent

on finding the private resources to do more than that. Right.

Right? In a sense,

we should set our educational priorities,

and then let our scale decisions

be guided by the resources we can find.

And the... With the first priority being

redirecting and locking in city resources.

So maybe another way to look at this is to say,

we need to be sustainable in these two places.

I'm just trying to say,

where is sustainability key, right?

Because we can't predict where the city money

is necessarily going to go every year, right?

That's very unpredictable.

And so is the development resources.

So we're financially unpredictable.

Does that make sense?

So if we want to make sure you're committed

to some sort of sustainability,

are we saying that that is in the early literacy,

and this second band, right?

And is this a wonderful thing to have,

but when you can't afford it,

that's what you get out of it.

Except to the degree we can shift

to the city's programming... Right.

To meet this, because the mayor is committed

to additional after school. Right.

And if it means... that means

we're doing five-day-a-week

instead of two-and-a-half-day-a-week,

less kids, the same facilities,

that's a good outcome, as far as I'm concerned.

The... so...

yes, in general, I think that's right.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to continue

to find private funds to do more, right?

Right, yeah, of course.

But I think it's really important

that private fundraising is a reaction

to our priorities and plans,

rather than that we are given money

that tells us how to do programming.

So I think that's the first thing

we all have to agree on... Right.

Because I think in the past there has been some, like,

somebody wants to do something and we're like, "Okay."

You know? No, no, absolutely.

And we are setting those priorities...

Right here... with the banding.

Right, okay. Yes.

I understand that, right?

The...

- And I think we, if we can focus on what is,

I mean, we have the capability to, A,

find donors that are interested

in the things we're doing,

but also turn donors that think

they want to start new programs and have ideas

away from those ideas... Away.

And into something that's a more sustainable,

strategic program. Agreed.

But one of the ways we said

that was sustainable is invest in this,

it will demonstrate to the city that they should invest now,

and then money flips over,

which is the process we're in the middle of...

Right. Which also requires

some, some tweaks of our policy choices,

which is fine as long as we're still

doing what we want to

and believe the citizens need us to do.

I mean, the way I think about this

on a macro scale... Iris, tell me

whether this is cockamamie or not,

is, since 2008... cut, city cuts,

learned massive efficiencies, you know, with thanks

to Christopher and everyone in the branches.

Now the money is moving towards restoration.

Rather than use those resources to sort of simply go back

to our previous practices,

some of which we learned were more inefficient

than they needed to be, to use that reinvestment

for two purposes.

One, additional time,

that just takes staff, et cetera, of all kinds.

And, two, additional educational programming.

Is that... that's my general...

And to the degree that private money

helps to seed that and add to that on top,

that's great.

Remember, this is a public-private partnership.

So we use private money

to try to jumpstart public money.

Now, let's use public money

to try to up the ante for private money.

That's how this builds, right?

So, hi everybody,

thanks for coming.

This is my favorite day of the whole semester,

coming to the picture collection.

And I'm going to hand it over to Billy,

who's going to explain

how this particular section of the library works,

and how we will be working here, finding our inspiration.

Okay, so, welcome.

This collection opened in 1915

at the main library across the street,

the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building,

the one with the lions.

If you think about what was happening in New York City

at that time, 1915,

so like right at the tail end

of the immigration explosion,

um, and if you think of how that affects

absolutely everything,

- from businesses to advertising, - from businesses to advertising,

And artists having new jobs, or more jobs,

so lots of artists at that time period,

if you think of the environment they were working in,

they had lots of things, new jobs, advertising.

Instead of going across the street

with very specific needs, you know,

"I need a picture of this

'cause I have an ad that's... the deadline's tomorrow."

And we actually have examples of the things

people were asking for.

We kept journals at that time

to see what they were asking for,

in case we had it or not.

And some of this stuff was really, really specific.

Like, "I need a picture of dolls being carried

into France by an Italian in the 18th century."

Like, you know, I don't know

what the person was working on.

A lot of the times things are just simple.

I need a picture of a giraffe,

or a picture of somebody holding an umbrella.

Sometimes it's really complicated.

And that library has millions of pictures.

They've got lots of stuff.

The problem is, the way it's organized,

it's by creator's name and title.

So if it's a picture of a giraffe,

but taken by a particular photographer,

or you know, it's a printmaking,

you know, an etching or something,

that's how it's organized.

So if you go in looking for something

based on a subject, it's hard to find.

So what they slowly started doing

is collecting stuff by subject heading.

So when somebody came in looking for pictures

of fortune tellers,

or pictures of people in raincoats,

or pictures of people seen from behind,

there would just be a folder,

and those things would be in that folder.

And a hundred years later, we're still here.

So yeah, so the past hundred years,

every single working artist in New York City

probably used this collection.

In the '30s, Diego Rivera, when he was doing murals,

had a little incident at Rockefeller Center,

some of you might know about.

And later that year, he was doing

labor union hall murals at the New Workers School.

He sent people to this collection.

Joseph Cornell lived in Queens on Utopia Parkway.

He used this collection constantly,

if you've ever seen his boxes in his collages.

Most of the images in those boxes

were, like, sourced from the picture collection.

Andy Warhol stole lots of stuff from us.

I'll stop a little bit,

I'll let Jay jump in,

and if you have a question, just ask.

This is the world's largest circulating free picture file.

And, as he was mentioning,

this is a place that's meant to be used

by people who make things

and think of ideas and are artists.

You don't need to wear gloves,

you don't need to make an appointment,

we don't keep things in plastic bags,

like baseball cards or old comic books.

You're encouraged to use what is here.

So, as an example

of what you see around you in all these files,

this is a file called "Dogs in Action."

We have lots of dog files.

There's dogs by breed, there's just dogs in general.

This is "Dogs in Action."

Look at the range of pictures there are,

and the different styles.

- There's a person having fun with a large dog.

A dog that fetched the newspaper.

Digging.

Leaping and wet.

Somebody trying

to pull a dog's jaws open,

maybe to give it a pill or something like that.

A pit bull chewing a ball to pieces

until there isn't anything left of it.

A dog jumping out of a bathtub, from an ad.

A dog, again, flying through the air,

all four feet off the ground.

And, again, tug of war with a piece of clothing.

So, besides this being a file of dogs doing stuff,

you saw the different range of pictures there were.

Photos, drawings, prints, all different sorts of stuff.

Different moods, some looked threatening,

some looked silly, some looked happy.

That's how this can be useful for you,

because you're into drama and the stage.

And what we have here is mostly arranged by topic.

As was mentioned before,

we have pictures of atomic explosions,

pictures of shoes, of pickles, of umbrellas,

all different sorts of things.

There are very few pictures that are by mood or type.

What the librarians here do,

what the person at the desk does,

if you ask them a question,

they say, "What comes to your mind

when you think of this?"

If you can tell the person at the desk

what you're thinking of,

we can tell you the places

to look to composite that.

It's very much about inspiration,

and about how we translate that inspiration

into pictures of specific things.

So what you see around you, all these files,

each file is one subject or one thing

or one occurrence or one happening.

It's basically split into two halves.

This wall, famous people, A to Z by last name.

Royalty in the corner.

They have their own because they're exclusive

and don't want to mingle with the common people.

And then there's everything else,

A to Z.

All these things

that we've described.

And the things that we have here,

the hundred years is important, too.

Because it's not like we started a year ago

and just looked for all these things

and filled up the files.

We have been clipping the pictures

for a hundred years

as these events were happening.

So there's not only the interest

of actually touching something

that might be 70 years old,

these are advertisements from that time period.

So you get to see the typefaces they used,

you get to see how they could reproduce color,

how they portrayed women, minorities,

things like that.

You can see the look of different things

- changing through history as people's attitudes

And the technology of reproduction has changed.

So, it really is like looking back in time.

A lot of the '50s and '60s stuff here

is from the '50s and '60s.

There's stuff from the 1900s.

I'm going to give you time to go around

and look for the pictures for your specific scenes.

And if you want to share the folder, that's fine,

but have your own pictures.

So, you have your own inspiration,

your own research.

My grandparents were all second-generation New York Jews.

They were not immigrants,

they were the children of immigrants.

And I was very interested in the journey

that they took, right?

I mean, we talk a lot about the immigrant journey

from Eastern Europe to the Lower East Side, right?

But we don't think as much

about what it was like for their children,

who had the opportunity to become more American,

and yet they were still very much

tied to their parents and to the culture

that they had grown up in

- on the Lower East Side. - On the Lower East Side.

And so my first book, I mean, my dissertation

and then my first book, was about the depiction

of second-generation New York Jewish life

in vaudeville,

and in silent film, and in Broadway theater,

and in music, and comic strips,

and comedy.

And then I realized, after I finished writing that,

there was a whole aspect to it that I hadn't explored,

which was, where did all of these scenes

in film and theater and comedy take place?

Well, they almost all took place in delis.

There was something about the deli

as a location of New York Jewish life

that had never really been analyzed.

And then I said to myself,

"Well, let me try to figure out, how many delis were there?"

And where were they located?

And what was their function

in terms of the social and economic life

of the Jews during that period?

The delicatessen, and the food that was served

in the delicatessen, become important

not just for Jews, but for the identity

of the city as a whole.

I mean, we think about New York as the Big Apple.

But I don't think most people,

when they come to New York, start eating apples.

It's not the first thing

that you want to eat when you come to New York.

Right? People want to eat a pastrami sandwich.

And, you know what's interesting about both of those,

and I write about this in the book, that, again,

they're both symbols of carnality, right?

They both have a sexual undertone to them.

I mean, the apple, obviously,

right, from the bible.

And the overstuffed,

or in Yiddish, ongeshtopt, pastrami sandwich.

There is a kind of very crude

sexual imagery.

This was the time

after the First World War that Jews are moving

out of the Lower East Side, they're moving to the Bronx,

they're moving to Brooklyn,

all the places that we said before, right?

They're moving uptown to Harlem, which was

a very Jewish neighborhood

in the years between the wars.

And they are beginning somewhat to move more

into the mainstream of American society.

It's still a very, very anti-Semitic culture

that they're living in, right?

1920s is probably the most anti-Semitic

decade in American history.

You have the rise of the KKK,

you have Henry Ford, you know,

in the pages of the Dearborn Independent,

who was constantly fulminating against Jews

and saying that they're destroying...

You know, he's a follower of Adolf Hitler.

I mean, really bad anti-Semitism.

There's a red scare,

which is often associated with the Jews, right?

But Jews are finding

a niche, at least

in the New York economy, partly through

their involvement in the entertainment business,

because Jews are very, very heavily involved

in entertainment, right?

At a time when it's seen

to be quite disreputable to be making movies

and to be involved in the theater,

and so on and so forth.

And they also are moving very much

into food-related businesses.

And, of course, they're very involved

in the garment industry, right?

- And they have a sense of popular taste - And they have a sense of popular taste

And what people want and what people are...

Are looking for.

So, World War II...

"Send a salami to your boy in the army."

"Send a salami." Why are you sending a salami?

This gets back to this whole theme

that I've been talking about, right,

of sexuality.

Why are you sending a salami?

There's a reason, right?

I mean, it's this sort of phallic symbol.

And so, if the whole point is that you're sending a salami

to give your son a dose of virility

so that he can defeat the enemy

and return safely to the bosom of his family, right?

I mean, that's the whole point of it, right?

I mean, subconsciously, right?

There's a lot of subconscious symbolism

that I'm trying to suggest is going on here.

What's happening after World War II is

Jews are moving out of the city,

they're moving to the suburbs, right?

And they're no longer congregating in delis

to the extent that they used to,

because they're not living

in close proximity to one another

and to the neighborhood deli anymore, right?

So you have shopping centers,

but how many delis do you need in a shopping center, right?

Jews are much more part of, or want to be much more

a part of the fabric of American society.

So the food doesn't go away,

but where is the food being sold now

if it's not being sold in delis?

Supermarkets, right?

For that old-fashioned flavor

That all the folks favor

Try Hebrew National Meats

They're a treat, to be sure, 'cause the beef is so pure

In Hebrew National Meats

You'll find corn beef, and roast beef, salami

Pastrami, and wonderful frankfurters, too

They are surely delicious

And purely nutritious, those Hebrew National...

Hebrew National...

My mother sold records

while my father tried to make his way in jazz.

He had a certain charm, and he could sing,

and therefore he got a job with a number of dance bands.

And the year after I was born,

he got a job with the Joe Loss Orchestra,

which was probably

the most successful dance band of its day.

Can we hear him singing?

We can hear him singing...

With that, that one moment.

Do you want... Do you want to see,

so those of you that watch the television

may have seen him singing...

Yeah, but it's all right, they can watch it again.

It's so, it's so... it's so extraordinary.

Well, there's a little story behind this

particular little clip we're going to see.

You've got to understand, the bands of the 1950s

were well-suited to play the music of the day.

It was Frankie Laine and Johnnie Ray.

When beat music and rock 'n' roll came in,

they weren't so suited to it,

so they had to find work

for the saxophone players and the trombone players.

While the singers could be quite adaptable,

they were having to cover records

out of the charts that were not necessarily

that suitable for this lineup.

And then I suppose this happened.

ROSS McMANUS: Whoa

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa

Whoa

If I had a hammer

If I had a hammer

McMANUS: I'd hammer in the morning

Hammer in the morning

I'd hammer in the evening

Hammer in the evening

All over this land

All over this land

I sing about danger

I sing a warning here

I sing about the love between my brothers and my sisters

All over, all over this land

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa

I've got a hammer

I've got a hammer

And I've got a bell I've got a bell

And I've got a song to sing all over this land

All over this land

It's the hammer of justice

It's the hammer of freedom

And to talk about the love between

My brothers and my sisters all over, all over this land

Yeah, yeah, yeah

Yeah, yeah, yeah!

All over this land

Ooh, all over this land

Ooh, all over this land...

Certainly there is a...

there is a slight family resemblance.

Only around the eyes, not around the feet.

Er...

I want to read something that is actually quite smart.

I think Greil Marcus, beautifully in an interview,

characterizes this moment of revenge and guilt.

He says, "Elvis Costello was someone

"who you'd better not cross.

"He was someone who was,

"as he said in his first interview...

"and I really do believe this is the key to his career...

"he said the only emotions he understood

"were revenge and guilt.

"Whether or not he's recording with the Brodsky Quartet,

"as he did on The Juliet Letters,

"or whether he's simply standing up

"and singing 'Tramp the Dirt Down, '

"which is a song about

"how he wants to dance on Thatcher's grave,

"I think he has always looked for the most effective way

to make trouble."

Do you think that's true?

Which part of it?

Any part of it.

Yeah, I think he gives me way too much credit.

Um, of course, it's...

Professor Marcus, you know,

it's his job to create a thesis like that.

That's what he does.

He writes very, very long and intricate books

explaining the connections

- between various political and cultural movements,

And the vividness of that, to him, I won't deny,

except that he's covering a period

of about nearly 30 years, 25 years.

And there was any number of people in my, to myself...

I know it's very convenient

to put these labels like punk or new wave

or angry or, you know, political.

But each song has a different occasion for me,

and there are different means,

and there are different motives.

And there are, I hope,

different results if you listen to them.

And on different days,

you can sing them with different inflections.

I have sung words that are heard in "Tramp the Dirt Down."

I sang it on the night the miner strike collapsed

in, in, in sketch form,

and at that time, I would agree

it was probably pretty aggressive.

And then the tune that I ended up using

alludes to "Isn't She Lovely."

It alludes to "Isn't She Lovely,"

Stevie Wonder's melody.

That was a joke.

But there's a joke carrying a song

with all these brutal and disappointed images

of what that particular time let loose in people.

The desire to step on your fellow countryman

to get ahead.

And I still feel that way.

So I get... I sang the song up until a few years ago,

and people said, "You can't sing it now, she's dead."

I think, we especially have to sing it now that she's dead.

Now is...

Not because, not because, no, no, she's a human being.

She actually died, you know, in dementia,

which I literally wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

But what she let loose in the country,

I cannot forgive.

So that's my opinion.

And in a democracy, I get to say what I feel,

and I get to sing it as well,

just as politicians get to say it

over and over again and get paid to do so.

If we want as a society to take advantage

of all of these great technological opportunities,

we have an obligation to, um, help those folks

who are being put in a worse position

by modern technological change.

I think the city understands that,

and they're doing a plethora of activities.

It isn't unified and it isn't working towards a coherent goal.

Other cities have, um, created...

- so this is the indicators from Seattle, um,

Created sort of positive visions

of what, uh...

what an inclusive city could look like.

If you read those documents, it becomes very clear

that the library is actually

maybe the most crucial institution,

because we're a community hub

for people who don't have home access.

We're a place where people

get exposure who don't otherwise understand it.

We're a place where people can learn skills,

where kids can do homework after schools.

I think there's an opportunity

to bring together the sort of full scope of people

involved in making sure the wires are in the ground,

there's affordable internet, there's community hubs,

there's digital skills,

to develop a series of indicators on and goals for

what an inclusive New York City would be,

and that we could...

that could be helmed by the mayor's office,

but that we could provide the convening space

and help them unite a bunch of their activities.

That would rationalize a bunch of the projects they're doing,

it would give us a way of continuing to shine the light

on those who are being left behind,

and, um, and also, you know,

highlight the central role the library's playing in this space.

Uh, again, it's a thing that other cities have done

and that New York is actually just kind of behind on.

And actually people come to us all the time,

so people talk about us

as an anchor institution in the community

for digital inclusion, not just digital access,

but access being, like, the lowest common denominator.

It's actually what do people do with it.

Not everybody goes to a WeWork, but they could go

to their neighborhood digital incubation center.

They could go...

and, you know, people talk about it,

not only, certainly for the people

who don't have computer access, but also for everybody.

The fact of the matter is that, you know,

technology is moving at a pace

that we're all going to have to keep up with,

and it's about how we think about it.

And so exposure to all those kinds of tools

but also to a community of experts.

So it doesn't always have to be us.

It could be bringing in a lot of others.

And so the conversations I've had,

many, many conversations that Luke clearly has had,

sort of indicate that this is a great opportunity for us.

What if we convened everybody in this space

at a giant conference at SASBY

to articulate what along all, you know, what do we want

in terms of people having fiber to their buildings,

in terms of community spaces where they can go online,

in terms of digital skills.

We could, you could then commission CUFF

or somebody could commission CUFF to do a research,

a basically baseline data on where we are as a city

that would highlight the gaping holes

and where New York is behind the times.

We could then, six months later,

convene another big meeting here at the, um, at SASBY

to identify low-hanging fruit and develop strategies

of which we will certainly be key players,

because of our, um, of our assets.

- The, that might give the mayor something to...

A way of talking about his, all of his projects.

It would certainly develop us as a central player.

There's like three different

pieces of narrative that we use that this stitches together.

One is the most arresting figure that Tony uses

is, you know, one in three New Yorkers don't have access

to broadband at home.

Like, that gets any audience's attention.

The second historic one that we always love

is, is the Carnegie point,

is that Carnegie sought to create a library

within walking distance of every New Yorker.

So this is a way to kind of embrace that heritage

and say... and I love the way,

just from a two-second look at what Seattle did,

is to say, "Okay, neighborhood density,

how many public access spots are there?"

It's a way to kind of renew the Carnegie idea

in a digital fashion.

And I think the challenge

would be how do we, we want to position ourselves

as helpful advocates yet... for the city, um,

you know, but a little distance from it.

This isn't a... it would be a partnership,

but... and it's not,

this wouldn't be the first time the city wanted

to plant a million trees,

and they did a tree census before that.

And now, you know, last week they planted the millionth tree.

For the library, with CUFF or whatnot,

I think it's a super-brilliant idea to say,

"Here's what the digital...

"is one in three a real accurate number?

"How does that go up and down every year?

Here is what it looks like neighborhood, region by region."

You know, so, I do think this is the logical next step

and our bona fides are there based on everything,

but also on the 10,000 lends that we will have completed.

I just want us to make sure

that we don't lose sight of what digital inclusion is,

that it isn't just about broadband.

And I don't mean to make that something minor.

It's not, it's huge.

But that is honestly simply just not enough...

Mm-hmm. And I don't want this to...

a lot of people are doing the broadband wagon, sorry.

So it's what's, what more, like what kind of society...

so I just want us to be...

There's the quantitative story and there's a qualitative story.

Well, there's a skill,

there's a "How do you function in society?"

I just want us to be aware of that, yeah.

Okay, we're coming to that.

And then it's changing, right,

so the free computer you get somebody in 2015

isn't going to be relevant in 2020.

The bandwidth we secure for them now

will be outdated as the internet changes.

And the skills that you learn today

won't, um, uh, be sufficient in a couple of years,

which is why the role of a library will,

if we want to be in the space,

will be continually important,

because there will be a different set of people

continually left behind.

So it's not that broadband isn't crucial

or this wasn't a good attempt.

It's just that it's a...

if we can widen the focus

and set the end goal on engaged internet users,

we'll see there's a lot of different ways

that we can make a difference

and are already making a difference as a system.

Look, this project succeeded because it got us to this point.

It was awesome, right?

Agreed, agreed.

Yes.

Hi, everyone.

Welcome to Books at Noon.

Today I'm pleased to introduce Yusef Komunyakaa.

I wanted to ask you

if you see yourself as a political poet?

Do I see myself as a political poet?

- Um... - I mean you use, I mean,

there have been, you know,

you used your experience in Vietnam

to talk about, you know,

and you've used issues of race in poetry,

so I'm wondering if you,

as far as sort of the spectrum of poetry,

if you see yourself as a political poet?

Well, I think language is political,

and that, that's what I use as a tool.

I think it was, um, Richard Wright who said

that he wanted to write sentences,

language that functioned as a club.

I don't necessarily believe that.

For me, I don't think the surface,

the surface of the poem,

the politics are not on the surface of the poem,

but I think since I use language,

the politics are underneath,

woven into the emotional architecture

of the poem.

Has that always been part of your style,

to weave in what's going on?

I mean, it's part of your language,

it's part of who you are as a poet.

I go back to Baldwin,

and James Baldwin said that

we have to know what's happening around us

in order to know what's happening to us

because we're a part of everything around us.

And I think perhaps the poet

is cursed to be a keen observer.

Observer.

And there is a kind of innuendo,

and also it's part of an extended possibility.

What I mean by that is that

if we are in the rhythm of the poem,

we are in the emotional architecture of a poem,

and language says things that are direct

but also insinuation,

the same as a blues singer would.

I think that's what it is.

It really takes me back

to the essence of the blues,

insinuation, daring.

You mean to allow silence?

Simplicity say that also in a way morphs

into a more complex emotional place.

Got your library card?

Yeah.

Okay, so you want to take these pictures

and save it in here? Uh-huh, but...

Not all the one.

This... This here is on the memory card here.

Yes. You want to transfer it to here, correct?

But, but I want first to save.

Well, this is why you have to hold on "Control," you see?

I'm going to show you example.

So once that gets to 100%,

then call me back over, and we can take a look.

100% to finish it?

Yeah, 100% is finished downloading,

and then we do installing.

Go back to "Home."

Huh?

Home. Home?

Home, yeah, this, yeah.

This year's supply, I'd say about 22.

Now, have you worked with the book,

the regular-sized braille yet?

So we're going to start on this first...

this first page that has A through E on it.

So go ahead and check out the page.

Are you lefty or righty?

Um, righty.

You're right-handed? Mm-hmm.

Okay, it's good to hold, to keep it...

Straight? ...straight though.

Uh-huh. Most people that read braille

end up reading with a combination of both hands.

Okay.

So your right hand will be your leader,

- but sometimes your left hand will kind of keep your place. Okay.

That's okay to check out with both hands, if you want.

E?

Hmm.. No, that's the D.

Before you try to comprehend,

just practice moving your hand in a straight line

and following.

This is how a braille-reading hand moves.

So these lines that are kind of together,

these little kinds of almost railroad tracks,

are there to help you kind of pattern and figure out

how to move in a fluid, straight, smooth way.

A lot of people will read with a couple of fingers.

I noticed that you for right now

are mostly reading with your middle finger,

and you want to make sure that this finger gets in there, too,

because your forefinger has a lot of sensitivity,

and a lot of people read with their forefinger

and then middle finger kind of together.

Okay.

When your one hand finds the next line for the other hand

is called tracking.

X, X, X, X.

Z, Z, Z, Z.

Now make sure that you...

Do like this or with your hand,

wherever you can, okay?

C... okay, and... what?

Okay, and...

You've got "Why not."

So N is the end.

One position is different.

You know, one is horizontal and other one vertical.

- You got it? - Yeah, I'm writing...

And now I'm going to do the other one.

I have some statistics here

on how many people with disabilities there are.

This is according

to the 2014 U.S. Census.

There are roughly

eight million people uh, in New York City in general,

and about 900,000 of those people

are people with disabilities.

So that's about 11%.

I'm the housing coordinator, and I do answer

a lot of 311 calls

regarding housing for people with disabilities.

For low-income housing,

there is the New York City Housing Authority,

which is known to have a very long waiting list.

Fortunately, that is not the only option.

There are other options.

There are a few different vouchers available.

One is the Medicaid Waiver Program,

and that's for people with physical disabilities,

and it does include things like home care

and Meals on Wheels

and subsidized housing.

If you have a voucher that covers $1,100,

and you go find an apartment,

and the apartment is within that range, right?

It's $1,000 or $1,100 rent a month,

uh, that means that you meet the criteria,

you meet the income requirement for that apartment,

- and if the landlord tells you, "We don't take vouchers,"

That's considered discrimination.

And if that, you know, if that does happen,

there is an agency that can help you out with that.

That's called the City Commission

on Human Rights.

It's always good to know your rights.

Another housing opportunity is the housing lotteries

or affordable housing.

There is a difference between affordable housing

and low-income housing.

Most people don't realize that.

So affordable housing is for, you know,

it includes low income,

but it also includes, you know,

middle class and working families as well.

Another agency that we do work with,

Housing Preservation and Development.

Basically they are working with developers

who are building new buildings

or reconstructing existing buildings,

and each building has its own lottery.

So each building will have its own application,

and in each lottery,

five percent of the apartments are set aside

for people with mobility disabilities,

and two percent are set aside

for people with visual and hearing disabilities.

Finding stable housing is pretty hard to do,

especially in the affordable and low-income markets.

Oh, yeah, let's do it.

In 2014 we launched an extensive strategic plan,

but most importantly, we began to fill the basket

about what we were going to put here,

the Mid-Manhattan Library

as well as in the Schwarzman Building.

We engaged, um, in a very public engagement campaign

around our plans.

These were just concepts that we had come up with.

We had public meetings,

we had numerous media opportunities,

um, thanks to Ken and his staff.

We met with stakeholders, we met with our board,

we met with anybody who would listen to us.

The goals, then,

were really to keep our constituents informed,

which I think we did;

to ensure that we got important feedback

as to which should go where

and what should go in what buildings,

and what programs and projects that we should really focus on.

And, lastly, the thing that I am the most proud about is...

And I think everybody in this room

or anybody affiliated with the library should be proud about...

Is that we were maintaining transparency

during this process.

Um, we were communicating as best we could;

whatever we knew, we were letting people know.

Now in October, it's actually November,

we started a new phase of this campaign.

And, um, it's to introduce the really spectacular architects

that we spent months, um, trying to get to this point

that we spent months, um, trying to get to this point

and to pick a team like this

to work on this iconic project for New York City.

Um, and in this next round,

there will be an enormous amount again of public engagement,

and we'll include even more substantive conversations.

And as Tony noted,

um, most importantly it's to start the conversation here,

with our staff and here at the library.

So, um, let me just explain how we got to this point

with these two wonderful architecture firms.

Um, I think as everybody knows,

we went through an RFQ and an RFP process,

and working with a working group,

which included members of the board of directors

as well as senior staff here at the library,

um, we arrived at, um, uh, two semi-finalists

and ended up with one finalist group.

Francine, you, having worked

in libraries all over the world,

maybe you can give us a sense

of what you think the futures of libraries are going to be,

both in the physical sense

and in the sense of libraries as institutions.

First of all, for me,

the

library does not exist.

Every library, it's my experience, is different.

It's totally different

if you're thinking

of a circulating library in the Netherlands.

There's even already a difference

between if you make one in Amsterdam and in Rotterdam,

there's even a bigger difference if you make one in Scandinavia

or we also worked on the library in Athens.

For instance, in Europe,

the northern part of Europe is more books

and the southern part of Europe is almost no books.

Um...

One maybe very important thing...

I'm just now improvising...

That for me libraries are not about books,

it's a lot of people think that it's a storage space for books.

No, libraries are about people

who want to get knowledge to them,

and that can be done by books,

it can be done by many other ways.

It's very much about learning,

it's about long-life learning,

it's about the whole generation.

And so libraries are, they're not only...

there are cultural importance,

but they also very much economically important.

It has... here it's a little bit different,

but, like, in Europe, it's always public money,

and it's public money that you invest in your own population.

Uh, so it's very much important

that you give it back to the public.

And, um, yeah, what else?

I guess I could give a whole lecture about libraries.

Um, I think what is maybe also important,

that as a library,

reflects what is necessary in that city...

It's a research library, it's also an archive.

- It's a city archive, it's the circulating library.

I'm dreaming of, especially if I think of this building,

about many different atmospheres,

of different ways of studying,

of different, very important, uh...

maybe when I did design the... the...

famous library we did in Delft,

that's where our office is based.

It's in a library for the technical university in Delft,

and that was opened in 1995.

And we, when we did the design in 1991,

they already told me, "Francine,

you don't need libraries anymore in the future."

And that's in a way still a kind of opinion we hear a lot.

Do you hear it a lot?

It's totally because people, they still think of libraries

about a storage space of books,

or people think of the library when they were a kid.

A lot of people have no awareness

what is happening in the nowadays libraries

and how necessary they are.

What else, do you want?

Maybe I should just stop.

Okay.

But I have a lot of ideas about libraries.

Okay.

What will the catalog...

That will probably be the center of the catalog...

We've got lovely essays...

We've got some... in there.

Plus, we only got halfway...

That needs to be, like, life-sized.

Really?

I almost wanted to be...

It's okay, you got...?

No problem.

All right...

Reminds me of a couple of paintings that was done

back in orientalism.

I don't know if you know what that is, orientalism?

Yes.

Eh... in chapter one

of Alice's Adventures

in Wonderland, um,

she is being recited a story by her elder sister, right?

Um...

And it's boring.

She, she doesn't like the story,

and, and this is this thing that encourages her

and, and this is this thing that encourages her

and sets off this whole journey into, into fantasy,

and I found it so interesting, thinking about that

and realizing kind of what my, my journey has been,

um, which is essentially the opposite of that.

It's trying to take stories and make them not boring.

Um, it's trying to take traditional literature

and traditional, like, like, ideas of what it means

to be intellectual and academic and educated...

and how it was the actual boredom

that pushed Alice into this new world of chasing fantasy.

I feel so similar to that so, so frequently.

I, I read these things,

and I see all these brilliant, brilliant people in this world

who are, are... feel the need to package their ideas

and their intellect

and, in this stringent and traditional way,

because that's the way that we're used to digesting it.

So I hope that one of the things

that you take from this program

is that intellect and academia

and literature does not have to be highbrow.

It does not have to be elitist.

Um, it can develop in a organic and genuine way.

So I'm going to read this last piece, um.

"When this man enters a room

"He wishes to keep his chin up

"To carry with him a continental smile

"And a heart

"A heart that lifts the floor like a splintering brass chorus

"Of drums and saxophones, Questlove and Coltrane

"marching to Gettysburg at my feet

"With shotgun improvs that grow into rock steady

"Playing like a humble bass line for the beautiful,

"the gorgeous shootouts that ring out

"throughout old Chicago jazz clubs

"and smoky New Orleans hallways.

"He is a man.

"He is a man because he claims he's claimed his identity

"Yet still walks with the melancholy whisper

"Of everything mama couldn't teach him,

"Preacher couldn't preach to him

"On Fridays when the bar ends, the clouds unclench their fists,

"I walk home, empty pack of Marlboros in my back pocket.

"Girl I don't know so well, under my left arm

"Laughing too damn loudly.

"I sit under a poster of Hendrix with Mona Lisa-like eyes

"that follow me wherever I go

"And I wonder what is in a man.

"It wasn't always like that, though.

"Before the intrigue of standing tall swallowed my skin

- "Every boy had a smiling father to dribble him

"Every watch could stop if you please

"Every set of five fingers had a warm twin that fit

"But since then, I spent too many Sundays with the sun

"And girls just looking for

"Thought I had a good one once

"But now all I do is write black love poems

"The only thing she hates more than me are mirrors

"The only thing I hate more than love is not being in it

"Call it crystal eyed or young of me to say

"But some days I wake up wondering

"Where have all the trumpets gone?

"What makes a man, and what have they done with Motown's tongue?

"When did the sound of my own breath

"Become not enough music to get me through the night

"And why, why can't we let ourselves go in the nighttime

"Without it up in the morning,

"In the morning.

"In the morning, wake me up

"Like we died in each others' arms 12 hours prior

"And had been planning to do so on breath cue

"From the first time my lips cuddled your forehead

"I know.

"I know my carpet may not taste as sweet as the golden gates

"But you slept here last night

"And somewhere between the Bankers Club and the eight ball

"from yesterday, I was reminded that a broken heart bleeds red

"So now my past, my insides got you looking like a fresh murder

"Can I be a man and clean that up for you?

"Could you, could you love me just as hard

"if I'd rather talk some out?

"If, if I'd rather,

"If I'd rather picket fence my tongue quiet and slow

"like a stream across the whole navy Van Gogh of your body

"Cheek to back in a curve of your thigh and I disappear

"And there's no more before, no more after,

"Just a screaming white light

"Rattling the inside of your skull

"Like a drug-addicted prisoner and a man, a man,

"I swear to God, I'm a man

"standing tall,

"Looking down over his work

Like a lost diamond."

Thank you so much.

The way that my staff can help,

in addition to providing direct help,

the government and community affairs office,

we can also provide, you know, guidance, possibly.

You know, as you're navigating through government,

many of you may not have done that

as intimately as you're doing it now.

You may have a question about

you know, an agency

or who these other agencies are interacting with,

or perhaps, you know, the mayor's agenda

or the speaker's agenda or the governor's agenda,

or things that are helping you

to navigate through the agencies at the federal level.

- So we can help with all of that. - So we can help with all of that.

So I thought it would be good...

The other thing we'll be doing is,

I will, I or a member of my team

will be joining your biweeklies

Yep... just to hear from you

what's happening,

and if there are any, you know, new initiatives

that we should be aware of

or if there are any ongoing initiatives,

just for you to give us updates on those as well.

We've got to make sure that

we're bringing our Government Affairs with us

so that they understand where we might be able

to plug into those government relationships, right?

So we need to do both.

Off the top of my head,

Christopher mentioned our meeting this week

with the Department of Health.

As you all know,

the First Lady's mental health initiative.

We're trying to see how we can help them

move that agenda along.

There are a lot of ways that we can provide help to the city.

A, you know, we have infrastructure

in every neighborhood in the city,

so we can provide space for them to conduct meetings.

We can also help them get the word out

on some of these initiatives

and possibly our programming can align

with what they're trying to achieve as well.

Minority women-owned businesses.

We're working with the city on this as well,

to track, to do a better job

of tracking, um, you know, who we partner with,

who we do business with.

So that's happening right now.

IDNYC is ongoing, as we know.

The city is so happy with our participation

under the IDNYC programming,

they've asked us to provide pop-up sites,

so some of you are involved with that as well.

Christopher knows about this as well.

Uh, the mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs,

I mean, New Americans Corners.

We set those up last those up last year in all the branches

and the city is thinking about ways

that they can improve on those services

to the immigrant population

and one of the ways that they're looking to do that right now

is to possibly provide legal services

in public spaces in the city, including libraries.

So we're in conversations

with the city on that as well.

Libraries have always been this adjunct...

Right. to the education system

in the city.

There are 127 city agencies.

I'm sure if we were to go through a list,

we probably do business with 30 or 40 of them.

We are the greatest example of a public-private partnership

and on that public side, I mean,

we interact deeply on a daily basis,

and it really is, uh, it's a good idea for us

to track that as best we can.

Mr. García Márquez is mostly remembered

in terms of magical realism,

being the style that he worked in.

You know, the idea of magic being a part of everyday life,

extraordinary things happen, magical things happen,

spellbinding things happening.

A big part of his work.

Several people have said that Love in the Time of Cholera

is like the American Huckleberry Finn.

Everybody knows it.

Everybody can quote it.

People, you know, it's the book everybody reads there.

Um, so...

So what do we think of him?

I did think, as I read it,

it would have been better titled,

Lovemaking in the Time of Cholera,

because I got a little bored

with all the in and outs of all the bed.

I find the beginning lines and beginning pages,

I can tell whether I can get into a book in a couple days.

I mean, it's not like, "Call me Ishmael,"

which is very striking,

but this one is, "It was inevitable:

"the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him

of the fate of unrequited love."

And the theme of almonds and bitter almonds come through.

And this is a story of unrequited love.

That was only at the end gets fulfilled

under the guise of being a boat with cholera, you know.

And so I think he's saying, in a way,

that passion is a sickness.

The explanation for Florentino

was exactly what you said, unrequited love.

That kicked off the rest of his life.

It affected him for the rest of his life,

but he really loved Fermina.

Yes, he screwed all these women

in both figurative and literal sense,

but he loved Fermina,

and he would have done anything for her,

and I think this is proven throughout the book.

Also, he was devastated

by what happened to América Vicuña.

- Right. - As we all were,

he was devastated by that.

He kept on thinking about it.

He went into the stateroom

on that final voyage down the Magdalena,

and he cried until there were no tears left.

He was a human being,

and that's what I think was so good about this book.

It was surreal in many respects, magical realism,

but yet there's tremendous,

in-depth knowledge of human nature,

both good and bad, in this book.

I felt it so perceptive about what it means to be married,

what it means on your wedding night,

what it means to be a widow, what it means to get old.

I mean, I was personally affected

by the fact that the whole second part of the book was,

"What does it mean to be in your 70s now?"

And yet, he keeps on injecting these surreal elements.

So I think both characters were very sympathetic.

They were real.

It was his imagination of Fermina that he loved.

He didn't know her.

He only knew what he thought she was,

and of course we've all had relationships

where the person, the other person,

thinks we're something we're not.

And, I mean,

it takes a while for you to finally say, "Look,

I'm not who you think I am," you know?

It's the... and I think he had all...

it was his imagination that sustained him,

not the real person.

Not the real person.

But I do think love, you know, what is love?

It's very hard to figure it out.

He was in love with love,

or his fantasy of her, his, you know, what did you call him?

His imagination of her, about her

was not the real her,

and, um, and that's what kept him going.

That and his constant promiscuous affairs, affairs,

is what kept him going.

Uh, so he was living in the world of illusion.

What is love, after all?

I think that's one of the themes of the book,

is that love is really an illusion,

and the way that Florentino loves Fermina

is no different than, say,

the way that Romeo falls in love with Juliet,

and it's based simply on a gut reaction in adolescence

and based on very little else.

The pursuit of love,

it's just a means to delay

and avoid the aging process

and ultimately to avoid death, if you can,

as long as you can.

Both the city and the library tend

to view a lot of patron-facing digital efforts as separate.

So there's the ITG consideration

of how much bandwidth we provide for Wi-Fi.

There's innovation labs.

There's TechConnect, there's the hotspots.

On the city side,

there's the Lincoln YC pay phones projects.

There's coding in the schools.

There's a NYCHA hotspot.

These are all you know, components of a larger strategy

around an inclusive digital city.

If you tell that richer story,

it, um, it's more powerful, because you see the connections,

and, frankly, from a library perspective,

it reveals just how integral we are

to the digital life of the city,

in a way that if you just take it one on one,

we're sort of less relevant.

And so that's the other goal of this.

Can we help the city understand the richness

of these issues,

so they can understand the richness of our solution?

Should we have personas for, like,

think of different types of users.

Yes.

What does an older adult need to know

in order to be able

to communicate with their family,

to not feel isolated, to stay in touch with the news?

What does a student need to know?

What does a, right, um... in, in,

some of that conceptual work actually doesn't exist

in the larger digital literacy space,

but is exactly the input necessary

for us to then say, "Okay.

"If that's where people need to go,

"where are we best equipped to help take them

"and how can we partner

"with the other institutions around the city

"to sort of collectively have

a digitally rich environment?"

I have to say, though,

I think of all the programs,

I am the most proud of what we're doing today,

because I think the mission of the library

and the mission of our guests resonate so beautifully.

We want to share the arts with all people,

and this city, which is so amazing,

with incredible theater and incredible theater-makers,

these guests are part of the reason why

deaf audiences are able to experience that.

Interpreters at theater

are the red carpet for deaf audiences

to have access to what's being performed onstage.

Um, we are not performers,

yet in order for an audience that is deaf

to enjoy and cry and laugh

with everybody else in the theater,

they need to understand what's happening onstage,

and they need to understand the emotional life

of the actors and the characters,

the choices that actors are making,

and the, um...

that whole framework of the play.

So we do study the actors.

I do study their mannerisms.

I do think about the way a show is directed and staged.

I do think about text.

All those pieces come together

to present a red carpet to the deaf audience

and say, "Hey,

this is the show that everybody's enjoying."

And I'm looking at how...

how the context is giving meaning.

I'm looking at what the intent of the person is

that's hearing, that's speaking to the deaf person.

I'm trying to pull out and parse out all of that

so I can create a real communication

between these two worlds

that are... come with different cultures,

- different backgrounds, different world understanding.

Sign language is more than just how your hands move.

It's this whole three-dimensional space

in front of you.

So it does include our face.

That's where grammar will show up a lot of times

as well as, um...

affect, mood.

So it has a dual purpose.

So I think that we try to explore that with every play.

What's the feeling in every play?

What's the mood?

What are the characters doing, yeah.

One thing that the library has

that's kind of cool is we have

the fair copy of the Declaration of Independence

that Thomas Jefferson wrote as a draft

before the final draft went to the Continental Congress.

And, um, the big difference is there's a section that,

where he's quite negative about slavery,

and that was taken out

to win the support of delegates from some southern colonies.

Um, we were wondering just,

since everyone's relatively familiar

with the Declaration of Independence,

we were thinking we could get two volunteers

to read just a few lines,

uh, trying to capture a different mood,

a different emotion.

Um, one, sort of angry and defiant

and then another one kind of more inspired and uplifting.

No, pleading. Pleading, okay.

Pleading the king to allow you to do this.

Yeah.

So do we have any volunteers?

Somebody want to give it a try?

Okay. And this lady also.

Oh, terrific.

So is any... are either of you

feeling particularly angry or particularly pleading?

Her choice.

Why don't you try angry,

and you can use my microphone,

and Candice will be your interpreter.

Right, so you can stand right there,

and I'll stand next to you.

So hopefully this will show you

a little bit of the difference

in how an interpretation might look.

So very angry.

Not super fast.

Okay.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident,

"all men are created equal,

"that they are endowed by their Creator

"with certain unalienable rights,

"that among these are life, liberty,

"and the pursuit of happiness.

"And that to secure these rights,

"governments are instituted among men,

"deriving their just powers

"from the consent of the governed.

"That whenever any form of government

"becomes destructive of these ends,

"it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it,

"to institute a new government,

"laying its foundation on such principles

"and organizing its powers in such form,

"as to them shall seem most likely

to effect their safety and happiness."

You were angry.

Pleading?

Yeah, pleading.

Pleading, you may have gotten the easier one.

You're begging... Are you ready?

You're begging the king to allow us to do this.

You're begging the king to allow us to do this.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident,

"that all men are created equal,

"that they are endowed by the creator

"with certain unalienable rights,

"that among these are life, liberty,

"and the pursuit of happiness.

"That to secure these rights,

"governments are instituted among men,

"deriving their just powers

"from the consent of the governed.

"That whenever any form of government

"becomes destructive of these ends,

"it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it,

"and to institute a new government,

"laying its foundation on such principles

"and organizing its powers in such form,

"as to them shall seem most likely

to effect their safety and happiness."

Little prep next time for me.

That was fantastic.

We have such talented audiences

at the Library for the Performing Arts.

We do. Thank you so much.

Leroy...

Have you seen who got 30?

Have you seen who got 30?

But teens are more independent,

and they have a hard time

asking for help.

Most of the times, a lot of teens,

they think they know it all.

We all did at one time.

So it's kinda...

So my best way of getting in touch with them

is kind of let them know, "Oh, listen.

"So what are you doing?

"I'm so bad at math.

"What do you recommend for me to do?

What do you do to work on your math skills?"

And then they'll tell me, "Oh, Rick,

"all you need to do is do this,

and they have books in there."

I'm like, "Oh I know we do, but do you use them?"

And they're like, "Oh, yeah, Ricky.

You could go to this website too..."

So I kind of feel what they need and what they know

and then I build from there.

Um, it's a little bit hard when it comes to,

getting them to come for,

like, if we do a teen math program here,

a lot of times, if we tell the teens,

they won't come in.

So it's different ways and techniques.

So it will be great for us too.

This is what we have to work, and that we're with the schools.

So the schools could work something with the parents,

and then their parents bring the teens in.

Because they'll come in for a great Wii game or Xbox.

They'll come in on their own for that, no problem.

- Recreational. - Recreational.

But when it comes to something educational,

it's a little bit hard, which is understandable,

because they're doing school seven hours a day.

Yeah, they're exhausted.

They're exhausted when they come here.

This is why I think it's very important for the libraries

to give the teens their own space

and their time in each branch,

because it's important for the teens

to come in and feel like they belong somewhere.

And it's not a school.

When they come to our programs, I don't want them to feel

like they have to sit there straight

and just do math work.

No, I want you to feel like this is the place

for you to come with your friends...

- Relax. - Yes.

And talk about math,

you can learn from each other,

respect each other is the main thing that I want.

Respect each other, but also learn from each other,

and how can you help each other?

And with the teens, a great way to do that too

is get them, a bunch of teens in one room together

and have them kind of let us know what they need,

not us kind of telling them, "Oh, this is what you do."

It's kind of like, "How will you help him?

How would she help him?"

All that kind of stuff, and it works.

We have, as you know,

a great way of studying how the children and teen readers,

their reading patterns,

in terms of what is being borrowed,

through a tool called Collection HQ,

and I noticed for the September statistics

for Parkchester's children and teens,

there was a lot of focus on math.

- Right. - It seemed to be a point...

"How's your math going?"

where... right.

Not good.

As far as, of the top ten circulating children,

non-fiction titles for Parkchester,

there were at least four or five books

on fractions being requested. Correct.

And what will be interesting for all of us to see

is system-wide, is that also a pattern of use, right?

Yeah.

Um, Ashante, you've been working a lot

with, um, through the MyLibraryNYC program,

and I'm just curious, does this seem to be the...

is... does there seem to be a true pattern

of certain topics being covered

at various points in the year by children and teens?

Um, parents are really challenged by the new math,

Um, parents are really challenged by the new math,

- with the Common Core math. - Yes, Common Core.

So they're used to doing the math, working from...

working from the top down,

and now they're going from left to right.

Right.

So parents are looking for books on math,

kids are looking for books for math,

and we're seeing that, with the teacher's sets,

that math teachers are looking for teacher sets

using the MyLibraryNYC teacher sets,

and... it is, it is a true trend.

So I'm glad you guys noticed it.

There's this huge increase

in circulation of teacher sets and items,

and so I'm wondering, are they mostly math teacher sets or...?

Well, the highest...

the highest-circulating teacher set

is the baby animals.

Because who doesn't love baby animals?

That is the highest-circulating.

But math is following right behind it.

And that's new, right?

Yeah, that's new. That's new.

We've tripled our,

we've over tripled our teacher sets.

Yeah, I was reading this last night.

I thought, "That's incredible."

Yeah, we're very proud. Really incredible.

We need to look at it holistically.

You know, how we can partner with the programming team

to ensure that there are resources

and, you know, there are connections made

between Programming and Collections,

and also how we can broaden our reach

by working with volunteers and staff.

There is a, an urgency around this.

We cannot fail.

I mean if parents are coming, pleading to you...

Yeah, yeah.

I can see in their eyes their need,

they want their kids to be successful.

Yeah, exactly.

Their whole family depends on this generation.

The library cannot fail.

Yeah.

If you actually had a non-floating collection

in specific areas

that you know your neighborhood really needs...

Like, math sounds like it's more than Parkchester,

but it's obviously here...

And you had a four- or five-day series

for parents and kids

to come and learn to do math together,

there might be a real opportunity

to bring the community together in here too.

So you could have something like the Programs in a Box.

You could have this...

I mean, the cornerstone of all of this

is you and the collection, right,

and having that partnership with the teachers.

Then you can build around it,

but we do have the means to build around it, right?

We have the Programs in a Box,

which we're all committed to.

We also have the ability to bring in community tutors.

There's a lot of potential there

that we can weave together.

Let's not lose sight of that,

and, actually, let's not give that up right now,

just because we're having this conversation.

Let's figure out how we help make that happen.

Here you go.

Check in?

Or check out?

How old are you?

You're 12?

So you have a student ID?

Uh, do you have any form of ID?

Do you have something with your name on it

and your school name on it,

like a schedule or a report card

or a progress report?

Okay, so I need you to bring me one of those things,

and if you don't have any of those things,

then you need to come with a parent or guardian, okay?

So go get it? Huh?

Do I have to go get it?

If you have it, yeah.

- Hey, can I take out - Atlanta?

Yeah.

Um, this one's actually reserved,

but, um... let me see.

Since we're toward the tail of the NYPL HotSpot program,

the devices generally were going out for a year.

That has changed.

Lending periods may be shorter than a year.

When we check the devices out upstairs,

the due date that it gives you

is the due date that it's going to provide.

They're not renewable at this point.

You're going to get

six gigabytes per month at 4G speed.

Now once you bypass that, it will still work,

but if you're doing something like streaming,

watching Netflix,

it's going to operate slower.

And keep in mind,

and I tell this to a lot of people,

because I've been doing this for the past couple of months,

be very careful who you let

use the hotspot device.

You can connect up to nine devices at once,

but you have to keep in mind

the other people who may be using the connection

may also be using the data that's already allocated.

So if they're streaming and you're streaming,

they're eating up data that you're using.

These can only be checked out

on fine-free adult library cards.

Kids cards cannot be used for this.

Cards for teens cannot be used for this.

And if anyone has any money on their library card now,

you will be asked to make a payment

and clear the balance completely once we go upstairs.

If you can't do that,

then we cannot check out the device.

Please have your library cards ready,

and we will proceed to the first floor for checkout.

I've only ever read the first one,

which is The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

That's what the movie's based on,

it's based on that book.

But that's just the first one.

And then there's

Th e Marvelous Land of Oz,

Ozma of Oz,

Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz,

- The Road to Oz, - Th e Emerald City of Oz,

The Patchwork Girl.

Like, and then it starts talking

about specific characters. Uh-huh.

Um...

Yeah, The Scarecrow of Oz.

- Yeah, that's a whole series. - Yeah, that's a whole series.

But I can put Glenda on hold for you.

Do you want me to do that?

Yes, please.

Okay.

This is for November 27, 2016.

Okay.

Okay, we keep the survey here.

And you are good to go. Congratulations.

Thank you. Have a good day.

You too, have a good one.

Next in line step down.

Sure.

Okay, yes.

Celebrate good times, come on

Let's have some solos.

Tina.

Go, yes.

Celebrate good times, come on

Little solo.

There's a party goin' on right here

Cheer her on.

Tina.

Celebration

Fabulous.

Go Amina.

Amina.

And your laughter too

We're gonna celebrate your party with you

Go Amina.

Fabulous, go Amina.

Let's close it in a little.

Close it, close.

Let's all celebrate and have a good time

Good.

Go Bodie.

Celebration Fabulous.

Go Bodie.

We're gonna celebrate and have a good time

It's time to come together

It's up to you... Let's have Millie and Liz.

Millie and Liz join.

Millie.

Come in Liz.

You'll find her.

Nice, nice.

I love the movement of Liz's legs.

Did you see that?

Look at Millie's stretched out legs.

Let's go easy.

Let's go.

Margalit.

Come on, take center.

That's right.

Just have to enter in the information

and then try it out and see what happens.

Right here...

Hey, hey. Julius,

if you're holding on to the robots to stop it from moving,

then that means you need to change something

on the computer.

This number?

Click the green "Run" button.

It was... ah!

I'll just click...

Um...

See how this is kind of moving?

See how this is kind of moving?

Can you think of a way

that maybe you could make it more stable?

Five, four, three, two...

Oh, oh, oh!

Oh, oh!

So how many coding blocks did I have?

Five. That's right.

Now, do you have to make yours exactly the same as mine?

You don't.

But just remember that for each action

that you want this robot to do,

you have to add another coding block.

So you keep experimenting

until it works the way that you want it.

Please don't twist

Oh, I told you.

Please don't twist.

Oh, oh!

Anyway, it still didn't go over...

I mean, that's good, though.

That's good.

Yeah. Noah.

Yeah.

You did best.

Yeah, I did something. That's so cool.

Is it perfect?

- Yes. - Okay.

Welcome, everyone, to the celebration

of the 90th anniversary of the Schomburg Center.

It really is wonderful to have you all here this evening.

Thank you.

Thank you to the Schomburg.

Thank you for all the amazing work we all do together

as New Yorkers, as lovers of the library,

as all of us aspire to a world

of continued creativity and inspiration

drawn from the Schomburg and all of the collections

and work of the library.

Leading that effort at the Schomburg

is our amazing director, Khalil Gibran Muhammad.

And there he is.

And he'll tell us more about the important work

being carried out at the Schomburg

and the great history of the Schomburg

as we celebrate the 90th anniversary.

Over to you, Khalil.

Thank you.

I've work with and met some spectacular people

over the past several years.

People who are talented, creative, and passionate

about the Schomburg.

People whose words make the world kinder and gentler.

What I took for granted is the importance

and significance of the public value of what we do.

Of what our curators, archivists, librarians,

educators, and all the staff do,

of what our supporters and donors do.

We do mind building, soul affirming,

We do mind building, soul affirming,

and surely more than we can ever measure

or put in an annual report, lifesaving work.

Toni Morrison once said in this building,

that libraries are the pillars of our democracy.

Maya Angelou sat on the Langston Hughes Stage

of the Schomburg Center

and called them "Rainbows in the clouds."

These are not just inspirational metaphors.

I've seen the lightbulbs turn on

behind the eyes of a ten-year-old junior scholar.

I've listened to the octogenarian volunteer

tell me that, in our building,

being there helps her keep on keeping on.

I've greeted hundreds of academics

in our reading rooms,

and dozens and dozens of campuses across the nation,

who said it is hard to imagine what their careers would be,

but for the rich collections of the Schomburg archives.

There is nothing in the world more powerful

than to watch a history maker look back at her own legacy,

to touch his own past,

as I observed when Congressman John Lewis

held in his brave hands

the second meeting notes of SNCC,

the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,

from October of 1960,

housed in our Ella Baker Archives.

We should all be so fortunate to make some necessary trouble,

as Congressman Lewis always says

of his civil rights past.

And to have that trouble preserved

so that future generations will learn,

and, when necessary, be prepared to do the same.

It isn't an accident

that leaders of the NAACP and the Urban League

appealed to the Carnegie Corporation 90 years ago

to purchase Arturo Schomburg's collection.

Or that civil rights researchers turned to our collections

to argue and build a case for

Br own v. Board of Education.

Their intention and our mission

remain as relevant and true to this day.

And through national partnerships

and digital initiatives,

we'll reach more people than ever before.

How much is the book?

Ten dollars, autographed copy.

I'll sign it for you personally.

Here we go, we're going to go,

Old McDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O

And on that farm he had a wife, E-I-E-I-O.

And on that farm he had a wife, E-I-E-I-O.

With a kiss, kiss here and a kiss, kiss there

Here a kiss, there a kiss, everywhere a kiss, kiss

Old McDonald had a farm E-I-E-I-O

And on that farm he had a dog, E-I-E-I-O

With a woof, woof here and a woof, woof there

Here a woof, there a woof, everywhere a woof, woof

Old McDonald had a farm

On to homeless patrons.

Everyone recognizes the problem seems to be increasing.

Yeah.

Everyone recognizes that the library has a responsibility

to serve all patrons and to be welcoming,

but there is sometimes a tension

between what one kind of patron needs

and what another kind of patron needs.

And so lines have to be drawn about, you know,

how do we accommodate people together

who may not always want to be together

and be respectful of everyone.

And then there was the question

of what is the appropriate role of the library,

not just as welcoming space for everyone,

but, you know, where should we be intervening

in social policy around the homeless... Right.

As versus where should we be relying on the city,

other private agencies

that are expert and engaged in this

as we all face this problem.

We have a policy that talks about

- how users have to comport themselves in the library.

And so it would embrace most of this conduct,

and we may have to revisit that.

I don't know if we want to give more flexibility or less.

So if you don't do certain things,

like if you come in and sleep,

you could literally be asked to leave.

You aren't allowed to just come into the library and sleep.

So the barring policy,

which can lead to your being barred from the library

for periods of time.

So that is also part

of this discussion.

I am not an expert at this topic,

but I've been a New Yorker my whole life,

and one of the things that you notice is, you know,

the way in which we who are not homeless

keep our distance from the homeless.

And in the libraries is a place

where we don't keep our distance.

And I do believe that as much as we need rules,

and as much as we need institutions,

in the end we need a change of culture in this town

that says, you know,

"There may be people who are scary,

"but there're all other people who we should just be helping,

right, as regulars in our neighborhood."

But you... And I don't know how to do that, right?

You know, the mayor's made this commitment

that he's going to deal with the homelessness issue,

and he's put $100 million toward that goal.

Right, yeah, no, I know.

I think that they're developing a plan to be able to do it.

And we house in this room three collections.

The Print Collection, the Photo Collection,

and the Spencer Collection.

The Print Collection,

we have around 300,000 to 250,000 prints.

And in our Photographic Collection,

we have a half a million photographs.

And this present collection that is

about illustrated books, European manuscripts,

we have around 15,000.

We have prints from around the world.

But here, we have almost, the...

I can say the history of the European printmaking.

Everything is started with printmaking around the 1400s.

There are some samples, early samples from the 1300s,

but, um, what I decided to do

is to show you some of the highlights.

The first print is Albert Duürer,

- and it's called - Th e Rhinoceros.

Duürer used to sell these outside

of the Sundays church with his wife.

This is a kind of newspaper

from the time, 1515.

It's telling a story about the king of Portugal

receiving a rhinoceros.

In 1515, a rhinoceros,

the Europeans at that point haven't see a rhinoceros.

Last time they saw was in the Roman Empire.

And that rhinoceros arrived to, uh, to Lisbon,

and after that the King Manuel decided to send this rhinoceros

to the pope.

Real thing.

But when the rhinoceros was going to Rome,

But when the rhinoceros was going to Rome,

the ship never arrived.

There was a very strong storm in the Mediterranean,

and the rhinoceros die, and there was a wreck.

Somebody took a note, a sketch.

Duürer was in Nuremberg,

and he saw this sketch,

and he say, "Oh, that's good idea."

The caption here

is telling the story of what's happened.

People were buying these things,

and what's almost like a today's newspaper.

They were telling each other.

Not everybody was able to read.

Duürer never saw the rhinoceros

apparently,

and that kind of plates, that's not really a rhinoceros,

it looks like,

but that was one of the popular prints

about the story of the rhinoceros.

The next one I'll show you, you know, it's a Rembrandt.

It's after his wife died, Saskia.

Before that time,

he did around 80 self-portraits,

together with painting and prints.

This one is after his...

and you see the print before, he's very joyful, you know,

wearing fancy clothing,

but here he's sitting on the window,

and you see an introspective artist.

Some people think that this print

was one of the steps for,

some historians tell the one of the steps

for a new style in Rembrandt's career.

Come on, big smiles.

61% of the library's expense funding

comes from public sources,

the majority of that from the city.

It's obvious, we want to engage our elected officials,

we want to engage our community,

because we want them to fund us.

And it brings us financial sustainability.

My good friend, Councilmember Andy King,

in the Bronx, he likes to say,

"People pay attention to people who participate."

Now, think about that.

Community boards,

we're going to community boards, telling our story.

PB, we're going to PB meetings,

telling our story, pitching projects.

If we're not participating,

people are not going to pay attention to us.

So civic engagement is important.

Building deeper relationships, what do we do?

We're out there trying to improve the lives

of the people and the communities that we serve.

We're trying to improve their lives.

Now, how could we not engage with them?

How could we not try to build deeper relationships,

whether it's with an individual in the branch

or with a community-based organization?

This is a relationship that we have with our community,

and we need to build those relationships

as deeply as we can.

To me, the biggest practical thing

to help us about understanding community engagement

and really helping you guys understand

is to do away with that feeling of, like,

"Oh my gosh, another thing.

Oh my gosh, another thing."

It's all connected.

Summer reading is community engagement and advocacy.

- Any program you do is community engagement and advocacy.

Anytime you bring in an author or an elected.

Every time you go to a community board,

a participatory budgeting meeting,

literally everything we do, because it's for the community

is community engagement,

and we really have to maximize those opportunities.

So what we're hoping is that

the more we help you understand the big picture

and connect those dots,

it's hard to connect the dots here in NYPL right?

Because you're split up by branch.

You're split up by network.

You're split up by borough.

You're split up by department.

Some of us are out in the Bronx.

Some of us are at 39th Street.

Some of us are never in our offices.

Some of us are always in our offices,

but we're all doing the same work

and so that feeling of,

"Oh, crap, letter writing is starting,

"but my summer reading kickoff is starting

and I have someone out on AL."

Like, that's the reality of your job, right?

But the more that we understand the budget cycle,

the community engagement cycle,

and the more we understand that it's year-round,

the better off we are, and the easier the lift feels.

We did it, we got all this money,

and now we're having to do the work to support it,

but it's gonna start again.

You know?

What does Iris always tell us?

"The budget wasn't baselined,"

and then we all start to pull out our hair

and grumble about the page budget,

and so that's just our work.

We always have to prove that we're relevant.

We always have to go back to the drawing board

and prove that we're relevant every single day,

every single season, but we are winners.

All we do is win.

All those other agencies want to learn from us,

because we did it, right?

We're taking the lead.

We're working with our sister systems

in Brooklyn and Queens,

but we're taking the lead, you guys.

And that is all you.

Susan, there was a little pop

of this light.

It's very subtle, early on.

I heard it back.

I think I can get it,

I can get it in post, yeah.

It was pretty faint.

All right, stand by.

"Presently he came back with the telephone directory,

"holding it like a bible, smiling tenderly.

"And while he was gazing at her long drooping lashes,

"Margot sped through the R's

"and found Albinus's address and his telephone number.

"Then she quietly closed the well-thumbed blue volume.

"'Take off your coat, ' murmured Albinus.

"Without bothering to stand up,

"she began to wriggle out of the sleeves,

"inclining her pretty neck and thrusting forward

"first the right and then the left shoulder.

"As Albinus helped her, he caught a hot whiff of violets

"and saw her shoulder blades move,

"and the sallow skin between them

"ripple and smooth out again.

"Then she took off her hat,

"peered into her pocket mirror

"and, wetting her forefinger,

tapped the black lovelocks on her temples."

- Uh, let's take that pocket mirror. - Uh, let's take that pocket mirror.

Mm-hmm.

"Then she took off her hat,

"peered into her pocket mirror,

"and, wetting her forefinger,

"tapped the black lovelocks on her temples.

"Albinus sat down beside her

"and looked and looked at that face

"in which everything was so charming...

"the burning cheeks,

"the lips glistening from the cherry brandy,

"the childish solemnity, the long hazel eyes,

"and the small, downy mole

"on the soft curve just beneath the left one.

"'If I knew, I should hang for it, ' he thought,

"'I would still look at her.'

"Even that vulgar Berlin slang of hers

"only enhanced the charm of her throaty voice

"and large white teeth.

"When laughing, she half closed her eyes,

"and a dimple danced on her cheek.

"He pawed at her little hand, but she withdrew it briskly.

"'You're driving me crazy, ' he said.

"Margot patted his cuff and said,

"'Now be a good boy.'

"His first thought next morning was:

"it can't go on like this, it just can't.

"I must get her a room.

"Curse that aunt.

"We shall be alone, quite alone.

"A textbook of love for beginners.

"Oh, the things I shall teach her.

"So young, so pure, so maddening.

"'Are you asleep?'

"asked Elisabeth softly.

"He achieved the perfect yawn and opened his eyes.

Elisabeth was seated in a pale blue nightgown."

One, two, three, four, okay.

And these you're going to return also?

Return these. Okay.

Hello.

25 cents.

Hello.

Harney thinks that

if in America the conflict between capital and labor

is not resolved through a social revolution,

that what you will end up with in the United States

is essentially the same class-conflict-ridden

European situation,

and, like, we've seen,

the Americans still think by the 1840s

that there is such a possibility

as an alternative future for American capitalism.

That capital and labor don't have to be at odds.

That the variable of land

shows this third way out of this conflict,

and yet, here is Harney saying, "No, listen."

"Already this is a problem

in the United States."

That famous quote that Marx has is

that labor cannot be free

where it's branded in black skin.

This is specifically in the United States.

The key here is that Marx is saying,

if capitalists have the availability

of both slave labor and free labor,

free labor can always be undermined,

and, in fact, it was.

Because Northerners already were catching up

to the fact that, you know,

"There's some black unskilled laborers here in the North,

"and whenever these workers

"start striking or demanding things,

we can just introduce these unskilled people."

It's just the same principle.

So Marx is writing, saying,

look, this is a problem that must be rid of

if you even want to have a development

of the political workingman politics in America.

But, secondly, and this is the deeper argument,

which I think is quite important today...

There is a very, very, virulent critique

of bourgeois society by Southern ideologues

that would have been getting quite a hearing in the 1840s.

We know because people like Eric Foner have written about

how Abraham Lincoln read this stuff pretty regularly

in the Richmond Inquirer and all of these other publications,

the Southern ideologues would write to.

George Fitzhugh, I think I mentioned him last time.

He's this well-known first American sociologist.

He's a Southern ideologue.

He believes that slave society

is better than a free laboring society.

- Why? He's got an argument. - Why? He's got an argument.

It's coherent, and there's a logic.

Here it is.

Throughout human history,

we've always had people who were unfree,

in order for some to have the liberty

to think and to act and to engage in politics.

Throughout time this has been the case.

Why all of a sudden

does bourgeois society promise something it cannot accomplish,

which is the idea that all can participate

in political activity?

This is the lie that modern society has.

That's the problem.

It's not that there's this class conflict,

and that you have these people who are demanding things... no.

You've already lied to them.

The problem is that what you want isn't possible.

The idea of a free society is a failure.

That's a quote.

He writes this book called

Slaves Without Masters,

that essentially...

Slaves Without Masters is the idea

of the Northern workingmen for Fitzhugh.

He says, "Look what happens when slaves have no masters.

"No one takes care of them.

"No one feeds them.

"No one clothes them.

"We in Southern society have figured out the remedy

to the conflict of capital and labor."

And, again, it's articulated in this way.

John C. Calhoun, also a Southern ideologue,

same way of thinking about it.

The problem of capital and labor in America

is mitigated not by land, they say,

but by slavery.

Richard Hofstadter, one of the famous American historians,

writes a short essay in his very famous book,

- The American - Political Tradition,

That compares Fitzhugh.

He puts "Fitzhugh, the marks of the planter class."

And what he means by that is that you have here

a critique of modern bourgeois society.

You have a critique of labor.

You have a critique of this supposedly free society,

but you have a critique from the right.

One, that as Marx says, "The working people knew,"

this is in his address, and I'm just going to quote it,

because I know it off the top of my head.

This is in the address that Marx writes to Lincoln.

This is the...

on behalf of the International Workingmen's Association,

Marx writes a letter to Lincoln.

And he says, "The workingmen knew,

"the workingmen knew that when slavery was proposed

"as the solution to capital and labor,

"they knew that all of their hard-earned historical gains

were in jeopardy."

So, why Marx was supportive of the Republicans,

because Marx knew

that the attack of bourgeois society from the right

that the attack of bourgeois society from the right

was also an attack on any possibility

of a workers' revolution.

Because the workers' revolution, insofar as Marx was concerned,

was a legacy from the revolutions of 1848.

It was a task.

It was something that was received.

So in this sense, what we have

is many different responses, essentially,

to the crisis of the 19th century, right?

If one end is Karl Marx

and the other end is Fitzhugh,

in the middle, and closer to Marx, certainly,

than Fitzhugh

is Lincoln.

Lincoln says,

"The free society is not and will not be a failure."

That Lincoln and Marx agree on.

The definition of that free society, they disagree on.

Those two groups of people,

the liberals and the more radical, socialist types,

have so much more in common than slave planters

who are arguing that bourgeois society is a lie.

It's been good for him.

I mean, I don't get the...

Let's hear it, New York!

Genet took these very marginalized people,

and pimps and thieves and murderers

and elevated them

within his pantheon as saints.

The Thief's Journal is my favorite book of Genet,

The Thief's Journal is my favorite book of Genet,

but why I love

Th e Thief's Journal

isn't necessarily because of those things.

Yeah.

I love it because he takes,

he writes my kind of memoir.

It's a memoir, yet it's completely true

and simultaneously completely false.

Because that's the kind of guy Genet was.

But when I say false,

I mean, that's the part that he transforms truth into art.

He elevates it as poetry.

And in this way it's close to what Anselm Kiefer says.

Yes, and I think that, you know,

I don't even like reading memoirs.

People say, "What's your favorite memoirist?

Whose memoirs do you like?"

I hardly ever read them.

I like fiction, really.

Really strange that I should be writing nonfiction,

but it just happened.

But, um... but that's the kind of,

I was thinking of it and writing this.

I didn't want to just sit and write an autobiography.

I wanted to, you know... And you don't.

Just write about real time,

which I am living, and the things that are,

they're the truth of my real time.

But what is the truth of our real time?

It contains dreams.

It contains, you know, spinning off.

It contains, uh, uh, misinterpretation.

It contains memory.

So I was very interested in finding a way

to braid all of these things together.

I'm Gerry Oliva, Director of Facilities.

In the spirit of getting things done,

Iris actually has been generous the last two years,

to set up a fund called Fix It Now,

which sets aside a pot of money for us to take care of items

that are non-capitally eligible.

So these can range anything from, you know,

doing a paint job, replacing doors,

whatever we need to do in the branches

to keep things functional so that they look good.

In FY15, we actually completed 25 projects

totaling almost a million dollars.

In fiscal year '16, working with Sites and Services,

we've identified over 260 projects that need to be done.

70 of those

are priority one projects.

- We completed seven projects to date - We completed seven projects to date

And spent a little bit over $249,000.

The projects currently are,

at Inwood, we did new flooring;

Cathedral, we did a complete refresh;

Battery Park City,

we did a glass-enclosed multipurpose room;

Hamilton Grange, a new boiler;

Pelham Bay, new flooring and paint;

St. George, new computer table;

and we have 11 additional projects in place.

We'll continue to work with Sites and Services

to reprioritize projects as necessary

and to add projects to the list.

And as long as

we have the funding,

we'll spend it and get it done.

How can we help circulation?

Where can we add to it?

Where would we find an enhancement?

Um, and Melissa rightfully pointed out

that in the ebook category,

the waits are enormous to get our ebooks,

particularly the popular novels.

Um, and so...

More so than in-print books?

More, yes, yes.

The backlog is, she said,

I think almost like four or five months to get.

Yes, it's terrible.

It's terrible.

If one of the ways you want to spend these funds,

which has to be in accord

both what we need to do... And...

and what the city wants us to do with the city's money,

um, I'd like to see the analysis

of ebook borrowing, physical borrowing,

and whether more money in...

you know, what the bang for the buck is,

and more money into either of those.

Ebooks are growing

at about 300% of circulation,

and we know that circ in our libraries,

physical circ is not growing at 300%.

And that the waits,

the wait time because of the licensing terms

is much longer for ebooks than physical...

We... I mean, we can definitely show you the data,

but it's very concrete that that's the issue.

And because we're going out with SimplyE

in, I think, early November now,

adding in more collections into ebooks

will drive numbers up hugely, we believe.

Well, we'll meet demand, usually,

because you can flick a switch.

And the analysis we did on educators and grade levels,

we actually believe that we can be very specific

about what we target

in terms of which ebooks we go after.

So we're not just going to buy, you know,

whatever is on the street.

We're actually, we're actually very carefully looking

at where we can make it...

So the big decision there, so I'm mindful of this,

because the conversations I've started to have...

Yes, this is huge. Licensing deals we made,

which were great and historic four years ago

favored the thick end of distribution, right?

So we got permission for the first time

to buy licenses for books,

but they have to be borrowed enough

to justify paying for a full license,

whether it's 52 lends, two years, perpetual,

whatever, different terms, different deals.

- And that's why it's gone up 300% - And that's why it's gone up 300%

And why the other libraries in the country have benefited,

which is great.

Now I'm going back to the publishers and saying,

"Let's get to the rest of the tail, right?"

Let's get free previews.

Let's get metered rate, so that it's...

so that we can offer in effect, a universal e-catalog.

The question will still be, though,

if you imagine a future in which we...

everything is potentially borrowable, electronically,

for those who want to,

we'll still have to decide

whether we want to put money into metered rates

for, you know, a book that doesn't circulate hugely

or more for the best sellers,

and partly that's demand,

and it's partly what's the right thing for us to do?

Right?

So we'll still have to decide.

So that e-content, licensing purchase content strategy,

that's what Mike has been talking

to Melissa and Christopher about...

to help you work through those negotiations.

So I guess, I understand the temptation of electronic,

because if things go as we hope they are,

our... the opportunity there is about to expand,

if the deals that we're trying to negotiate work.

And demand is clearly expanded more than supply,

though I would like to see those numbers.

But let's go back and say, you know,

we also are concerned that we hadn't been able...

Because of budget cuts from the city and more generally...

We hadn't been able to do as much increase

of physical book purchasing

for circulating and for the research library,

and so how does one decide

between "e-" and then physical circulating

and physical research collections?

We looked at what's circulating and what's not circulating

in terms of physical books,

and we have some analysis of that.

We decided to take the money this year

and really focus on early childhood.

So we've set up

specific early childhood family literacy centers.

Those, there are special collections being built.

This is physical, now.

Yes.

Physical collections that align

with the early literacy program

that we're putting in those 20 sites.

Plus, looking at the other 60 sites

that won't have the whole family literacy centers

put in there,

and really look at whether we have the materials.

We're also testing...

This is part of the service innovation community work

that we're doing... We're also testing

building up nonfiction children's collections

that don't float,

so that we can actually bring...

and partnering with the teachers

to make sure we have the right materials in those centers.

So rather than sort of go whole hog

and decide "Let's change the whole thing,"

we're dipping our toes in

to making sure that those are the areas.

Certainly for the more popular fiction for adults,

I think we understand that very well.

But this is where we're really trying to focus,

is in the family literacy,

and with the schools,

and then figuring out for nonfiction materials,

what should float or not float

- and we are building those collections out.

So we are addressing out to that physical issue.

What about the physical research collection budget

that we were concerned about? Yes.

Not the famous special collection acquisitions,

but everything else, right? Right, but the...

I think the questions, are we buying the right things,

because it's an old collection development policy.

It's, like, from 2008,

and as I said, I really want the Mellon director

to get hand-deep into that.

So depending on where we are with that, you know,

we can dig deep into that

to make sure we're really spending money

on things that have research value

and are used.

And I'm not convinced

that that's totally the case right now.

I need to look at that a little bit.

You know and I know that, at a market rate,

we still have to put more money into the research collections,

but we also want to look at that

in terms of the... our properties

and to see whether the boundary of 50-50

is a real boundary or just an agreed-to boundary,

and maybe there's something we can do better.

I just think it's easier

to raise money for research collections

than it is to raise money for city collections.

Let's make sure we're putting it in the right place.

We're just talking about one piece

of the possible allocation of these funds,

which is collections,

electronic, circulating, research,

physical and electronic.

And, you know, the great dilemma

given constrained or not infinite resources,

which, sadly, is our fate,

is you could spend every dollar on the best sellers,

and they would fly out the door,

but then we would have no money for the things that...

We recommend.

We recommend, or that, you know,

we need to have in our collection

for the off chance that ten years from now,

somebody's really going to need it,

and there's no place else to find it.

We have... Yeah.

And, in fact, on the best sellers,

those, the non-library circulatory system

of the best sellers seems to work pretty well, right?

Yeah, yeah. It's not totally socially

just for those who can't afford the latest best seller,

but it's not like they're not circulating.

Whereas, I do think

we have a social commitment to the backlist

that isn't circulating, right? Yeah, yep.

Tomorrow morning before we open,

we have to put them back downstairs

wherever they were.

Guys, all, you also have a chair,

she's going to show you, let's go to the other end.

Let's do that whole table down there, everybody.

What's happening?

Here we go.

Oh, my gosh.

Now, who left their jackets here?

Whose white jackets were these?

They were moved here.

They were moved here.

So please make sure you're taking yours,

not leaving someone's dirty jacket...

One of those looks like...

We all see how it's done guys.

This is kind of pointless to me.

This is here, that's the other one,

two, three, four.

Okay, got it.

Double check if everybody has a sponsor card

and a program, please.

Like that, let's do that, all right?

So let's do this table first.

Make it really symmetrical.

Do this table,

work your way there to the other box,

set them back.

Guys... beautiful.

I'm very proud of this end, all right, all right.

You did a very good job.

And Anthony Appiah has volunteered

to tell us about a few items

in this instance from the Schomburg Collection,

a selection of works by Phillis Wheatley.

Phillis Wheatley became

the first African-American woman poet

to be published in this country in 1770.

But she was born in West Africa

and sold into slavery when she was seven

and brought here and purchased

by the Wheatley family of Boston,

who taught her to read and write

and seemed to have encouraged her poetry.

She arrived in Boston on the 11th of July 1761

aboard the Phillis,

the ship from which she derived her first name,

which was recently returned

from Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.

When the Wheatleys died,

Phillis married a free man of color named John Peters,

who was a grocer.

The rest of her life was not so happy.

Two of their children died in infancy.

Peters was imprisoned for debt

in 1784 and then Wheatley fell into poverty

and died and was quickly followed in death

by her only surviving infant son.

So her poems are her only legacy.

Schomburg has Arthur Schomburg's own copy of an elegiac poem

on the Reverend and Learned Mr. George Whitefield

which was the first poem Wheatley published.

Whitefield was an evangelist in the U.S.

and the personal chaplain of Selina Hastings,

the Countess of Huntingdon,

who was one of the leading figures in British Methodism.

Wheatley's Whitefield elegy brought her into national fame,

and it was published in London as well as in Boston.

And her reputation was reinforced

by the publication of her poem, "Recollection,"

which first appeared in March 1772

in the London magazine or gentleman's monthly,

Intelligencer,

which was then more widely published

in American and British periodicals.

So what we have here on display

are materials all collected by Arthur Schomburg himself.

As I say, his copy of the first poem Wheatley published,

his first edition of the poems,

signed by Phillis Wheatley herself.

His London magazine with the poem "Recollection,"

and a copy

of Memoirs and Poems of Phillis Wheatley,

published in Boston in 1834, signed by Schomburg.

- That book, which was published the year Wheatley died

By Margaretta Matilda Odell, was the, is the basis

of much of what we know

about Phillis Wheatley's life.

In a famous poem about her enslavement, Wheatley wrote,

"'Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land,

"taught my benighted soul to understand that there's a God,

"and there's a Savior too,

once I redemption neither sought nor knew."

So we can see why Thomas Jefferson

in the Notes on the State of Virginia,

might have written that,

"Religion indeed has produced a Phillis Wheatley,

but it could not produce a poet."

But this was not the only judgment of her

made by one of the founders.

In 1776 Wheatley wrote a letter and a poem

in support of Washington, George Washington,

and he replied with a gracious invitation

to visit him in Cambridge,

stating he would be,

"Happy to see a person so favored by the Muses."

I'm very grateful to Steven Fullwood,

assistant curator of Manuscripts, Archives,

and Rare Books at the Schomburg,

both for finding this material and for telling me about it.

Unless there is other business before the board,

we are adjourned, thank you.

Well, here we are again.

Thank you for coming.

Eyes open.

Smile, smile, yes.

Yes, that's, I always forget the smile part.

There, so you can all see it.

Okay.

Eyes wide open, smiles.

So maybe just talk about the state of play.

So you've talked about it historically.

You've talked about reparations,

but this book clearly is original

in one significant formulation among many,

- but one being that - but one being that

You wrestle with the issue of violence

within the black community

in ways that typically are positioned as an either-or.

That's... that's... Either these are explorations

that are about the terrible things

that black people do to themselves...

Right.

Or they're about the terrible things

that whites do to black people.

Yeah.

But here, and probably surprising to many,

you found a way to web... wed those two things together.

And that seems to me to be an explicit response

to the conversation we've been having

about Michael Brown, for example. Right.

Right, well, as you said, it's very much a response

to an ocean of "black on black crime"

or black people not caring about black on black crime.

And I think people who regrettably, you know,

people who I agree with quite a bit,

play into this sometimes

because they are afraid of talking about

"neighbor on neighbor," as someone, you know,

helpfully phrased it for me.

Neighbor on neighbor crime that happens

in African American communities,

and we say neighbor on neighbor crime

because the vast majority of crime

that happens in any community

is done by other community members.

That was always true.

That did not become true in 1965.

That has always been true in black communities

and in other people's communities.

It's just true.

People don't tend to, you know,

take the subway to the other side of town,

you know, to commit a crime,

they tend to rob people who are right around them.

And in that sense, the black community

is just another human community.

And the fact that the black community

suffers more crime

is part of the oppression,

not separate from the oppression.

Mm-hmm.

It's not something that, you know, mutate over...

it is part of what happens

when you have a group of people who,

over a course of generations,

have been isolated, segregated, plundered,

have had things taken from them.

The expectation that the amount of crime

that happens in their neighborhoods

will somehow be the same

as what happens in other neighborhoods,

it's absurd. Right.

It's just absurd, you know.

I don't find it hard to explain,

nor am I afraid of any sort of conversation

about the kind of neighbor on neighbor violence

that happens in African American communities.

What the hell do you expect to happen?

Right. It just makes sense.

You know, I'm black, I'm African American,

there is so much about being African American

and African American politics that I don't understand,

primarily because in my household

Malcolm X was Jesus.

You know, and so, your orientation is...

I mean, and that's like,

again, that's at the root of this book.

You know, like the stress on the body.

You know, Malcolm's belief, his anger, his rage,

you know, at seeing, you know,

black people beat in the street

and dogs sicced on black people,

said to me, "The black body, your body, is precious."

Your life is as precious as anyone,

and you should not give up your life

and you should not give up your body for rights that are

already written in the Constitution.

I'm making my way very slowly

right now through this Barbara Tuchman book

called A Distant Mirror,

- it's a history of the 14th century. - It's a history of the 14th century.

And she has this chapter

on serfs, and she goes through the literature

of how people talk about serfs,

and it's no different than

how people talk about black people,

except the substitution for the science that, you know,

we use for black people,

I meant black people being scientifically,

you know, genetically inferior, is replaced by God.

That's really, really the only difference,

so when you get to that, you say,

"Well, damn, this is something about the human condition."

Like... and I guess in many ways like,

that's the power of the African American experience,

when you begin to understand,

there's actually a statement about

the human condition.

As we're seeing the fruits of our labor

with all the increased staff

and increased hours

and increased educational opportunities

that were created.

And we had a great campaign,

Invest in Libraries, right?

I mean, we need to sort of

tee this up for next year.

Um, we have to have a new story, a new priority.

It can't just be that we want

to baseline the money that we got last year.

I mean, is it seven-day service

across the entire system?

Um, is it, you know, more capital money?

We have to sort of formulate that here,

and before we know it,

the budget cycle is going to be upon us.

I'm sure that they're going to have their first hearing

starting at the end of November

for the next fiscal year.

So this is sort of an important moment

to sort of figure out,

and you're the ones

to sort of help us craft this message.

To sort of help us craft this message.

So I think that we need to sort of

start having a discussion about this and, you know,

we need to know how much

can we absorb here, you know?

It was a phenomenal year and, you know,

between Louise and Christopher, you know,

hiring these people, getting them, you know,

assimilated into the library,

that's a huge number of people

to get into the library system.

Um, so, we need to sort of figure out what the message is.

And, you know, it's gonna...

it's the third year of this administration.

We sort of have to have the right message.

I believe, George, that we're beginning

to get into their psyche a little bit more.

So, you know, this is the moment

to start thinking about that.

We had asked for $65 million,

and the $65 million would have

brought us back to fiscal '08.

So we didn't get everything that we asked for.

But by the same token,

through the eyes of our friends in government,

they may feel that the problem

as far as library funding is concerned is solved.

So that's one of the big dilemmas

that we have to deal with at this point.

We also know that we had

over $1 billion in capital needs

that we were asking for.

We only received $300 million.

But the real remarkable thing that happened last year,

is for the first time ever as far as we can remember,

is that they actually entered into a dialogue with us

at a point in the process where

they had never done that in the past.

So to them, again, on the capital side,

they may feel that problem is solved.

So, we have to get past that.

We have to articulate a message this year again.

And, in addition to the message around funding,

we have to continue applying pressure

on the community side.

I mean, that's... that's a reality

and that worked last year, so we have to continue

applying pressure in that way,

continue to build relationships,

not just with our elected officials,

but with the groups and the individuals

and the users and supporters

and all the folks out there that really do love libraries

and to have them tell our story for us.

We have a core group

of library managers

who really were phenomenal last year

and are gonna be great this year.

And, you know, we need to sort of figure out,

also, what their roles are going to be.

You know, not everybody is great at this,

but people can have buddies and partners

who can teach them how to do this.

For me, the key questions that we need

to get our head around is sort of

"What is it, what's next that we want to do,

or need to do, or need to fund to do?"

And what do we think is a political message

that our colleagues in city hall

and city council will embrace?

I mean, I think one of the lessons

we learned last year is surprise, surprise,

politicians like simple messages, right?

So, six-day service, all right?

And, you know, the way to win here

is to think about the match between

- what it is we are delivering and want to deliver,

And what is a message that is easily projected from them,

so that they can rally the citizenry

in support of what they're trying to do as well.

And this only works if we think strategically

for and with the political leaders

and match that with the substance

of what we think we need to deliver

and need to find the funding for,

and that's the intersect that we're looking for.

Macomb's Bridge, as you may not know,

is the jewel of the New York Public Library.

And we do have

programs such as this for the community,

for us to come and talk and have a conversation.

And it is about moving forward.

It's not just about talking about,

we can't preach to the choir, you know.

Mm-hmm. Right.

We already know.

But it is about moving forward,

and sometimes you have to take little steps

to move forward.

So you have come to talk,

and there are five young men outside,

and I say to them,

"Hey guys, come on in

and listen to Brother Muhammad talk ."

Because even if they're in here on the computer,

that's good enough for me.

Yeah. Because they're listening,

and that's what the beauty of Macomb's Bridge is,

that we're small, right?

They chose not to, and that's fine.

Latron did.

Yeah, Latron is over there.

But they... but there is this peer kind of thing

and we've all been children

and there's that peer kind of a thing

and they chose to stay outside and take pictures while,

you know, doing whatever it is that they do.

This is a first step.

We also have our writers group,

which is a group of adults who come together

and talk about things in the community,

but not only that, talk about things,

what's going on in the library.

You know, the free access

that we have in the library

in your own community.

And you can't force people to come in

and take information that's available to them,

you can only let them know it's there.

From what I see,

I'm teaching in the school system.

I grew up single.

My mom was young, single.

I knew my father, but he didn't live with me.

My husband, same thing.

We grew up without our fathers in our home.

We grew up, there were "uncles" there, quote unquote,

but no fathers were there.

So, we tried to change that with our son, you know,

and made sure that we were there

and it does make a difference.

Not only us being in the household,

Not only us being in the household,

but us being there,

because you can still be a family,

but if you're working 12 hours

and your husband is working 12 hours,

your child is still being raised by the street,

or pray to God that someone in the school

is caring enough for them

to let them stay a little longer.

I see now, after school programs start early.

Some students are out there 6:00 in the morning,

waiting for the school to open

because their parents have to go to work

to pay these bills

or to do whatever they need to do

and then they go home 8:00, 8:30.

That's from 6:00 in the morning

to 8:30 at night.

There is no family,

no kind of connection.

Okay,

I told a lot of people, you have to...

don't depend on anyone.

Do it yourself, just believe in yourself

and keep working at it.

I couldn't afford to go to film school.

I learned from the library.

I learned how to type.

I learned how to read a script.

I learned how to do all that from the library.

People say, "Why didn't you go to school?"

I was taking care of my kids,

I couldn't afford it, couldn't find no job.

So, I learned from the library.

But we have to stick together

and we have to form a group where we can say,

"We just ain't going to take it no more,"

and just do and look out for each other.

We cut each other's throat a lot.

Because once somebody get it, think as, or Nas was saying,

you know, once you start getting that money,

everybody want to go spend money downtown, they...

nobody want to bring money back into the community.

And then when we try to

bring back money in the community,

we're always trying to get...

cut each other's throat.

If we come together,

it seems like the only time we come together

is when something crazy happens with us, you know?

As soon as it's over, it died out

and everything's back the same.

Can I say something

about what he just said?

My grandmother had a store, and I'll tell you

how she lost her store.

Like almost every other

black store owner.

When you have a store, you have to buy products.

You have to buy straws,

you have to buy brown paper bags,

you have to buy canned peas.

So, what happens is you have to go to your distributor,

the people who are distributing these items,

and most of the time, most...

Like 99% of the time, they're white.

So what basically happened with my grandmother is

that they kept going up on her prices

of her straws, of her paper bags,

of her canned peas, of her this and that.

So, every time they went up, she had to go up.

But those same distributors

weren't going up on their prices in other communities.

Right. They stayed the same.

So, basically,

that's how they basically get it, get you out,

and it goes from one thing to another,

from farms to our meat markets.

We have no farms.

As a matter of fact,

the government was sued by black farmers

over 20 years ago, and they have yet, to this day,

got their money for their farms.

So, I mean, it's terrible.

- Yeah, and if you notice the neighborhood - Yeah, and if you notice the neighborhood

And who owns the stores

and what we particularly eat is outrageous prices.

Like, my mother used Hellmann's mayonnaise.

You go to the store now,

Hellmann's mayonnaise is like $6.99

when it should be $3.99.

And the same goes for chicken wings.

It's more than steak now.

You know, it's because we eat this

and we're going to buy it, you know, so...

So it's a lot of that going on,

but it's almost every single aspect

of our lives are hit some kind of way.

We talk about these things that we need

for our children in the communities,

but we don't have 'em in the communities for them.

We don't have this... these tapes

that show and tell their true history.

The only thing we have available for them

are textbooks that tell them untruths.

Like McGraw Hill,

they're still printing untruths about our lives.

Would you tell everyone

about what happened with McGraw Hill,

because it's an interesting example.

Okay, McGraw Hill, we spend millions, billions of dollars

across our country, giving them the right

to write textbooks that we use

to educate our children on a daily basis.

So they wrote a textbook, and in it, it mentioned,

it was a section about slavery

and it said something to the effect,

I don't want to quote,

but the slaves came to America as workers

to lighten the load, but the thing that...

The significant point is when it... they were contacted,

they said that they did it

and they will only change the writing

if someone calls them and asks.

So if you haven't heard about it,

your schools haven't heard about it,

the books won't be changed.

So this is information

that we are allowing our children to hear

because the Department of Ed,

they have a big contract with McGraw Hill.

Yeah, so... So what do we do about that?

So McGraw Hill, in a geography book,

as you just described, describes, on a section,

immigration, and it's looking at

how this diverse, very diverse country,

a nation, that we often say, of immigrants,

where did its people come from?

And it's pitched to a ninth grade audience

of social studies students learning geography,

and in the section that looks at

the southeast corner of the United States

it's purple, meant to denote African Americans.

And there's a little bubble that jumps out and says,

between the 1500s and 1800s, immigrants from Africa

came to work in the southeast part of the country.

- I'm paraphrasing. - I'm paraphrasing.

Literally referred to immigrants...

black people as immigrant workers.

Workers, yeah.

Now, that was egregious enough,

but the irony, that in the passage

referencing indentured servants

to explain how people of lower economic status

from England and Australia arrived here,

said that indentured servants came and often had to work,

had to do difficult work for little or no pay.

So in reference to the quality of their experience

and their recompense for their contribution,

there's actually a qualitative judgment

about what happened to indentured servants

and nothing with reference to people of African descent.

And it is hard to justify this.

There's a page of advisors.

There's an editorial board, and unfortunately

Texas is where this textbook was being used,

which is the largest textbook market in the country

and this happens, you know, in 2015.

The one thing I'll say,

and this is a very exceptional thing to say,

but it is true.

This community happens to be very different than many others.

You do have the Schomburg Center.

Yes.

So, you do have a place

where you can spend the rest of your life

and sending your children there for the rest of their lives

to learn the truth, and the truth is complicated,

but you certainly can draw upon the collective wisdom

of people who have thought deeply

and paid very close attention to the historical record

to correct the mythologies and lies

about people of African descent in this country.

So we know that,

you know, the average woman makes 77 cents on the dollar

that the average man makes.

The black woman makes 62 cents on the dollar

for every dollar that a white man makes

and even less than her white counterpart.

So are you supposed to walk into the marketplace

and say "Yeah, pay me less than everybody else?"

Or are you supposed to say, "I want to be part

"of making sure that the women who come behind me

are paid equally for their contribution to our economy"?

So that's troubling.

And I'm not sure where that came from

other than this notion that there's a price to be paid

for standing up for justice and inequality.

And that's certainly true.

But if we don't teach our kids at an earlier date

something different about privileging values

in how we govern ourselves in the world

and how we think about people

and how we relate to one another,

then I'm afraid we will be reproducing

the same outcomes as we move forward.

But I fell in love with this man

who wanted to understand the world

and he's an extraordinary person

who leads me towards porcelain.

Tschirnhaus thinks that it's possible

to analyze the products of the arts

in a philosophical manner

that boats and bridges and buildings

should be considered as the arts of invention.

- These objects can train - These objects can train

What he calls the active imagination.

Because they exhibit

all the possibilities of imagination.

In fact, I realize,

he takes on the world as possibility.

As you walk down the street

there's nothing in the material world

that you encounter that cannot be brought

into this space of reflection,

and at each point of this reflection

as you pause and look with dedication,

at this lamppost, this gateway,

you recreate the manner of its creation.

You move through the series of actions

that caused it to come into being.

And above all, he's interested, he writes,

in how to obtain what should be observed

in the first mode of the formation of things.

How something comes into being is critical.

It's a kind of poiesis.

And when I read this, my heart swells.

This is my rubric,

of my journey to my white hills,

this tracing of the first formation

of porcelain from white earth into something else.

Tschirnhaus is describing with a passionate lucidity

the value of looking and thinking

about how an object

as an idea comes into being.

Primo Levi,

my hero, wrote in The Wrench

of the advantage of being able to test yourself,

not depending on others in the test,

reflecting yourself in your work,

on the pleasure of seeing your creature grow,

beam after beam, bolt after bolt.

Necessary, symmetrical, suited to purpose,

by which Primo Levi, a chemist

who spent his working life analyzing paint

as well as being a writer,

means that method is interesting.

Be very, very careful when you describe

how something is made, how it comes into shape,

as process is not to be skated over.

The manner of what we make

defines us.

Music and your work.

Music occupies your life...

Yes... and you work to it.

And it was this wonderful piece

that I read where you talk about

the various musical moments that mattered to you

from Keith Jarret to Purcell

to the piece we're going to listen to if we could.