Public service. Thank you for attending todays session, its great to see all of you in person. Its been three years, so [applause] and during this past three years, we cant thank all of you enough for your support of the library of congress back home. Now, we want to remind you that the library is there for you, whether youre here in washington or youre at your library back home in your communities. We are the Nations Library and its at your disposal to use anytime. So if you want to look at Thomas Jeffersons collection or George Washington or rosa parks or Frederick Douglas collection, i could go on and on, you can do it from home. Thanks to everyone for everyone who stopped by the pavilion and who stopped by our open house yesterday. We cant thank you enough. Your stories and work inspired us from prison librarians to army librarians, to of course, children, youth, young adult librarians, we were so inspired by the stories we were hearing. One thing that was spotlighted during the pandemic was the Important Role of libraries across the nation. People discovered that librarians are frontline workers during this pandemic, whether giving out free covid tests or doing Contact Tracing or trying to help your communities get through the entire pandemic. So todays conversation is as vital as librarians, you all have an Important Role in the release of proper information. So today, the librarian of congress along with our esteemed colleague will be discussing this important topic. So it is my distinguished honor to welcome the 14th librarian of congress carla haden and joined by nancy davenport, retired librarian, thank you all. [applause]. You wow. Hello, its so wow. Hello. Its so good to see everyone. And i just have to start by saying this has been like a family reunion. Its been our revival. Its been inspiring in so many ways to see people that are firsttime attendees, that have been coming for 40, and im going to let that go a little bit, 40 years, and just delightful. And to be here with you, nancy. Full disclosure. When braswell introduced nancy, what he didnt say was nancy was a mainstay basically at the library of congress for how many years . Thirtythree. Thirtythree years. [applause] so i knew nancy before even thought about the library of congress. She did Something Else thats very interesting. She left the library of congress and went to d. C. Public libraries. Person with to the the Council Library and information resources two years and then from there to d. C. Public libraries. Then from there to a special project in vietnam working with the parliamentarians of vietnam to build a Research Library for that parliament. Parliament. From there i went to au. So im im one of those people who sort of wandered around librarianship, finding every opportunity and taking it. And thats a good point in terms of some of the firsttime attendees, people who were in library slashed information school. You can tell my age wanted to say library school. Library school, to think about your career in a more cyclical way, or winding way, to be able to go from that. I i wanted to ask you a questio. And this is for everybody. What were the similarities . Oh, what were the similarities . Because i spend multiple times, multiple jobs within llc made Everything Else easier. Most of my career was in the Congressional Research service doing policy analysis and bringing together a lot of materials the Congressional Staff needed. The second part of my career i i went to rare books with having absolutely no knowledge of what is going to go on their, discovered a theft pics i work a lot with the general counsel, et cetera, to be able to figure out that theft. And i guess, and from there went to be the director of acquisition for the entire Library Something i never thought about doing, but it was really wonderful to do that job because it holds so many things together. The library of congress requires materials through copyright deposits, it requires, acquires vince to purchase, through subscription, but it also acquires materials from donors to get materials to us. And working through all of those pieces were really important. Library the library also d offices around the world that acquire materials and so one of the great pleasures as well as being an obligation was to occasionally go out on a field trip and go to meet the people who worked for the library of congress but it preps never been to the library of congress as they collect the materials from the own country. Its a very fulfilling place to work, for sure. And many of the people and some of people who are here today got a chance to see the open house and roswell talk about that. I want to give you a sense of why that did for the Staff Members at the library of congress afterwards, after everybody had left and putting things up and i would rent and thanked all the divisions because you had everybody there, copyright, even the development office. Just everybody was there in all the different divisions. And the theme, the common theme they said was really we know we were card, we try to be there for the library community, but to hear people think kaus really was inspiring. And so they were very pleased to get that feedback, that it means something, special i have to tell you that catalogers were over the moon. [laughing] [applause] one woman said [applause] that gets back to library school, thats where the division goes, really smart people go to cataloging. [laughing] others go to programming, and childrens like me. You can tell catalogers. Someone said its like visiting the mothership. It is the mothership, right . Here it is. And that was so inspiring because i have to say what i admire so much about you, nancy, and other people have been able to, i met some people here at this conference who have gone from like like a public lin Academic Library, or academic to public and the gobetween. And for a while in the profession that wasnt that acceptable. We are among friends. A Public Library especially. I remember at the Research Library and someone said you would like the public, dont you . Yeah, you know. [laughing] i do. But that thing that come if you try to do something for the general public you are dumbing it down. Not to. No, its not. It took a while for this interweaving and for us to people that Public Library experience cross over and be accepted. Now, how did you come how were you accepted going to a Public Library after being at the mothership in the same city . In the same city. With a different clientele. With a very different clientele. It actually worked out very nicely in a couple of ways. Ginnie cooper was a chief librarian at the point for d. C. Public library, and as you travel around d. C. , this week and however long you are here, ginny was instrumental in getting all of the new libraries built. And that she was working with the developers and the contractors, et cetera, down to the painters and the paint colors it was going to be, i had the opportunity to more run the library as an institution. And it was wonderful. One of the things we did while i was there was to create a whole cadre of employees and we are presenting this concept to the board of trustees, and i was going on about a wonderful theyre going to be when we hired all of the students, and one of the Board Members said what are you going to call them . It was like, teams of distinction. And we made their badges that they were teens of distinction and the kid stood up taller when they did that. The very first meeting of the teenagers when they were hired was i when he to talk to them and they just sat in their seats, et cetera, and i said now i have two instructions for you. Next time an adult walks into this room you will stand. And the sort of looked at me, but they stood. And from that point on it was a life lesson, but at the same time it was one that every professional staff member walked in and said, these kids are getting train the way we want them to be trained to work with our public. And thats a tough crowd. A tough crowd for advocate for. Never easy. Oh, no. Ive been involved with was told by one, and i respected her saying this, we were trying to get teen Services Going and special programming in spaces and things, were really going to do more, and she said i just had to say, i have two at home. And i dont want to come to work and see them. [laughing] so respectfully, im going the other was moving the audiovisual, making materials assessable, and moving materials to the first floor that hadnt been there before and they were going to be we were waxing odd about this a foot Library Directors have to sometimes think about. You are going on and you are so enthusiastic and people sitting there going, youve got to find that line that is behind you. There going to be so morning so many more people coming in. A lady came in later and said to me shes going to be retiring because the were going to be a lot of people coming in, and she didnt think she would like that. [laughing] because when they were on the third floor it would be quite come nobody was coming in. People come and do what they wanted and now we will have all these people, and i respected that. Because when your people that are not into customer service, that can be a difficult. Every Library Needs a lot of behind the scenes help. So there are similarities, Public Libraries academic libraries. I would call the library of congress research, Major Research different even from an Academic Library because you have a pretty interesting clientele with faculty. Yes, we did. And special libraries and different types of library but there are certain values, and i brought a copy, i still am a librarian. I pulled it out as ice come in because this was publication from a little while back. Michael gorman, are entering values, and it was revisited. Librarianship in an everchanging world. What were we sang back then . What were we talking about . And its interesting even though we call it misinformation now, we were still all, no matter what type of library talking about and reaffirming that we are that trusted source, that we will look for the best information and how we do it. Basic Reference Service and research. That is still a common theme. But a difficult one. In these days. Now, remember we are in front of friends so we can talk. Misinformation, so it was, its interesting to be a librarian in this time when youre interacting with people who are not in the field. So theyre saying i was the only librarian on the panel, we could have some way to tell people or show them about good resource services, like we do that. We call it information literacy. Weve been doing that, that theres, this this is the. And i had another person when i was talking about information literacy, we check the sources, we said okay, if you something, for instance, theres a famous actress that did a book on thats nice, confessor experiee but of what the who have managed that and going to refer that. And you are the guide on the side and thats what were doing. Doing. I was talking about these values and what librarian to do, and the person said, you know, if you libraries all join together [laughing] and worked together, you could be the trusted computing be like those big search companies, everything. If yall just put your resources together. Yes, sir, if there is ala. We do work together. But that idea that this is a time, ms. Information we shoud claim it. We should be even more hopeful. Now, i do want to bring up something, and hope, were going to open up for question answer and just comment, to. During this time when i have been meeting different people and its been so wonderful, ive also been hearing about the threats and the nearterm, and theres a a young gentleman whos getting his phd in a new field, and had to write it down because i was saying it different. Knowledge destruction. Well, misinformation, banning books, all that and i keep going back to alberto in the history of reading his book on history of reading and that one chapter, forbidden reading and the photo that starts that chapter has a woman who looks like shes a former slave, and shes in front of the cabin. She has a book, and he says, paraphrasing, but as sentries of dictators, slaveowners, and other illicit holders of power have always known, and illiterate crowd is the easiest to rule. And if you cannot prevent people from learning to read, the next best recourse is to limit the scope. And the whole chapter is about book burning in everything, censorship. So what ive been sharing at this conference, particularly of course in School Librarians and that come is a start of efforts to really limit in a disturbing way. Yeah, right, right. What young people, now weve always had that and you told me something that is going to really full disclosure about your experience because this is been something thats been going on for a while. Your mother did it. Yeah, my mother. The story i told carla earlier was, i grew up in a college town, West Virginia university and more content is the town, and the Public Library was underneath the police station. So it was the safest place in town for any kid to be hit d methods of course that the kids there often. And i pretty much read my way through this library over the years, and one day i discovered this book that ive never been before. It looked interesting but he had little tiny prints in it, it was a novel but it was not a contemporary novel. So i checked it out and it went home with it, and the librarian called my mother and said, margaret, you should take a look at what nancy brought home today. Today. Im not sure shes ready to read it. And the book was anthony adverse. If any of you remember this book, which is probably not ever a bestseller, so my brother sat down and read that book that night and then said to me, sweetheart, i would like for you to wait another two years before you read this book. And i waited another two years, because it was, it was not hard for me to wait those two since it look like it was tiny print and thin pages. And at the same time my mother said, do read it then but dont read it now. It was readers advisory but from a parent to a child, a mother was a big reader. We would trade books all the time that we reading while i was in high school and college, but it was, i remember that story very vividly. Dont read it, i dont want you to read it now. I want you to read it in two years from now. And you waited . I i waited. You are a good kid. [laughing] i went to Catholic School. It and it got a great education. But it was, it was really important to me that it had a sense, i had a sense of trust with my mother and she do with me, and they didnt want to abdicate that trust in any way ever. It was really important. But i can tell you another story based upon the Catholic School peace. I use the Public Library to do a class project made when i was in the senate for the eighth grade, and it was all on, it was all in the blessed virgin mary. You guess how much i could find at a Public Library. I did find a bunch through encyclopedias, et cetera, and it went back to school and they said but it doesnt have the imprimatur of the church audit secant uses materials. Thats what i thought maybe i really need to become a librarian because reading widely as important for us in a profession but i think for us in school its also we read widely whatever you choose to. Science fiction is not my thing. It was my husbands and you read constantly sciencefiction. But those sorts of things i really important in their formative to the individual when it happens. So when you approach a student, whether its yours or a patron student, the care with which you treat them with always affect the rest of their library career. And didnt, you said your mom purchased a copy of the book . She purchased it. And she really wanted you she wanted me to read. Im still going back to you waiting two years. [laughing] its like a chocolate bar. My brother was not going to be interested in reading it. There were only three of us. I have worked in some areas where putting that responsibility on a parent could be a barrier as well. Absolutely. In terms of either their literacy levels for the time and effort and how theyre going to get the book and all of that. So the quick answer for some of these challenges that are saying we want the librarians to go through every book in the library and tag sexual content. Thats a lot of work. Thats a lot of work. Maybe if you are not sticking to the childrens section of the young adult section, but nonetheless who defines it. The legislation says they are little loose on that. The quick answer is thats the parents responsibility they should read the books, they should do with their mom did and if they dont want your child to read about than you also to think about what that is and then whos responsible. We think were doing it through selection, and responsible in terms of selection development. But then to go through each book and what might be, that might do that is quite and its interesting because what im doing is trying to be very, i been in washington to lock. You are being very circumspect. Six years now, so im very conscious of that, plus the technology, people tweeting, the librarian of Congress Said this and that and the other, you know. Its like it does make your speech is a lot less interesting, let me just say that, okay . [laughing] its because youre very aware that you are representing in that, however, i am a librarian and im grateful for the opportunity to be able to at least bring the issues of and talk about them in different ways. So this information, presenting the facts, being the trusted source, that is i think one of our bedrock qualities. Thats why people when as we said our biggest stereotype is that