Jesus let me look into this as a portfolio of data that ive i purchased from florida tells couples hold and a lot of the members have been manipulated into the problems. And he but his attitude was not a shock, but kind of like this is part of the course in the business. Youre just purchasing data and you never know what youre purchasing. And its this kind of chilling end to the whole thing because of course youre not just purchasing data, youre purchasing the rights to collect on people in a profoundly affect their lives and somehow or another whoever stole it from aaron must have stolen it from someone else as well and to this day, but that is just floating around in cyberspace and someone else will buy it and try to collect on it. And somehow that more than anything else just kind of seemed to speak to the chaos and the dysfunctionality of this industry. Host you actually give one message to consumers and regulators to fix this; what is the take away . Guest you have to be skeptical who is calling you on the phone can and cant assume blindly that they have a legitimate claim or that the amount that they are asking for is accurate and you have to do your homework and make sure that theres a legal obligation to pay the debts and the equivalent of fighting defensively, which your financial reaction to the calls. On the larger level theres a few things that need to happen. One is there needs to be better enforcement and resources in places like the Consumer Financial protection bureau. There were two things have to be careful about what they pass along and make sure the information is correct and that the information is where its supposed to be. And number three, i think there needs to be a change in the way the court system works because the 90 noshow rate is creating all kinds of problems. So theres a fair amount that needs to be done. Host i want to thank you for coming today for writing this book and for bringing this information what happens to the people of all sides and what they can do and what should be done at a higher level of a regulatory basis. I congratulate you for writing it. I loved reading it. I read this in a very quick setting. I couldnt really stop reading it. So thank you for being here and writing the book and best of luck with it. Guest thank you very much. That was after words, booktv Signature Program in which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists, public policymakers and others familiar with their material. Afterwards airs every weekend on booktv at 10 p. M. On saturday, 12 and 9 p. M. On sunday into 12 a. M. On monday. You can also watch online. Go to booktv. Org and click on after words and the book in the tv series and topics list on the upper right side of the page on a recent trip to new york city, booktv visited the New York Public Library where we spoke with the president and ceo anthony marx about the history of the institution as well as its Current Operations and futures. Host would start with some numbers. How big is the Public Library and how many employees, etc. . Guest it combines the largest circulating bridge system bridge system in america, 88 inches in every neighborhood as well as for Important Research libraries this one being the crown jewel at the center of the system but also the Schaumburg Center in harlem and library for performing arts in the business library. Theres about 2100 employees and we have a budget of 280 million operating about half comes from the city of new york largely to pay for the circulating Library System in new york. The other half comes from the billiondollar endowment over the private foundation. We raised between 80 and 100 million a year. Theres also in the vicinity 40 or 50 million this year of Capital Improvements and again mostly coming from the city but can also come from private sources. Its an amazing system. Almost unique in the world combining a Great ResearchLibrary System like the library of congress and the Public Library neighborhood system. In washington, d. C. The library of congress and the washington Public Library has nothing to do with each other organizationally. Here we are all within the New York Public Library system and we have close to 18 or 19 million physical visits a year. Its one of the great treasures of new york and of the world. People come from all over the world. Host when you see items is that the books tax guest books is probably more in the vicinity of 20 million. And then its archives, prints, maps, manuscripts. This building for instance, and this is true of the Research Libraries, so schaumburg book of and we have the archives, the manuscripts and great authors both within, Charles Dickens and just recently added tom wolfe. You can walk into this building and go into one of those special collections and showed no documentation, no fancy jobs come ask to see anything and we will make it available to you rather quickly. Host anybody can see that. How many of those 20 million books are available to check out and take home . Guest co. The majority in the vicinity of 14 million bucks circulate. The visit in six or 7 million bucks that have acquired the Research Collection and added all this other material. We have one of the worlds great map collections, we have the genealogy collection. It doesnt stop and weve been collecting for over a hundred years. Host what does the Public Library system meet to an average new yorker . Guest Something Like a third of new yorkers depend on the library to be able to read because they cant or dont afford books. Something like a third of new yorkers depend on the New York Public Library for having computer access because they dont have broadband. You cant even apply for a job in age. Especially in the poor neighborhoods who absolutely depend on us to read and go online or to have a quiet place to sit and read and think and write and create. So thats very powerful stuff and its also true in the better off neighborhoods in new york that every seat is filled. The New York Public Library has never seemed more. More books circulating, more computer use. Every neighborhood wants one and we had more use than ever. Its a the way that its experienced most new yorkers. They come into the branches after school every day. After School Programs we aim to become the largest Afterschool Program possibly in the nation because we have the kids coming in and Everybody Needs more help on education for all of that is part of the experience of the library where people dont know this with the leading free provider in the english language instruction new york is have immigrants he teaches citizenship. We are the leading free provider in new york and the basic computer skills training. We will be at 150,000 people enjoying those programs and we are also now starting to cheat tv critique so the kids in the south bronx and harlem want to get jobs in the Information Technology industry to come to the library with a leading nonuniversity partner with the Online EducationUniversity Program to have sessions that will find instructors for them so that they are not trying to learn only online but doing the same thing in the academy. So, Educational Programs, quiet places, opportunities to read, to take out books and to use computers. And if and that his trust in the circulated letter a. Which is the majority of where our people are coming in and then theres the Research Libraries where people come from all over the world who are writing books and doing research to our archives and material but also our incredible spaces. If you go to the reading room is one of the most beautiful spaces in new york and we will find that every seat is built. Host why do you think . Guest i think after the economy had its difficulty in 2008, more people had to come into the branches because they couldnt afford an extra room or quiet at home or air conditioning or computers or books. As so this partly an economic driver. It is increasingly possible to do more of the work of the mind alone in front of the screen the more people want to come in and be with each other. We are human beings. We dont want to just sit in a cave by ourselves. We want to be inspired by beautiful spaces and seeing other people who are working and actually if we do our job right we want you to find the other people in the room working on the same thing you may not even know its there. Its a powerful part of human nature and the library is the centerpiece of the ideas and information in any city or town and certainly this one which happens to be the capital of the information age. Host do you serve all of new york city . Guest so, this system is three euros. I didnt even notice when i took the job. So, this is manhattan, Staten Island and the bronx. Brooklyn and queens were once separate cities and have a separate Public Library systems but we cooperate very closely with them and coordinate and to try to do things together as it should be. So, for instance we became a system for the Public School system in new york. His 100 years we lived sidebyside but didnt actually really cooperate and for 100 years the Public Schools depended on their libraries on around this site with maybe 10,000 books increasingly out of date in the card catalog. A sweet idea, one that i grew up with in the 21st century that cant possibly work. Now we are at about 600 schools we aim to be at all of them with computers in the library and the teacher or student can order up to 100 books at a time from our 17 million books. The three systems together will deliver rights to the school. So you get the efficiency of the systems spreading around the city and if it is an example of how ultimately 1. 2 million will be using the library on a dalia basis. Children who are assigned a paper would be able to construct their own Great Library on that topic in the classroom for the month but the paper is being worked on and then send it back to another classroom. During the paper topic later. So we are increasingly serving all new yorkers and doing it across all five boroughs in cooperation with the peers and friends. Host what is the history of the public waiver requests . Guest which began in 1985 and the coming together of the three private libraries created by wealthy new yorkers, after, lennox said lets make it available to the public. They came together and ultimately construct it this building to house the Research Libraries that were their libraries coming together. Fast forward about 15 years and along comes the richest man in the world at the time, Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Carnegie had grown up poor and depending on the library as so many people all around the world and certainly new yorkers have and he said lets create a great public circulating library in new york. He gave a gift for the three libraries i think it was about 5 million or thereabouts to create 65 libraries in the beginning of the Public Library system. It was and remains the largest single gift in the history of philanthropy in todays dollars. Billions. So, because of carnegies generosity, he made a deal with the city where he says that i will tell you the libraries, the city needs to pay to operate than as a public service. And i will ask and carnegie will ask the library and brooklyn and queens to operate them as private agencies funded by the city to do so but with some independence. Its a complete kid partnership and it means literally have the budget comes from the city and have comes from private sources. I think it actually serves the public well and creates interesting checks and balances and that makes my life a little more complicated but that is a good thing. Since that history was started with 60 branch librarys all of them were a 205 branches plus the Resource Library to be at host what is the history of this building that we are in . Guest it is 103yearsold. It was constructed with the support of the citizens of new york as well as private dollars. It was about to built to be the New York Public Library. They think it is fair to say it is the most Public Library in the world. The lions outfront Everybody Knows it was built interestingly on the site of the original reservoir of new york city. So, before the library was built a little over 100 years ago, there was on this whole area where the library into the park behind it is so old that area in midtown is the Clinton Reservoir and it was built here because it was the highest point in midtown. So as you can imagine that helps with gravity sending water around where it needs to go on the reservoir. They took it down. They built the library and the park and that about 25 years ago we excavated down to the foundation 37 feet down the reservoir and built the largest basement in the island of manhattan which we used half of the last 25 years and our plans are in the coming months to put 3 million more books under that space. Its a sort of amazing gift of history that the reservoir was here and created the basement of the foresight of the trustees in the library to create that space. Imagine being able to find a storage for 3 million more books at 42nd street and fifth avenue at the place of the most expensive and demanding real estate in the world. Libraries are also looking for more spaces and we have it because of that amazing history in that reservoir. Host walking through the slavery as many of the rooms in areas named after people. Guest sure. Look we are very grateful to the private donors. Last year we raised about 100 million just in that year of coming in. That makes the library work and it is in large part the Research Side of the library and increasingly private dollars were also going to add Educational Programs in the branches which is great. But we are happy to recognize the generosity of the donors. We certainly did it at amherst and most that i know not only was it a way to say thank you, but its also a way to encourage other people to think about becoming a serious. Interestingly mr. Carnegie is one of the names you dont find, even though historically he the largest benefactor. That is trusted and he was. Host who is on the board of directors of the foundation and is there a separate board for the library . Guest it is in the Foundation Board but it is known as the trustees of the New York Public Library. The chairman of the board currently who is the president of harvard at princeton before that and major educator, vice chairman who is the chairman of one of the great golfers of new york, county is one of the other vice chairs from the new york family. We have Tony Morrison and the editor of the new yorker and escapes from harvard. People that cover all Different Industries and academics. George stephanopoulos and anthony have princeton at nyu are recent additions. It is a great mix which is what you would want it to be. Lets put it this way. What makes new york amazing . What makes america amazing is the mix of people. The mix of background and talent and experience and experience. The library is where the fix of people come together with all the different information. Its been the most exclusive of combinations. Its where it comes from. At the library is the library is the foundation of that. Its where everyone can do that and does do that. And new york as elsewhere in the country into the trustees are a great mix of experience and bring their ideas to provide for stewardship and leadership. Host you talked about new york city being at the apex for the use etc. When was it not, when its at its lowest . Guest one of my predecessors came here as president in 1981. Much of this building was closed beautiful rooms that are now open in the public and used as back offices and storage. Bryant park was best known as a drug den. Under his 12 year presidency of the major society figure joined with him on the board who had been ceo of time life which of course was the dominant corporation in the media world. They together had the incredible charismatic leadership that turned the place around and opened the species back up and found more resources for this building it for all the other buildings committed the renovation of the park and turned it into what is now i think the first pair inch the most incredible urban park in the world on a sunny day and another the summer its just like the library. So, those were dark days and we turned it around. Im sure thereve been other dark days but thats the one that i remember because i lived through it and i remember when my Branch Libraries were closed to many days of the week. We still have more time. Its seen a 17 reduction to see if we can restore more of that and people in the people that come from all over the world. So this building has some of the most Amazing Things in the world in my opinion. We have the original declaration in jeffersons hand with the slave trade paragraph crossed out. They had drawn up the bill of rights to ge