1 12 5 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/85676/archive/files/4186ce33881558e559f1ccc3a95e14e2.jpeg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=qRTg4CMcHaiDFURsDMRHh54403bKnM7ll9tlV%7EJpmXEzAlmBaPYZ0zwWAtXLJTC4H6al24ToVXyD7y6g8c9tFazySwbLH%7ESC4ayGglifjr3b9J9%7ET-zljx8GoXyRMvWVffCqValZbjLihDOajVtoTWX6VlM7TbV9OrTi4JQPrZ%7EiNFmSlIxw9IKN7gwOQnV1wnVIEm3PlKMGh48BwIoKxi-IHB0QZIzSJBJtBylQ9MkDgPJ4SpgBfvq0lwAUIDY3O9T2Iyi8IBQClCnLDrjNATjJvMSXTGPqTdkE0H00U7o3Eyg%7E7oAzAnCbUVc3iV3sjZkxkuGXcMtIVEHuGqrulw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 57d7d19ef3ffd219c381c8e1e44a2aee https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/85676/archive/files/b75508dbd2c43bc6139f1aafac50f460.mp3?Expires=1773878400&Signature=d0Ae8gQCs72AxASZe1Si8mdqywlCWySzb3GKbEPM2tFRBMkLhkgK-W0IdR7Ymo1UZRQGx4fCKK3qGJ62JbAltR1NO8QG2h7-gtvprahZtd6Mddmi0ojCgxJf9qxHXrilQ4DQ2YEzFQ1fD929-uIwCVVcH-hUBVPnFIvEp5Aq4qS9LrqTqjI3zyWneGmv%7EIvPyx1zuAztuBWpuaNLhGICma79XwloaV5WS1-vs7c-FC%7EFIeuQgMOELbhtSkIu7u7Aun%7ECzDGCV8gJPmPsKIwjTWeTBBrm5J6KENBw6FngiwGlZd16TdUlutG2P3v0X1eAAht5a1x2WyRNmjYxTgIa9g__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM c6e12fa53c2f20b98b51c957a5308823 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Prince George's Memorial Library System Oral History Project Subject The topic of the resource Library System Oral history Description An account of the resource The PGCMLS Oral History Project is an initiative with the goal of documenting the voices and experiences of current and former staff members employed by the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System. This oral history piece is one facet of a large project of presenting and recording the library system’s history comprehensively via photographs, documents, and other primary sources. Established in 1946 in Prince George’s County, PGCMLS’s nearly 80 year history and generations of staff represent decades of institutional memory and service to the communities it serves. These interviews are intended to capture some of these stories and memories for both current and future use. In addition to providing an archive of PGCMLS staff experiences, this collection of oral histories acts as a tool for people interested in library work to hear firsthand accounts of what it is to work in a large public library in a variety of settings and departments. Disclaimer: The digital content exhibited in these collections is presented as documentation and perspectives on history and past events; they may reflect personal memories, opinions, and perspectives that are not necessarily the official position of Prince George’s Memorial Library System or any other Library staff. Some material may contain subject matter or language that may be considered sensitive or upsetting. These collections are copyrighted and are intended for educational purposes. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Special Collections Staff Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available PGCMLS Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource May 5, 2024 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-NC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" title="© Copyright" rel="noreferrer noopener">© Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .WAV Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Digital sound Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data .wav Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) Part1: 01:27:49 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Project: PGCMLS Oral History Project Chapter: John Krivak Interview Date: Apr 10, 2024 Participants: Interviewer: Paul Moreno. Interviewee: John Krivak <ul><li style="font-weight:400;">00:02 Paul: Today is April 10, 2024, at the Hyattsville Branch Library of the Prince George's County Memorial Library. My name is Paul Moreno, Librarian I, and I'm here with John Krivak, former employee of the PGCMLS. We are recording an interview with him as part of the PGCMLS Oral History Project. Hi, John. How are you?</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">00:24 John: Hi, I'm well. Thank you.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">00:27 Paul: Okay. We can start with, could you introduce yourself? Can you tell us about what your hobbies are, your preferred readings, whatever you want to say to this minute?</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">00:37 John: Sure. I'm John Krivak. I worked for PGCMLS from 1971 as an hourly, 1973 as a salaried employee until I retired in November of 2021. The proverbial Martian observer would say my hobby right now is subjecting myself to medical testing, but I'll tell the Martians it's not as much fun as it looks. Things I actually enjoy include singing and, of course, reading, and my preferred readings are relatively eclectic, although somewhat more limited than when I worked as a librarian because I no longer read things with the motive that other people are interested in them. You have to do that a lot if you're a librarian. If you want to be a good librarian, you have to read stuff you have no interest in the world in because you know that people who come to your desk are reading that and are going to be talking about it and are going to expect it. But I read literary fiction, genre fiction, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, horror. I read history, political science, biographies, popularized scientific material. I rarely, but occasionally delve into real scientific literature where you have to spend a lot of time on each page trying to understand what they're doing if you're from my non-scientific background.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">02:37 Paul: Okay, good. Yeah. A long time to read things and working as a librarian is an activity that you have to delve into. Okay, so tell us about what your early experience working in libraries. What positions or positions have you held in the system or in other library systems? Can you tell us about your career path?</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">03:00 John Sure. With your indulgence, I'm actually going to start before I worked in the library because I was a user of the Hyattsville Library before I ever worked in any of the Prince George's libraries. I moved from rural Pennsylvania to Prince George's County at the age of 15 in 1967. In Pennsylvania, it's a low tax state, which means it's a low public services state because you get what you pay for. In Maryland, where taxes have always been somewhat, even in the 60s, were somewhat higher, libraries were much more impressive. So in Pennsylvania, the public library, so to speak, used 100% donated bookstock and volunteer librarians, had no paid librarian and no budget to buy their own books. Uneven is the kind way to describe what I was used to from a library. And I loved it. But then, coming down here, and my sister, my older sister actually found the Hyattsville Library before I did, and she said, John, there's a library. But we're never going to read all the books in it. So the library became a sacred space for me in the sense that it allowed someone with an Appalachian background, parts of Pennsylvania are clearly in Appalachia, to read everything all the rich kids in the prep schools had access to, enabled me to be second in my class at Georgetown. Probably would have enabled me to be first if I wasn't working so hard outside the classroom. And one of the jobs I had outside the classroom was my first PGCMLS job. That was as a page at the New Carrollton branch when it first opened back in 1971. And being a page, mostly you shelve books, but they let me do a couple other things. They let me run the projector for film programming because films then were shown using reel-to-reel movie projectors.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">05:50 Paul: Was that 16 millimeter projector?</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">05:52 John: Oh, 16 millimeter projectors. And if it was a feature film, multiple reels, and you had to be adept at getting that second or third reel on there smoothly as the first reel, and there were fancy projectors with two reels possible to be loaded so that you could go right from one end to the other. And I knew how to do that. So that was extra-page stuff. I also was the…</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">06:23 Paul: That was black and white movies?</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">06:25 John: Oh, well, there was color. I'm not that old. There was color. But a lot of the movies were black and white. I remember at New Carrollton, the one that I really enjoyed the most because I also turned the sound up as high as it went was the original Woodstock documentary, </li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">00:06:45 Paul: The Woodstock festival, ohh wow </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">06:46 John: Which was the festival, the 69 Festival, and we shared that movie somewhere between 71 and 73.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">06:57 Paul: Wow, there was no censorship about that at that time.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">07:01 John: No, no The library has always, and I'll get more into this as I talk more about the library, has always been for its place and time a progressive institution. The Prince George's County Library has always been for its place and time a progressive institution.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">07:22 Paul: Good. Good to know.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">07:24 John: That’s, I'll go into that again later, but I also was the king of the old microfilm readers because the pages not only shelved books, but also as students or others needed to look at magazines and newspapers on microfilm and to make copies of the articles that they found there. Someone had to be able to assist in that, to know how to save people time by loading the films onto the machines for them rather than have them surrounded with them.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">08:01 Paul: Yeah, How to print out because it's a special printer.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">08:06 John: And usable prints! The oldest of the microfilm readers, the ones we had at New Carrollton in 71, were wet print. So they had a wet print process, and in between running prints, the system would dry out and not be ready to make another print. So you started by opening up the top of the machine, squeezing this squeeze bottle</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">8:32 Paul: Oh, the ink?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">8:33 John: to get the liquid substance to spread over the portion of the machine that it was supposed to spread over.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">08:44 Paul: So they have a special paper for that?</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">00:08:47 John: They had special paper, and then when you ran the print, you would tear it off without tearing the page, so that was an art in itself. And you would kind of hold it up in the air and flap your wings with it, to dry it.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">09:04 Paul: Like a Polaroid photograph</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">09:06 John: Like old cameras, like we used to do with the old Polaroids back in the day. So that was fun.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">09:15 Paul: So that was back in the 70s?</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">09:18 John: That was back in the 70s. That was while I was at college. It wasn't the job that paid for college. That was my 11pm to 7am shifts at the old post office, post office, what do they call it, SCF, sectional center facility, right there off of U.S. 1 in Riverdale next to the National Guard property in Riverdale. That was warehouse overnight, heftin’ 100-pound bags of commercial mail and throwing it into canvas baskets by zipcode. Boy, that was fitness. That was a fitness job, one I've not had since. But my library hours did things like let me buy lunch. The post office paid for tuition. This was back before one had to incur student loans. All you had to do was work yourself to death and keep up with your schoolwork. That was my first library job. After I graduated, or when I graduated, almost as soon as I graduated from college, a position opened in the old bookmobile division. I had learned while working as a page at New Carrollton that I liked the idea of what libraries, what public libraries do, that you help people on their terms. Not because you're trying to make money off them. Not because you're trying to get them to do something they don't want to do. But because you're trying to help them do whatever it is that they do want to do. That fit in well with the ethic of service that was drilled into my head by the Jesuits at Georgetown. Those two things together, it's like, yeah, let's try the bookmobile once and do some public service at least at the beginning and then we'll see. Maybe I'll go to law school. I loved it. I loved it then. When I started on the bookmobile, of course, I was the young guy, but I was also the local guy. They said to me, John, you're the low one on the totem pole. I'm afraid we have to put you on the ghetto runs. They were progressive, but it was progressive for its time and place. They still called the runs that went through the residentially African American areas of the county, the ghetto runs. For me, it's like, hey, I'm three years out of Duval High School. I went to school with these kids’ older brothers and sisters. I'm fine with that. If you hadn't offered me Palmer Park and Dodge Park and Carmody Hills, I would have asked for them So we, I had a good time for a couple of years primarily working with children because that’s bookmobiles –there were some adults that came on, I remember there was a guy that lived down in the Prince Place apartments, which are right near where the current Largo-Kettering branch is, that turned me on to Eric Dolphy. We traded, the library had one Mothers of Invention album, so we traded musical tastes and both learned something new. But for the most part, it was kids rather than adults that came on.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">13:30 Paul: Most of the collection that was held in the bookmobile books for children.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">13:34 John: Books for children and bestsellers. We had the bestsellers for adults. Adults could also…</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">13:43 Paul: Paperbacks.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">13:43 John: Paperbacks or hardbacks. I mean we had the new hardback bestsellers when they were still new, just like the libraries, you know, We worked out of the lower level of the old Hyattsville branch and out of the Oxon Hill Library. Bookmobiles were stationed at both of those places. I worked four days a week out of Hyattsville and once a week doing one of the South County Runs. The stock was primarily children's books, though. The users were primarily kids and kids that, in many cases, couldn't easily get to a branch library. At that time, there were not nearly 19 branches.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">14:32 Paul: So the kids just…</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">14:33 John: There was no library, for example, in Largo Kettering. So some of our busiest stops, and that helped the library system decide where to put new branches, was the statistics from the bookmobile stops. Largo Kettering was a no-brainer. Those were the busiest hours of your life.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">14:52 Paul: Were checkouts on the bookmobiles or just…</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">14:55 John: Yeah, Checkouts were done using the same system they used upstairs, which was a photographic system. You took a photograph of the person's library card and a photograph of the cards out of the pockets in the books.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">15:12 Paul: Oh, the catalog card.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">15:13 John: Yeah, the catalog card. And I'll talk more about that later, too, somewhere down the road.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">15:22 Paul: And how many books did you hold on the bookmobile?</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">15:25 John: About 3,000. About 3,000. By the time I worked on the bookmobiles, they were big ones. The original bookmobiles were quite small, the 1950 bookmobiles we call them, because I think that's when the library system first introduced bookmobile service. And kids had to wait in line outside the bookmobile in the early days, because only three or four kids could fit in the bookmobile at one time. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">15:51 Paul: Yes, obviously</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">15:51 John: By the time I came along, we were using next-generation bookmobiles that were easily the length of school buses, a little bit longer. So you can imagine you could have 15 people, users, inside the bookmobile at one time. Were there's still lines outside? There were in Largo. There weren't at a lot of other stops, you know, but that's one of the things. If you got lines outside the bookmobile, maybe that's an indication that feeds into that. Where are we going to put our next new branch when we have the money to build it? And so, at that time, I don't have an accurate memory of, there are, I think, 19 branches now. I could be wrong about that. I think there were 12 at that time. So there were quite a few places, Clinton never had a building, a Surratts-Clinton now, it did not exist back then, Spauldings did not exist back then.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">16:48 Paul: So it was mostly Oxon Hill and Hyattsville?</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">16:52 John: Oxon Hill and Hyattsville were the two big libraries. New Carrollton existed, obviously, since I had worked there as a page, but it was brand new. Bowie existed, Laurel existed, Greenbelt, and there were smaller branches in a number of places.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">17:08 Paul: And let me ask you something. So did the system were pioneering this program, or do you have notice of other counties that have the same?</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">17:08 John: As far as having bookmobiles, the real pioneer for the existence of bookmobile service was actually an urban library, it was the Pratt Library in Baltimore. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">17:28 Paul: Oh</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">17:29 John: They were the first, and that was to go to neighborhoods within the city that did not have a library.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">17:40 Paul: Library access.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">17:41 John: Prince George's was certainly an early adapter, but I can’t say – the Pratt Library had bookmobiles for at least 10 years before Prince George's did. So they were the true pioneers. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">18:00 Paul: Oh ok</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">18:01 John: One of the things that Prince George's was a pioneer at in a southern state, we're south of the Mason-Dixon line, so the old traditional division between north and south, we're on the south side of that. And when I went to high school in Prince George's County, starting in 67, the high school had been integrated the year before I got there. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">18:34 Paul: Oh wow</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">18:35 John: 66. But the library system, which was formed just after the Second World War, that's why it's called the Prince George's County Memorial Library System. It was dedicated to the memory of the fallen war dead, was never segregated. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">18:55 Paul: Good</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">18:56 John: On its earliest day, it had an African-American on the library board, and every branch and every service was open to African-Americans. Were all the staff enlightened? Heck no. This was. This was time and place, but at that time in the late 1940s, in that place in a county that had way more Confederate soldiers than it had Union soldiers, even though Maryland never seceded from the Union, it was progressive.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">19:40 Paul: Wow. Interesting.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">19:42 John: Yeah. I went to library school at the University of Maryland while I was working on the bookmobile that was… because I was still into the work all day and study all night mode that got me through university in three years.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">19:59 Paul: So what was your title by then?</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">20:02 John: Library Assistant I. They later changed that to Library Associate, but at that time it was a Library Assistant because before I had my MLS, I could not call myself a Librarian, and that's a ridiculous distinction because Library Assistants, Library Associates, they do the same job.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">20:24 Paul: Yeah. And it's no difference for the people.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">20:26 John: And it's no difference to the people, anyone who works in a library is a librarian. When I was a page shelving books, someone would come up to me and ask me a question. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">20:36 Paul: Yeah.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">20:37 John: Now, I'll be honest, sometimes I got a little bit in trouble with the management of the New Carrollton library because if I knew the answer and was confident that I knew the answer, I didn't say to the person, oh, I'm just a page. You'll have to go ask a librarian. But I gave them the answer. It's one of these things that you don't want the under qualified to say something they don't know. So there's a reason for those rules. But is it better service to redirect a question that you do know the answer to? There's an exception to those rules as well. Most rules are like that. There's some reason behind them. And there are all kinds of reasons sometimes to make exceptions to.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">21:29 Paul: So did you graduate from your master's degree and then you moved to a position?</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">21:36 John: I graduated from Maryland library school with a master's degree and there was a Librarian I position at the Oxon Hill branch. So I applied for that and was selected. And that was a different type of librarianship because it was a Librarian I in the Adult Services department. So I was no longer primarily working with kids but working with adults. And one of the things I realized were the gaps in my knowledge. I was a smart guy. I was second in my class at Georgetown. I never took a business class at Georgetown. I took economics but not business. People would come in and they'd have questions about running a business. I said I didn't know what I didn't know. But I was smart enough to say well I better try to become an expert on what people actually are asking. Business questions being one of them that was outside of my field. If someone came in and asked me a question about the transition from the Merovingians to the Carolinians in French history. I was on top of that but that didn't happen. People came in and said you know I want to figure out what I'm doing wrong with the business I'm running. Where can I find information on how a well run business is run. And so you have to not only know oh that's in the 650s, that's the easy part. The hard part is knowing what's inside the books. Which of them are the better ones. Reputationally. Which of them are ephemeral. Steering people to the best sources. And so one begins to read for others. Rather than strictly for oneself. And I realized that right away at Oxon Hill. And did a couple of things by way of developing expertise. One is learning what the library had. Especially in its reference collection. How it can be used. Two was going out to the Rotary Clubs and the Kiwanis Clubs that met in the Oxon Hill city. And telling them what we had. Being ready to take questions that were scary because I was just gaining knowledge. But someone, you know, that's how you, that's how you succeed is by trying things you've never tried before. Second thing there was a map and print based real estate service. Originally called Lusks. And then it merged with another company and they called it ready. Real estate data incorporated R-E-D-I.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">24:56 Paul: And it was system wide?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">24:57 John: It was two kinds of this was at Oxon Hill, and Hyattsville. And it was expensive. It was expensive. We had it at two locations, Oxon Hill and Hyattsville, South and North. It had two different kinds of maps. Large maps of quadrants of the county. Individual maps of subdivisions. So you had to know how to translate where a property is on one map to the other. And then to find out. Find it in the print materials where you would learn additional information about it. Who owned it. How long they'd owned it. When they bought it. What they bought it for. How is it assessed. When was it last assessed. All this stuff. It came to the library with no instructions. Most people would look at it and scratch their heads and say I don't know what to do with this. So what I did…</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">25:54 Paul: So you know how to read that map.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">25:57 John: What I did is I wrote instructions for it. These are the kinds of questions you can answer. Here's how you go about answering this one. Here's how you go about answering that one. Here's how you go about answering etc. And I sent a copy of that up here at Hyattsville. Because they were the other branch that had the service. So about two years into working as a Librarian I at Oxon Hill. There was a promotional opportunity at Hyattsville to become the Maryland Room Librarian. And in this kind of weird thing that's still more or less exists in the library system, you were also to be a supervisor of part of the adult department. Even though there was an adult department head that was your supervisor and really set the goals for the entire unit. You made sure that certain employees within the unit work towards those goals. And you still have that today although you no longer have a department head. We'll get around to that.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">27:15 Paul: Let me ask you something, so did you get any work of Sojourner Truth in Oxon Hill by that time, or was another librarian?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">27:23 John: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, the Sojourner Truth Room did exist at the Oxon Hill, I’ll come back to that because that is special collections, </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">27:29 Paul: Ok </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">27:30 John: I've got to look at the question. I'll come back to that.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">27:33 Paul: So did you move here to</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">27:36 John: But I came up to Hyattsville as a very young supervisor and person who was just absolutely ready to learn local history. I mean history was, was in my wheelhouse. And to me the history of. Hyattsville or Bladensburg is every bit as interesting as the Merovingian or the Carolinian dynasties in France. Even more so because I could see the places where these things happen. So I came up to Hyattsville as a Librarian II in charge of the special collection. I was put in charge of the - immediately- of the entire reference collection which gratified me no end. And then I supervised some of the people. It was weird being a 20 something supervisor because I was supervising people with much more experience than I had. And I approached it by figuring out what each of them could teach me. And having a private conversation saying you know I know you know a lot about local history. I'm going to rely on you to look as I'm just learning. I know you know a lot about mystery novels. I'm going to rely on you because I'm just learning it. So, when a young supervisor comes in and does not act like he's superior to the people he's better, nominally reporting to him but admits that he needs to learn from them. It's much easier when it comes time for the whole unit to focus on the real supervisor's goals. Which tie into system goals. To get, to get everybody on board. And then I was that Librarian II for about 15 years. And so I went through to the point where I was supervising people my own age. And I had as much experience as they did. And then, Rita Muggli was the Librarian III the second ever, Adult Services department head at the Hyattsville branch someone else had been the department head from when the branch opened in 62. Until Rita came along about 67 or 68. She was the Librarian III in Adult Services from that point to 1992 and then she retired. And at that point I applied for and was selected to be her successor as the Librarian III in charge of Adult Services at the Hyattsville branch. So there have been to date a total of three of us that ever had that position. When I left they eliminated the position.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">30:57 Paul: Yeah, because right now with this new branch is.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">30:59 John: Some people are just a hard act to follow.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">31:00 Paul: Yeah. Yeah, right now there is a branch manager.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">31:04 John: Yeah, the whole, the whole scheme was, was they took advantage of my finally packing it in to make some changes administratively. But, so I was the head of the Adult Services Department from 1992 until November of 2021. And that was all pretty much as high as I went. Actually in the late nineties I applied for two smaller branch manager jobs and did not get them. And then I thanked the Lord or whoever one thanks that I didn't because I was really happier being a department head than I would have been as a branch manager. Why? Because as a department head you still do a lot of information desk work.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">32:00 Paul: And programming</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">32:01 John: And that's where the real rewards are getting stuff done personally. Seeing the people who benefit from it personally. I know there are higher level rewards for higher managers of organizing it all.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">32:15 Paul: Yeah, it is more administrative duties</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">32:17 John: But it’s different if you don't see it. The other thing that I liked very, very much was teaching new people how to do the job. I think I was good at it. Some people would say yes, some people would say he was a jerk. Such is life. But, but I got a reward out of it. I found it personally rewarding to show people new to a job how to do the job my way. Of course, arrogantly thinking my way was the best way. But. If you're not arrogant, man. You're a better person than I am.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">33:01 Paul: Yeah, was working more directly with the collection. So. than more, less management.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">33:08 John: Yeah. And yeah. So that was that was my career path. And it ended. There was a six month period when I was the de facto manager of the Hyattsville branch because the. The branch manager had an operation on her back and was out for six months. And. I hated it. Everyday people would come to me with, with problems I couldn't solve. That I had neither the resources nor the power to make the world different than it was. If you're a branch manager, people are going to come to you and they're really upset about something over which often you have no control. That's frustrating. I found it frustrating anyway. Other people than I have have found that a challenge to accept and to get beyond.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">34:03 Paul: Okay, let's move to the third question. What was the most challenging aspect of working in Adult Service because most of your career was in Adult Services.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">34:12 John: Was in adult services and I've already alluded to this. You have to reset your mind from I'm doing this because I like to do it to I'm doing this because someone needs it. And what they need is not up to me. It's up to them. So saying, well, I'm not just going to help the people that like what I like. I'm going to help everyone that comes in the door. And if that means I have to learn something new, I better learn it well. If that means, I don't agree with them politically, I still better get them the best information that. feeds into their interest. If that means they may be ungrateful or they may be grateful to the wrong person. How many times did I help someone, sweat bullets to find them the information they want and they say, oh, thank you, God. It's like, hey, God wasn’t working in the information desk. I was but.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">35:29 Paul: Or thank you directors of the offices and facing the public </li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">35:34 John: Not so much. Not so much that. But I understand that people are religious and attribute the good things and find solace from the bad things that happen to them to their deities. I didn't really get upset about that. They can thank God. Maybe I was his instrument. In that regard. Better than Satan's instrument. Maybe. Probably. I'm sure there were people that saw me that way too. But no, it's, it's the same challenge. Now in children's services, you're working for the kids. But the kids don't know what they need, that's the difference between Children’s Services and Adult Services you’re more deciding what the kids need or their teachers in school are deciding and giving them an assignment to find something out. And kids themselves are more creative than we give them credit for. And sometimes we'll start to become independent thinkers as early as preschool. But there's still more of these are the things that you need to know. And these are the things we're going to teach you and we're going to decide what programs there are. We're going to decide that we have story programs and we have this kind of programs in adult services. Your programming darn well better be, we're listening for needs that we hear or that we think we hear and we're designing programs that cater to what we perceive the public as wanting.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">37:13 Paul: Yeah. You need to take care of that.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">37:16 John: You got to try different things. And are you always right about that perception? Maybe one particular transaction where a person really, really, really needed Something. Led you to devise a program that there are only two other people that wanted. And so you try and you fail and you learn from that. Other things you try and you succeed and those become ongoing programs that exist for years and years and years. So that's part of that challenge of Adult Services is the adult learner already knows a lot of stuff. A lot more than kids know. Even smart kids. There's still a lot for them to learn. The adult learner already knows a lot of stuff. Including knowing what they want to know next. And that's what you got to hop on. What they want. Not what a textbook tells you they should want. Not what your own personality tells you they should want. But what they want.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">38:24 Paul: Yeah. And the adults are more demanding than the kids.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">38:27 John: They can be. They can be. They can. Definitely. Well, yeah, you certainly hear. And you know, sometimes you were tempted. I was tempted back in the day. Well, I won't say I never said it to a customer, but you certainly hear, Oh and I pay taxes. Okay. So a penny out of every dollar you pay. Actually only .86 cents out of every dollar you pay goes to the library. So you got your money's worth already. Just by our opening the door to you. Everything else is on the house.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">39:06 Paul: Okay. If someone is interested in working in libraries or adult services, what will you say to encourage them to start their career?</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">39:15 John: Well, that's, that question has a premise that I would say something to every single person that's interested in working in libraries or adult services to encourage them. I would want to talk to the person and find out why they're interested. Because sometimes it's the right place to be and sometimes it's not. If they're interested because they like to read and it seems like it would be a nice quiet job. And it wouldn't, it would pay okay, but not be too taxing. I'm not going to encourage them to go into it because what you're supposed to be reading stuff you never read before and never would on your own, is not a quiet job. It's a noisy job. It's a busy job..</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">40:09 Paul: Yeah. And probably you have to read </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">40:11 John: It better be taxing. If it's not taxing enough, you better be creating new projects to make it taxing to learn how to do things. So I would want to find out that the person was right for libraries because some people who think that they're right for libraries have a misperception in that regard. They might be better off and it's a very closely related field - in fact, my daughter is in it -they might be better off becoming archivists where they work with a set of materials that were left by, you know, Ben Bradlee, the editor of the Washington Post, et cetera. They have some user interaction, but it's, it's more organizational ability, the ability to anticipate what subject descriptors people will be using to find that information a 100 years from now, et cetera. I might suggest to a person that really was, liked looking at books, discovering what's inside them, but was not that much of a person to talk to people and share. I might, I might encourage them to work for the library, but I might encourage them to go into a cataloging department. And some of the best people we've ever had in PGCMLS have worked in our cataloging departments.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">41:54 Paul: And also you have to be a good listener</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">41:57 John: So, yeah. So you have to be a good listener. So yeah, you have to be a good listener. And, and then, yeah, I would say, well, the other thing is you can't want to get rich. Now you might, you might be relatively rich if you rise to the level of library director. And I've had half a dozen people over the years that worked for me that became library directors eventually. But you got to settle for, you got to, you got to settle for a good solid middle class existence is enough. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">42:31 Paul: Yeah</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">42:32 John: That's all that's what you're going to get paid. But if you work at it for 50 years in a library that eventually became unionized, when you retire, you're going to have a darn good defined benefit pension, and you're not going to worry about the rest of your life. But you're not rich. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">42:49 Paul: Yeah, this is not</li> <li style="font-weight:400;"> 42:50 John: You’re not part of the 1%. You're not part of the 10%.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">42:54 Paul: Yeah, this is not the path forward for the richness. Yeah.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">42:57 John: So you have to have, I think, the ethic of service, to, to work in, in the public facing parts of the library and in adult services and in children's services for that matter in the public facing parts of the library. You have to have that ethic of service. I'm doing this for other people more than I'm doing it for myself. Does anyone have that as their only pure motive? No, I never did. I'm doing that more as my motive than the selfish motives that I that I find anytime I look beneath that.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">43:38 Paul: Okay, good. Okay, some public libraries have special collections. What do you think is the role of a special collection into a public library?</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">43:47 John: Yeah. What a special collection does is it declares that this library has a particular area of knowledge that they want to honor that they think is important. And there are all kinds of areas of knowledge. But a special collection gives particular honor to a particular area of knowledge. We briefly mentioned the Sojourner Truth Room at Oxon Hill. That special collection says and said, I think Oxon Hill opened in 67. I could be wrong about that. But said in 1967, the year after the Prince George's public schools, high schools were desegregated. And I think the value of knowledge about Black history is a value that we value extra. But we're going to put extra resources into that. We're going to put extra expertise into that. We're going to put extra programming into that. That's a value. Were there in 1967 people that said where's the white people's collection? Course there were. Just like there would be today. But the library system promoted a value. Most library systems have an equivalent in some way of what I still call the Maryland Room. Because I still, I disagreed when it was cut down to just the Prince George's Room. The local history is an obvious value because there's so much community building around understanding the history of a community. And it can be just idle curiosity. Why do they call that road that road? What does it have that name? Who was John Hanson, that the John Hanson highway is named after? Well, he was the first president of the United States under the Articles of Confederation before the Constitution in Washington. He happened to live in the Oxon Hill area. Why do I see these things up in the night sky above a certain portion of Riverdale? They call that Beacon Heights. Those were installed in the 40s to guide airplanes that were going to National Airport. So that they were part of the guidance of the flight paths into National from the North. Then you get the more loaded questions, a couple of things that I worked on with the Maryland Room. The Piscataway Conoy tribe of Indians wanted recognition as an official tribe. They were always there, but they were not recognized as an official tribe and still are not at the national level, but there's their state recognition. State recognition means something to a people because it means at least the state where we're from recognizes that we are a historically important group. That we exist. When I first started working in the library, the same people used to be called Wesorts, we sorts of people. That was partly making fun of the way they talked, but there were articles in the journals and the articles in the journals didn't call them Wesorts. They called them tri-racial isolates.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">48:13 Paul: ??</li> <li style="font-weight:400;"> 48:14 John: It means they were Black and white and red and they lived in their own communities a little bit away from other communities. Of course, there were Blacks and whites in by the 20th century, early 20th century in that were members of the communities that were really the remnants of the First Nations tribes. So one of the processes of getting state recognition depended a lot of documentation of when and how and where and for how long and how you know this group of people was a recognizable group of people. Where did they live? Where did they hunt? Where did they make their pottery? Land ownership has always been a Western concept, a European concept. So a lot of First Nations people didn't think of themselves as owning the land. They lived in the land. They didn't live there, but a certain part of the year they hunted there, where they fished there when the fishing was right. Or they made their pottery, but that was awfully messy. So they made it slightly away from where they lived. So these are the places, these are the lands we were part of. And we don't have deeds to any of them because deeds came along with </li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">49:53 Paul: The Western civilization.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">49:54 John: The Western civilization, so the whole concept of this is my land and it extends from this property marker to that one. And I've had a surveyor survey it. And originally the Lord Calvert granted it to me in Maryland. It wasn't the king. It was the Calvert barons that actually granted the lands. There's a county in Virginia called Prince George County. And every now and then we get a document sent to us through the mail usually… I'm trying to figure out what this document is about. And one of the clues that they were in the wrong state with Prince George's County instead of Prince George County, Virginia, was that a lot of the old Virginia documents would start out by appealing to the authority of the crown. Whereas Maryland documents from that same age would start out by appealing to the authority of the Calvert family. So you learn little things about, interesting things about history that way. Later, and this was after, well after I was no longer technically the Maryland Room Librarian. In fact, during that hiatus between Dan leaving the position and the position being filled after this new building opened, there was no Maryland Room Librarian, but that didn't mean there weren't Maryland questions. We were contacted by people from the statewide group that's documenting the history of lynching in Maryland. And that project asked us what we could tell them about certain incidents that they had vague documentation for. And I remember even though at that point the bulk of the special collection materials had been put in storage, because we're only going to be two years in between the old building and the new – well it ended up being five.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">52:07 Paul: Nobody counts with the pandemic</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">52:09 John: But that's how construction projects go. But we had snuck a little bit of the Maryland Room collection into our temporary storefront over here in the University Town Center. And one of the questions I was able to document from the vertical files was exactly where in old Upper Marlboro, in 1920s Upper Marlboro, the jail was. And exactly what path would be taken by people if they wanted to haul some fella out of the jail and hang him at the bridge. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">52:47 Paul: Wow.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;"> 52:48 John: So I found a map that showed this is where the, it wasn't where the jail is now. It was right downtown. This is where the jail was. And this, and you can see they would have gone down this street and then down this road. And the fella probably would have been from one or three or four families that were really picked on by the authorities in Prince George's County.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">53:19 Paul: Wow. Interesting.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">53:23 John: So communities are built in different ways. But knowing the history of being able to research the history of the community in which you live is one of those ways that helps build communities.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">53:38 Paul: Yeah, this is one of the main roles of the special collection to try to get documentation about the, the history of the</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">53:48 John: And there have been, there have been a couple other special collections in the county. I don't know if the, I think the original Tugwell room, named after New Deal Brain Truster Rexford Tugwell, who helped plan the existence of Greenbelt is now just a little tiny Greenbelt history room.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">54:11 Paul: Yeah. it is more about plans, blueprints</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">54:15 John: It was originally started as an urban planning special collection. So the original value was the same value that led to the existence of Greenbelt, of, we can plan a better place. But there's all that literature that had nothing to do with Greenbelt that wasn't specifically Greenbelt history. The spending on that fell off over the years. I guess the commitment to the original vision for the room lessened. There was also a special collection at the Bowie Branch, which was called the Selima Room. Selima was a famous race horse way back in the days, back in the 1770s. And Bowie, specifically the Bel Air farms was one of the early centers of the horse racing industry in the United States. And so they had a collection that was again, it was partly a local history collection, but it was well beyond. I mean, they still got the Racing Form every day. But there was a track in Bowie that closed a little bit after somewhere in the late 60s or early 70s, probably. There's still a track in Laurel that's technically not in Prince George's County because Laurel goes into Anne Arundel and Howard. I think the track is in Anne Arundel County. But that's one of the last vestiges of horse racing in Maryland, that and Pimlico in Baltimore. And that collection was sold off at a certain point.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">55:55 Paul: Wow. Yeah. Right now it's a need to keep that kind of documents probably in another format as a digitized documents or something like that because the management of that kind of rooms is very demanded. Because that need a person that knows the collection, have knowledge about how to answer patrons' questions, relate to the local histories and relate to our records and our collections. So it's really a very special position that is now for every librarian or people that.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">56:40 John: No, no, it's kind of one of those areas where public librarianship comes closer to being academic librarianship.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">56:53 Paul: Academic and archivist.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">56:59 John:And archives. When I was a supervisor, one of the things I would do when someone first came to work with me is find out what do you really want. I know you took a job in a public library now and sometimes job markets were loose and sometimes they were tight. Do you want to work in the public library for your entire career? Yes or no. It could be yes or no, it doesn't matter. I'm going to support you to learn whatever you need to learn. So if a person told me, well, no, I'm hoping eventually to find a job in an academic library, I would structure their experiences towards the more academic side of what public librarians do. If they said, yeah, I want to run a public library, I would structure their experiences towards understanding the management, the budget, the personnel sides of what libraries do. Even though it wasn't their job as librarian Is to know any of that or to know more of that than affected themselves. I promised when I negotiated over, I'm telling tales at school, I promised of when I negotiated over what these questions would be that way back up under number two and we're well past that. I would allude to the very brief time period during which the bookmobiles were assigned to branches because there was a question about the Hyattsville bookmobile that we took out of the list. The bookmobile division was when I worked in it, and for almost all of its existence, a separate division that was part of what was called Extension Services. You're extending services beyond the library building to serve people who are in places that can't easily get, especially kids, can't easily get to library buildings. And as there became more library buildings, there were fewer of those places in existence. But there's still, I mean, some of the places that we went from Hyattsville, if you think the kids that live in the apartments down off New Hampshire Avenue near the district line have an easy time getting their parents to bring them up here, you're wrong. If you think the Spanish kids that live up in the apartments where Erie Avenue hits New Hampshire Avenue up above, have an easy time getting their parents to bring them down here, think again. And that was one of the early diversities. When I was working on the bookmobile, the Erie Avenue apartments were mostly Spanish speaking families.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">59:44 Paul: Yeah, the whole population in Langley Park.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">59:46 John: Now a majority of the population in the Langley Park zipcodes speaks Spanish at home. But there was a time as the bookmobiles were phased out when there was also a budget crisis, you know, public budgets come and go and you do what you can with however much money you have at the time. And so the public budgets for the county got tight and they eliminated the bookmobile division. There were five vehicles, one of which was on its last legs. That was Old Number One, old number one died. Now there's two, three, four and five were assigned to the then four area branches of Hyattsville, Oxon Hill, New Carrollton and Bowie. And the four of the five bookmobile librarians were assigned one each to those branches and the fifth one retired. All of the bookmobile drivers were signed to the branches and Hyattsville got two. They went into the circulation departments. And so, but at the same time, the bookmobiles transitioned from being used to do neighborhood stops to being used as school outreach vehicles by the children's departments. That's why I was reluctant to talk a whole lot about the Hyattsville library bookmobile as such because that was a different department that operated it well past my bookmobile years. That's, the person who I made the promise to put that in will know.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:01:42 Paul: Okay. Okay, so let me move on. So probably during your career as a librarian, you met special patrons that make the library work appreciated. Can you tell us about one of these interactions that you remember?</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:01:56 John: One, gosh Can I tell you about one. Yeah, I can, but there's so many and I, I always wanted to approach librarianship as saying the people I happen to have an affinity for or like more aren't necessarily better and are certainly not necessarily better and are entitled to receive my best efforts as everyone else that walks in the door. I come back now to pick up books and drop books off because I'm still a reader, read more now than I did when I was working because I have more time to do it. And the guys I see that always say hello to me are Stanley and James ____* who come here with the ARC van that brings the Association of Retarded Citizens to use an outdated term but outdated terms live on an institutional name sometimes. They're the ones to say hey favorite favorite customers or one example. I think of a girl named Shea (spelling of name unknown) who was a bright high school student and I always loved working with bright high school students. She had a leg up on getting a good education because her mom was a teacher in the Prince George public schools and mom may still be a teacher or she may or retired by now too but she came in and said you know I need some help with the history project that I'm working on. And I used to sometimes say to the kids before we even got started okay we'll work on this but I need to find out how much work we're going to do together on this. What do you want to get? You want to get A, B or C.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:04:12 Paul: Or do you just want to make it </li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:04:15 John: And you know kids would laugh because I know that was a realistic question. I'll settle for a B. Okay well we'll do a B level B amount of work on it because you can work hard on history projects. Shay was like no I want to be a history professor. Okay. So over time I was able to work with her on many projects and to teach her how historians approach material that they use as evidence for the historical arguments they're making. How they, when they read from another historian a particular claim that they think is striking. Don't just accept it but say okay but how did you know that. Let me look at the footnotes to that chapter. What was that guy looking at? Let me read what he read. Oh was something from a different historian, what was she thinking? Let me track those down till I get to actual documents. And then decide, oh those claims were all correct or those claims weren't bad attempts to explain what they saw but I got another idea. That's where you become history professor. She teaches at William & Mary. Sometimes you feel really successful.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:06:05 Paul: Yeah, well that is part of the job so we met with special people every day and sometimes. Okay let me move to the next question. Can you tell us about any special memory or anecdote in your work, some fond memory that you have.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:06:23 John: Well I'll tell you something that I hope people find interesting. Well remember I started in the library system in the very early 70s. There were no librarian uses of the computer. And at the front end and no customer uses of the computer at the front end. Because it was 1971 or 1973. Now Prince George's County had always been a pioneer in back end uses of the computer. We were, I think and we certainly had the reputation of being one of the more advanced library systems and using computers for back end work. I think we were the first public library in the US that produced their catalog using computers to manipulate the data. Now those catalogs were printed paperback books. So the public used printed paperback books instead of the card catalog. But it was, computers were used in the back end operations to create the catalog to organize the data in the catalog. And our wizard was a guy named Walter Shih* ,S.H.I.H, Chinese name. He was the computer wizard that, that created that first in the country. Computer generated public catalog. Walter was before that, he was a pipe smoker. You go into his office and the administrative offices that always smelled so good because he smoked a pipe in there. But before that he had been a legend in the bookmobile division because everyone said you know when Walter Shih was here. He kept the easy books on the bookmobile in shelf list order at all times.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:08:23 Paul: Wow.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:08:23 John: None of us even tried shelf list order means they're exactly how they appear in the catalog. Perfect order even though kids are going to come in and grab and rummage and put them all over the place and then he would rearrange them in between stops. There's a little OCD can be a good thing as well as, as well as a challenge. But so back in there. I mentioned when we were talking about the bookmobile we took the we did the circulation by taking a photograph of the person's library card and the cards that were in the pockets of the books. But how we figured out whether things were overdue was computerized. So those photographs went into a unit that used computers to match to check to see whether the items were returned or not. So that was another back end operation that was computerized before computers came to the public. But then eventually, first the librarians got computers to use at the desk. And then we began to have public computer use, the very first public computers. We had one public computer at the Hyattsville branch and it sat on the back counter of the information desk facing out and each member of the public was allowed a 20 minute session. If others were waiting and others were always waiting. These were computers that did not have any graphics. They were what's called a Lynx environment. L Y N X even though that was a pun on L I N K S. Where it was all text based. And you use Gophers because it was developed at the University of Minnesota where they like gophers. Golden Gophers, go go gophers to, to find information in that Lynx environment. And that didn't last very long. Soon enough we realized no this is, this is something they used to give out free Internet accounts to people so that people could decide whether or not they ever wanted to use the Internet again. I don't think very many people decided not. But but then along came GUIs graphic user interfaces and the web as we know it with all the pictures, icons, etc. And we began to have those not only at the desk but also for the public to use and our catalog migrated to that actually computerized and presented by a computer catalog instead of what it had been. And I was the first, I will make this claim, the first person in Prince George's County libraries who said, let's have a computer class. Because I could hear, especially people older than I and this was long enough ago that there were people older than I, uh, older than me. Or didn't know how to use a computer, weren't comfortable using the library catalog because they weren't comfortable using a computer. And so we set up classes. We had them on Saturday mornings. And we, we let people say - we had two classes - I taught one and a colleague taught another. They could say, we want to learn how to use the library catalog on a computer. Or they could say we want to learn how to use the Internet on a computer. They could take both classes</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:12:48 Paul: It was back on the 70s something like that, that was back on the 70s</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:12:53 John: Ohh 80s. Yeah, no, it was 80s. The, the other guy that used to teach and we would trade off, he would do catalog one week, I would do Internet and then we trade off. He he taught himself enough to become our best ever IT guy. His name was Karl McFarland. He designed the library's webpage. I worked with him a little bit on that because he had worked for me. So when he became the IT guy and was designing the library's webpage, I was already used to working with him. But, but we did the first computer classes.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:13:37 Paul: So the first computer class was about how to use the catalog or </li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:13:40 John: How to use the Internet and it and it was about how to physically use a computer because they're mostly older people. People my age, if they worked in many, many kinds of fields, not in every field, but not if they swung a pickaxe or whatever, but learn how to use computers on the job because we had to. And we learned fast because if we had to. People older than me were often no longer on the job and didn't really have to use a computer except the world was going that way. So those classes lasted for a while. And those people were educated old school and I was like among the last people educated old school in this area in the United States where, where you went to grammar schools. Because I had this joke that I would tell the people about the computer, this, this part of what you're doing is case sensitive. And I would explain that that actually doesn't mean what you might think it means if you're educated in the grammar school. It means it depends it matters whether you're using a capital letter or a small letter. I said when I first heard that term case sensitive I went back to my school days and I thought, oh, maybe the computer needs to be addressed in the vocative case: Oh, computer! And these people were old enough that that was funny. The, or familiarly funny. And that lasted for a while and that spread from Hyattsville to, to most of the branches started to do some variation on that. But eventually we saturated that market now we never saturated the market for ESL learners learning the computer. And we kept doing Maria Escobedo primarily and others did Spanish language and Maria could do Spanish and French because she was that talented, computer classes specifically for ESL learners. And that, that lasted, that need lasted longer. But what we found with the regular computer classes is we hit this point where they were counterproductive. And when that came home to me, there was a woman that called, I need to be in a computer class tomorrow. And I'm like the classes already started the next one starts and I need it tomorrow. I'm sorry, you know, that's not how it works. So she calls the director and the director's office says put this woman in the class tomorrow. Okay, she went to the class the next day. She said I got a complaint. I didn't come here for this. I need to make a reservation at a hotel in Antigua. And I need to do it today. That's why I came for the computer class. Oh, okay, well</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:16:55 Paul: So she needs to make a reservation using internet ?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:16:58 John: It’s closing time. But can you come back first thing in the morning and we'll get it done. Yes. Yeah, if I have to, you know, yeah, we'll get it done. We'll get it done by we open at 10 we'll have it done by by 11 o'clock. Is that is, you know, that's the best I can do because I just can't make people stay past nine o'clock today. Okay, yeah. So, but ideas start generating in your mind if you're thinking about what the, yeah, the audiences have fallen off it used to be that we were always full. Now we weren't full, we were just halfway through the class when this lady called. But what if we tried what we're going to call personalized instruction by appointment. So, instead of us saying well we have this computer class, and it starts with mouse aerobics in case you never used a mouse before and then it goes into this and that goes into that. And then the fourth thing in the syllabus is this and what if we said, tell us what you want to learn, we'll figure out who among us is best equipped to do that with you. And we'll, we'll negotiate a mutually agreeable time so that no longer is it going to be what we have a class on Saturday morning and we have a class on Wednesday night. It's going to be what time is good for you. Do I have a person, do I, can I get the person off the desk at that time and,, and make this work for you. And we set it up it was primarily adults because it was, it was going to that adult learners model. The learner tells you what they want to learn. And some people took advantage of it and did like 15 appointments and we eventually put a limit on it, I think of six, you can come back six times and then we've got to spend our resources on some other time with somebody else. But that was a change in how we approached that particular type of programming based on what, how the times had changed how many, many of the old people that wanted to learn had been through the class, at least the ones that lived in our neighborhood. And now people were more likely to have a very specific learning objective that a one sizes fits all class does not fit. So we did personalized instruction by appointment and we made it available to all language, all age groups and and to all languages, you could do personalized instruction in Spanish. Not all languages, in languages that we have staff</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">1:19:40 Paul: That we have staff</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">1:19:41 John: You can do personalized instruction in Spanish or you could be a parent that said well this is something my kids have trouble with in school. I want a personalized session for her to to just practice this and someone from the Children's Department would take that. And that was very, I thought, very brilliant idea. It eventually became part of the library systems offerings and was organized through the web page by someone smarter than me on how to do that sort of thing that sort of, called my PGCMLS Librarian. And that existed right up until the pandemic, the pandemic shut that down because during the pandemic we weren't meeting people one on one across from you know across from a computer even with both of us masked we were observing six feet distance and stuff like that. And I don't know that it's come back since the pandemic because I haven't. I barely came back from the pandemic before I retired.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:20:56 Paul: Yeah. The program is still continuing. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">1:20:58 John It has resumed? It has resumed?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">1:20:59 Paul Yeah. It's most of people that need a, some assistant to try to find a job or try to understand a what…</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:21:08 John: Yeah. And that can help you too. I mean I'm glad you mentioned those trying to find a job because that helped us know that we should that there might be enough people to do a Job Seekers Club which we did at Hyattsville. I don't know if you do that now or not. I know James Taylor has one down at Mount Rainier where people can come at the same time every week. And develop some camaraderie with fellow job seekers and learn from the person who conducts the club who works for the library learn how to do job searches, how to do resumes, how to prepare for interviews etc. And so if you get enough person clusters of personalized instruction or my PGCMLS personalized instructions you can develop another program out of those. So it's the person, the people who are planning programs and that's, it's the direct responsibility of the department head. But any department head worth or his or her salt is listening to everyone that works in the department for what they heard, what they think might be, might go. We were the first library in the county to do resumé classes and they weren't ready for it. The public wasn't ready for it. So they, they, that kind of bombed and then it came back as part of Job Seekers classes and workforce development efforts that are much more enhanced after the latest strategic plan.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:22:56 Paul: Yeah. No right now it's a very popular program because</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:23:00 John: Yeah and it's interesting and sad in a way. It's a very popular program. And the nation is more or less at full employment. Full, full employment still leaves people out. Or it wouldn't be a popular program if full employment really meant everyone that needs a job had a job. There wouldn't be a demand for this.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:23:27 Paul: Yeah. Nice because</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:23:29 John: But I mean we're at the we're at the we have the best rate of employment we've had since I was a little kid.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:23:38 Paul: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Most of the people comes because they need help to not just to create a resume. So, to upload some documents because right now everything is online.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:23:52 John: Everything. So you can't work at a Burger King without going to your website. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">1:23:56 Paul: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah</li> <li style="font-weight:400;"> 1:23:57 John: Actually the one up on University Boulevard - I don't know if that's still open - was one of the last where you could go in and fill out a paper application and give it to the manager. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">1:24:06 Paul: Yeah. So. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">1:24:07 John: But it was both almost 100% Latino employees and managers and 85% Latino customers. So it was doing things the Central American way. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">1:24:23 Paul: Yeah. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">1:24:24 John: After everyone else again I'm sure the overall Burger King organization was always on that manager's case. Why aren't you making people do this through the computer?</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:24:34 Paul: No. If you go to any, any store.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:24:37 John: Yeah.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:24:38 Paul: People send in from the store. They send the people to the library that say ah, that you don't know how to do it. Go to the library.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:24:47 John: Right. Right.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:24:49 Paul: They are people there that can help you to make </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:24:51 John: You want to be a bus driver in the public schools, go to the library</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:24:54 Paul: Yeah. Yeah. And probably some websites are very tricky to use.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:24:58 John: Oh, absolutely.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:25:00 Paul: To submit documents or to try to check my, about your experience or if you have some legal status things like that are very, very. It's not clear for everybody. That's, that's we are supposed to think that.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:25:15 John: Yeah. And there are other barriers to employment that if you develop the right kind of relationship where the person knows you're not just giving them attitude.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:25:32 Paul:Yeah.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:25:32 John: There was a guy that used to come over and over to the Job Seekers and he never had any luck. But he had these horribly twisted teeth and his speech was virtually indecipherable.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:25:49 Paul: Oh my goodness.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:25:50 John: So anytime he got to the point where he actually was speaking to a potential employer, they couldn't understand a word he said.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:25:58 Paul: Yeah, because most</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:25:58 John: I mean, I, you know, I only understood a word he said because I had interacted with him 15 times for an hour at a time.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:26:08 Paul: Yes.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:26:09 John: During that time, it got to the point where I could say, well, you know, </li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:26:12 Paul: Yeah, because</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:26:12 John: part of part of the problem is. You need some dental work so that people will understand your speech better because you're a smart guy. And you tell people the right things, but they don't get what you're saying because the teeth.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:26:28 Paul: Yeah.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:26:28 John: Make it come out. They're not used to listening to your speech pattern.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:26:33 Paul: Yeah, sometimes the</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:26:34 John: Maybe a little while to get up with, to get up with it. And, but, and you only have a little while with these people. You don't have the luxury of going to job, the job interview with the same person 15 times so that they know I'm smart. And he's like, I can't afford it. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">1:26:50 Paul: Yeah. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">1:26:51 John: That's what we do. We figure out where you can get free dental work.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:26:57 Paul: Yeah. The first filter in some interview jobs is a call.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:27:02 John: There's a way. There's a way. There were ways to get free dental work done. And including the sophisticated dental work, not, not just checking for cavities. That's easy. But to get high level dental work done, which was what he basically needed some reconstruction. But that was part of his job seeking that we were able to eventually help with by not being afraid to have him, think god, this guy's an asshole for asking me that, for telling me that, for saying that to me. But to get to the point where he said, Oh, I know this guy's heart is in the right place. So I'm listening to what he says.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">01:27:48 Paul: Yeah. Okay.</li> </ul> * Last name was omitted to keep the person's information private. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Paul Moreno Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed John Krivak Location The location of the interview Hyattsville Library Branch Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Krivak Interview Part 1 Subject The topic of the resource PGCMLS Oral History Description An account of the resource Interview with John Krivak about his experience as a Librarian III in Adult Services in the library system. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource PGCMLS Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Special Collection Staff Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Apr 10, 2024 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" title="In copyright" rel="noreferrer noopener">In copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .Mp3 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Digital audio Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 200012 Adult services book talking Bookmobiles CLIC program extension services immigration services Librarianship Oral History PGCMLS History public libraries https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/85676/archive/files/f3d70f0df19b491c0f733d705b2afac3.jpeg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=AUMBiARl6Zy5AP0%7EcAG66Odizfe6F%7ELyAv23EyTc6%7EP-1dECETNOjWLsgmd55R2kOwqkNHWobz0ag8V2HzDPtdaK0ZsgHg7cExdQ1Zs9Jt6pkajBBU9Ji%7Ej6ZJoR1YDsfT2XNua%7EmMPocndhyQNhsRUzcKy-vI3cwiw86tLNEvbmxXLcW6sTzTM0x01RpoIKpaU1Pqq5zmucNx6bbpiCPkNgdFDWkS2qkP7noue63ul7ND7sg2t1OyCDjQ%7E1sRYIH52QuZ8hZnU9-3P43spN-WJvdwcPcBStBjjf3pAsvvQVKFNPwiqAvdNqgGxCynny-7SOCu71mvrLwz%7Ejv5yvFg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 57d7d19ef3ffd219c381c8e1e44a2aee https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/85676/archive/files/62c807d54c731dd3218aa5cafd7229c5.mp3?Expires=1773878400&Signature=gQgvdIz0sMcbFDokL7amq97a-fr4sMXpA1GV68Ujhp7OKmlIAgBuqISuP2VaqIjoUDJ26W0re70C1Hx4YKYULmBF5BTtydw9R9Hs5gwlAyipNP4GFFv-rZyMgrUIzBoBI9rWtVSHIv89xHF9t4FUBrQG2%7ECHj30DeLc7VYQxM3Np69C6esP%7E473L2kLSWUKL5%7EpaasZbNHgyx82BCS2FIzPcDomm-aNRPML0ybelU-yrcItu88zFMn4HGkuZLEHaUyPM70efBwQhZQI222us9NWXPHMVqYLZg%7EdUxbnx4iYFZpSm1kN2hMTTfUfG8pn1PR1iYq-poPRtf1oqvQc6fg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 58bdd524d3c972cd0ee204ab8af6a249 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Prince George's Memorial Library System Oral History Project Subject The topic of the resource Library System Oral history Description An account of the resource The PGCMLS Oral History Project is an initiative with the goal of documenting the voices and experiences of current and former staff members employed by the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System. This oral history piece is one facet of a large project of presenting and recording the library system’s history comprehensively via photographs, documents, and other primary sources. Established in 1946 in Prince George’s County, PGCMLS’s nearly 80 year history and generations of staff represent decades of institutional memory and service to the communities it serves. These interviews are intended to capture some of these stories and memories for both current and future use. In addition to providing an archive of PGCMLS staff experiences, this collection of oral histories acts as a tool for people interested in library work to hear firsthand accounts of what it is to work in a large public library in a variety of settings and departments. Disclaimer: The digital content exhibited in these collections is presented as documentation and perspectives on history and past events; they may reflect personal memories, opinions, and perspectives that are not necessarily the official position of Prince George’s Memorial Library System or any other Library staff. Some material may contain subject matter or language that may be considered sensitive or upsetting. These collections are copyrighted and are intended for educational purposes. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Special Collections Staff Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available PGCMLS Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource May 5, 2024 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-NC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" title="© Copyright" rel="noreferrer noopener">© Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .WAV Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Digital sound Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data .wav Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 52:20 Min Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Project: PGCMLS Oral History Project Chapter: John Krivak Interview part 2 Date: Apr 10, 2024 Participants: Interviewer: Paul Moreno. Interviewee: John Krivak <ul><li style="font-weight:400;">00:00 Paul: Would you be able to tell us more about the work that Adult Services Department at Hyattsville branch did while you worked there? We have heard that there was extensive outreach work in the community. Could you tell us about that? </li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">00:16 John: Yeah. And the library systems, during my time there was always interested in outreach, officially. And branches were like either eager to jump on that and do a lot of it. Or, oh my god, it's one more thing they're telling us we have to do. It's extra work. What's the minimum we can do to tick that box? And yeah. But I came out of bookmobiles, which was Extension Services, which was outreach. They were administered by one of the great librarians of the generation before me, one of the great African American librarians of the generation before me, Honore Francois. And when I was on bookmobile, not only did we go to the neighborhoods, but we went to Boys Village, which was a juvenile detention center down in Cheltenham. And I was on that assignment with a partner. And another two of the librarians went to the Edgemeade, which was an adult residential center for people with emotional handicaps. And when they disbanded the bookmobiles, one of the things we lost with those services, because those were never picked up by the branches. But so I was always personally dedicated to outreach and found that the Librarian III at Hyattsville was always willing to let me try things, even if they're things that she hadn't thought of. She was never, Oh, well, no, it wasn't my idea. So it won't work. Or it wasn't my idea. So who do you think you are? She was like, Okay, yeah, I see where you're going with that. Give it a try. If it works, it works. It doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't. So we did all different kinds of outreach. And of course, back in those days, the there were three age levels in the large branches, not just two. So instead of adult and children's, there was adult, young adult and children's. And the young adult were primarily doing, their outreach was primarily to the high schools. And was usually in the form of what they used to call booktalking. Where a booktalk is a librarian taking a book, a young adult book, a teen book, could be fiction, could be nonfiction, boiling it down to three minutes summary that make you want to read it. A real art, but I think it's been lost. I don't think the library does booktalking anymore. And I'm not partly because they're no longer separate young adult departments, their children's departments that include service to the high schools, or their adult departments that include service to the high schools. I know Oxon Hill, at least last I heard the their youth services person or teen services person, had moved into their adult department. But she's since retired, Josephine Ford was her name. She was a good woman. So I don't know what they may have reorganized after her retirement.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">04:00 Paul: So that book talks.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">04:00 John: While the young adult librarians went and did book talks at the high schools, we in adult recognized that there was another need that high school students had, some of them, particularly the college bound ones, how to do research. And so we taught research classes for high school students, usually through the history departments. And that, that again, that tied to the Maryland Room, although not necessarily depending on what has or hasn't been retained, always to the Prince George's room. Generations of Northwestern High, high school students did research papers on child labor along the C & O canal. That was up in Montgomery County and Frederick County, not in Prince George's. But we had the resources to make that because there were some really interesting books. </li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">05:01 Paul: Yeah, because it was Maryland Room. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">05:04 John: So the fact that it happened in up the river towards, towards Cumberland, that it happened in, in Montgomery, Frederick, Washington County didn't matter. There was still local history. Kids got interested in that because the whole child labor thing is inherently of interest to kids as a topic. Would you when you're in high school, would you rather think about and research and write about people your age that had to leave school to go and work on canal boats? Or would you rather write about coal miners who are, who are now in my grandparents' day, both my grandfathers had to leave school to go work in the coal mines, but that was not in Maryland, at age 9 and 13. So, there was that kind of outreach research skills for the high school students. We did because part of, part of it was expertise that I developed as far back as working at Oxon Hill. We done did a lot of business related outreach. We would go to our Rotary Clubs, Kiwanis Clubs, whatever to tell the businessmen who went to those meetings to drink and socialize, but would have a 10 minute session with a guest speaker to tell them what we had to offer them because they didn't know. At that time we had a lot more resources, I think, than the library does now in terms of answering practical questions that business people face during conducting, growing, saving from going out of business, instead of conducting a business. So we did that, and then I got more ambitious than I should have been by this time. By this time, I was the III at Hyattsville. As the III at Hyattsville, by saying, hey, I want to do this for the countywide groups, which aren't necessarily in Hyattsville. They might be in Upper Marlboro, they might be in Laurel if they're not a countywide group at the BW Corridor Chamber of Commerce. I want to do this for a bigger audience. And I talked to the director at the time, before they called them CEOs, they were library directors.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">07:44 Paul: Yeah, library directors</li> <li style="font-weight:400;"> 07:45 John: I still think of directors and said, you know, I want to do this, but are you willing to come with? Because they're going to say yes, if I ask them using your name, more often than they're going to say yes, if I ask them using my name. So, you know, you, you come, you do your thing. And then I'll do the, here's the sources. Here's the sources that you really need. Here's, you know, and she said, sure, you know, let's do that. So we did that for about two years in different, different groups. And I said</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">08:33 Paul: So what was the </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">08:34 John: I think, I think this could be a full-time job for somebody. I'm doing this and I'm doing everything else I'm doing. And I think this could be a full-time job for somebody to, to organize these kinds of things. And she said, well, yeah, do you want to? And I said, no, I want to be a Librarian III at Hyattsville, but I know a guy, I know a guy. He, in fact, he's the guy that replaced me at Oxon Hill. I know a guy that would be perfect for it, Mark Robinson. So he was our first business librarian. He reported to, through a very short line within the administrative offices to the director. And so that outreach went from being a Hyattsville branch to a county wide to a specific position and held on for a while. And then they eliminated it. And again, you hit a lean budget here and things get lopped. Things that weren't necessarily unsuccessful get lopped because you can't afford to do everything. And so that, I wish that had come back under our last strategic plan and it did not. I think that a techmobile with some books with a business librarian that went to the businesses, to the industrial parks, to the business centers would be a great way of doing outreach. But that didn't make the cut in the last strategic plan. That's the last one I'll have input into. For what it's worth. So we did business oriented. We did outreach, of course, the most and probably the thing I'm most proud of is the outreach we did to the immigrant communities. And this went back to shortly after I got to Hyattsville. You know, when I was at Oxon Hill, there was a little pocket that had been there since the Second World War of Tagalog speakers that lived down in Fort Washington, but they were within the Oxon Hill library service area. But when I got up to Hyattsville, it's like, man, there's lots of people that would benefit, who's teaching the classes. And of course, we found out there were classes, there were English classes. Are those English classes coming to the library? Can we get them to come to the library? And this was at the time of the so-called boat people who were heavily present in the Hyattsville service area, especially the apartments down in what's called Chillum, down along Chillum Road, uh, Vietnamese and certain degree Cambodians and even some Laotians and Hmongs, people that had fled Southeast Asia because of the war and spent a couple years usually in refugee camps in Thailand and then eventually found their way here. So they escaped in the boats from their country of origin to Thailand because you could get there by boat and it was organized to bring over refugees from Thailand to the United States. Then they were the boat people. And…so I knew this guy that I had met at the library and then he revealed that he teaches English as a second language to the adults from that community. And I'm like, okay, well, they can use the library if we make them want to use the library. Can you bring one of your classes by and let me talk to them and let them see the library? They'll…and he said yeah, let's try it. So I did that in 77, the first year I was at Hyattsville, and after the first time I did it, he said, you know, that could have been good, except you don't know how to talk to people that don't speak English. Let me give you some tips and we’ll try this again. If it seems like you are saying one word at a time, you might be speaking slowly enough. So think of, think, you know, think one word at a time, speak one word at a time, your clarity is great, your speed is way too fast. Let me tell you also, when people are at the level of class that I'm teaching right now, everything happens in the present tense. You are using future tenses, you are using past participles, all of that stuff is harder than it needs to be for people to understand what you're saying. So change your, think about your sentences, change your sentences, make them present tense. You said to the people, when you come to the library again, to my class, when is a question word. Who, what, when, where? Question words. So as soon as they hear you say, when you come to the library again, they think you're asking them when they are coming to the library again, and they don't know, they don't know, you put them on the spot. Say next time you come, that's your way of keeping it in the present tense and avoiding the question. So he gave me all these tips on how to do it better, and I've taught them to many people over the years. Over the years it came to the point where we had more bilingual library staff than we ever had before. We had Las Dos Marias at Hyattsville, Maria Martinez* followed by Maria Escobedo*. Back in the early days, there were total three Spanish speaking librarians in the county, there was one in Beltsville named Luz, and then it became more beyond Spanish. But there's so many languages that there's always an opportunity for a monolingual English speaking librarian to learn communication skills, to speak with people from any language in ways that can be understood. It's just hard work. You have to listen to yourself. If you use library jargon, don't say, oh, don't use it. Say, no, I use that because that's what we call it, we call it the circulation desk. Explain it</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">16:22 Paul: Yeah</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">16:23: John: because it doesn't mean anything to say the circulation desk. But if you explain what it means, then it means something. Don't say…don't use idioms, because everyone uses idioms. Listen to yourself, and when you use an idiom, stop and explain it. And even give lessons on idioms, let people guess what a certain idiom means. What does it mean when I say, I'm going green? Where the library is going green. So that kind of thing, I think that the person who still works at Hyattsville that did a really good job of learning how to do monolingual English ESL conversations is Susie Misleh*. Yeah.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">17:34 Paul: Yeah, good tips for the ESL services. Okay, so let me move on. So from branch reports, we also noticed that Hyattsville library had a program called CLIC Project. Can you tell us about more about it? </li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">17:48 John: Yes, I can. And that was actually a system project. It wasn't initial-, initiated by the Hyattsville branch. That was an Honore Francois project. And so I, you know, the kind of branding name, CLIC!, and you're supposed to pronounce the exclamation point as if it were okay, so that things click in people's mind that the library has information about the community, it actually had three parts to it. One was something we were already doing, rebranding what we already had, we're doing, in references, information about the community. I mean, it's not like before the Clic! Project, if someone came in and said, how do I get a pothole fixed, we'd say, well, gee, that's not what we do, you know, we'd always know this is who you call to get a pothole to report a pothole and get them to come out and fix it, etc. So the Community Library Information Center is what CLIC! stood for. So part of it was rebranding that part of our reference service that gave information about needs in the community. Part of it was really spending time and energy on beefing up materials designed for use by adults who are learning to read English. And that was done, not necessarily with the ESL community in mind, as much as with adult illiterates who were born and raised in the United States, because there was still, now people question the figures that were thrown around back then as to the extent of adult illiteracy, but there's still some degree of people who go to school and fail to learn to read. And that's a barrier that can follow them through their life. But some people realize it, just like people go back and get GEDs that never graduated from high school, people that never learned to read by the third grade and stop paying attention to school by the sixth grade and are having trouble even keeping manual labor jobs, something clicks.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">20:18 John: I want to learn to read. So, Adult New Reader collection was built. And when I started working with the people that were working with the boat people, we actually had the commitment to go out and find dual language dictionaries for Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, and Hmong. And you know what, they didn't exist. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">20:53 Paul:Yeah</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">20:54: John: But there was an organization that was affiliated with Georgetown where I’d gone called the Center for Applied Linguistics. We sold them the idea of publishing those four dictionaries. And then they did exist. And we were probably the first public library to have them. So there was an Adult New Reader component that became an ESL collection de facto, just because so many more people learning English as a second language have come into the county since then. And the third component was a directory of organizations in Prince George's County, which was a printed directory updated annually of nonprofit organizations in Prince George's County. So it was a local directory that did not exist. And that was produced not by the branch staff, but by two women who worked in Honore’s office and in Administrative Office’s, they did all the verifying the contact information for… we fed them some ideas of who they should contact, but they did all, the all of the hard work of verifying and keeping up to date. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">22:14 Paul: Yeah</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">22:15 John: They would go back to these organizations four times a year. And so just, you know, just want to go over the information we have is it still, you know, do you still call yourself this? Is this still what you do? Is there anything you have added in your services? Is there anything you used to do that you don't do anymore? Is your phone number still this? You know, is your address still this? Are you still on such and such a bus route? Whatever. And this was a great directory. And it was actually sold to the public at the, at the branches and used heavily by all the reference desks at the branches. And it lasted for a while. And then for some reason, again, probably that year's budget, we stopped doing it. And part of the excuse for stopping doing it is, well, people are looking that stuff up on the internet. No, you can't. That had a section with all the HOCs in Prince George's County. You know what an HOC is? </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">23:18 Paul:No. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">23:19 John: Okay, if you buy a house in many communities, there's a homeowners coalition or whatever. There's a, it's a quasi governmental thing, because they have some authority over what you can and can't do with your own residence.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">23:33 Paul:Ohh </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">23:35 John: But it's not the government. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">23:38 Paul: It’s a community resource</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">23:38 John: It's you, you sign, you know, allegiance to them when you buy the house, or you're not allowed to buy the house. And so there is a state agency, not a county agency that registers them. And then doesn't publish a directory of them. Can you find out from that state agency, the HOCs? Yeah, if you want to spend a week, could you find out from the directory of organizations? Like that. So, you know, people say, Well, this is, you know, this part of reference is, you know, no one needs that anymore. It's all on the internet. No, it's not organized the same way. It's not structured the same way. There's not the understanding of how and where to get to it. </li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">24:28 Paul: No, probably a lot of things are right now on the internet, but the people don't have the skill to find the correct information online </li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">24:37 John: Or it's in there, but it's in 15 different places. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">24:41 Paul: Yes. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">24:42 John: Whereas when there was such a thing as the library produced directory of organizations in Prince George's County, it was one place, one place that you went. </li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">24:52 Paul: Yeah, you don't have the time to gather all the information. Right now, an adult services librarian in New Carrollton is trying to make some directories. </li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">25:03 John Right, right, right. Nici*, Yeah</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">25:04 Paul: Yeah. So she takes that work to verify numbers, websites, because the website changes quickly. </li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">25:13 John: Wouldn't it be nice if the library system officially supported that the way it once supported the CLIC! Project?</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">25:23 Paul: Yeah, no, that is unofficial. It's just a project, a personal project of Nici. Okay. Can you talk about the art and skill, you're very famous on that, of reference and how you approach it through your career?</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">25:42 John: Well, I think in some ways, I've begun to do that through my answers to some of the other questions. What I haven't talked about very much, I said you have to listen to people and figure out what they need. There's an art, and it's not one I invented. It was invented by library school professors around the time I was in library school. So there's an art of negotiating a reference question from what the person first says to what they really mean, to what it's actually possible to do, and then coming to an agreement of this is what we'll try, this is what we'll work on. There used to be an old commercial, and it was set on a bookmobile. A woman came in, the bookmobile librarian's name was Marge. A woman comes in and says, Marge, I need a book on biology. Marge, being the best there ever was, opens a little desk drawer, pulls out a laxative. It wasn't that easy. But that was a real example of where someone might start in telling you what they were going for and what they actually needed to know. So that art of negotiating a reference question is very, very important. And it was taught to me in library school. It was taught officially by PGCMLS to all the information staff for many years under the rubric of BRS, Better Reference Service, or Basic Reference Service. Basic Reference Service can be better Reference service of how to talk to people, how to ask open questions, how to paraphrase and say, well, I think I'm hearing you say that that you need this. Is that right or is that not quite what you're going for? Well, that's not quite, but let's just talk about that a little bit more. Of then when you get to the end of things saying, did that really answer your question? Does that do it for you? Do we need to keep going? So there's that, which the library system used to officially teach for many years. I think that they do cover that in the LATI* program. And so anyone who's for those who aren't insiders, anyone who's hired as a Library Associate that hasn't been to a library school is required to take the LATI program, which is a statewide program. And for a while, Honore Francois, who I mentioned before, was one of the teachers in that. That was after my time. I was in the very second ever LATI. They used to call it the Walker Workshops because there was this guy from South Carolina named Tom Walker that used to run, that ran it. And it was invented the year before, the last year I was a page at New Carrollton the year before I started working on the bookmobile. And so they used, they kept teaching it there, but they no longer required, it used to be required that any Librarian I who was not required by the state to take LATI took an internal course on better reference service. Several of us were part-time instructors for that for over the years.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">29:40 Paul: Yeah, right now</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">29:41 John: So that's a big part of it. The other big part of it is kind of what I alluded to when I said, well, you know, not everything's on the internet, or it's everything may be on the internet, but the best way to find things isn't always on the internet. And if it is, it's not often even well-constructed web searching. It's knowing how information is structured, who gathers information. I want to know how much people spend on pizza in Prince George's county every year. Well, who would know that? The county wouldn't know it. They don't, they don't keep track of that. Is there a trade association that uses some market research and some formulas? Okay, let's look at who are the trade associations that deal with pizza, pizza restaurants, et cetera. So thinking through who would collect that, why would they collect that? And sometimes the answer is no one in their right mind would collect that because it would take this much effort and yield so little result. So sometimes you got to the bad news with customers of, well, we're just not going to be able to do that. But that kind of understanding this, the structure of information spheres is part of mastering reference work, and an underrated and hard to explain part. But it's there.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">31:29 Paul: Okay, what words of advice would you give someone who was starting out and wanting to acquire and maintain strong skills in the area of reference? </li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">31:39 John: Okay, well, it depends. If they work for me directly, two things are going to happen just as part of their job. When they first came into my department, I had ready exercises that I developed over the years that every new person got to do, every new person got to do my exercises on how to find legal information. And that would go through the different levels of government, county, municipal, state, federal, would go through what the sources are, would go through how to figure out who did what, and then how to find it, and would go through the difference between statutory law and case law. Because we used to have a little law library at the Hyattsville Library. We didn't by the time that it was torn down. So we don't here now. But there would be business reference exercises. There would be a variety of things that I kept in my drawer. I think I gave most of them to Hannah* when I retired, that you would use with a new person. But also everyone, new, old, in between, I would do monthly reference exercises, reference questions, question of the month, question of the month. This is what someone's looking for. They heard there was a ghost in Old Hyattsville, somewhere along Oglethorpe Street. What's the story? There's a way to find that answer. </li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">33:29 Paul: Yeah. Sometimes Hannah makes some exercises like that. So just throw out a question for the whole area and try to gather information from everybody</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">33:37 John: And just let everybody answer them. And you better have a, you better know the answer yourself before you put it out there, or know an answer, a way of answering. You're going to find out different ways of answering, because different people have different approaches which can work or not. And that's part of it. Well, could we look at this way? Could we look at it that way? Was there once a newspaper called the Gazette that actually covered that part of the world at that level of human interest? Does that still exist? No. Is there an archive anywhere on the internet? Yeah. Is that searchable? Okay. So if a person did not work for me, I had some opportunity over the years to advise people throughout the system, primarily during the years in which the Maryland Ask Us Now!* service operated. And I had the honor of being among the group that organized that service. That was a 24 hour, seven day a week, because we partnered with international partners, live online chat service for reference, for reference work. And we started one year in July with a guest speaker. She came down from New Jersey, which had a statewide public library service, chat service. That wasn't 24/7, but they became a partner of ours. And she spoke to, we invited people from across different libraries. It was public, there was college, there was school, there was special. Then after that meeting, which got everybody all excited, let's do this. 10 of us were the committee to make it happen. We started working on that in July. February of the next year we opened. We hope that was like the best committee ever. I've never, I've been on a lot of committees. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">35:53 Paul: Yeah. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">35:54 John: No one got that much stuff done in nine months.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">35:57 Paul: Yeah in the system, there's a lot of committees</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">36:00 John: We had to figure out who we could partner with. We had to figure out what software we were going to use. We had to figure out how we were going to get the grant money for it, because it was primarily grant money. We had to, so the libraries that joined only had to commit staff time. They didn't have to commit actual budget dollars. We had to figure out, you know, all the details of, and we went live in eight months after we started working on it. I had a special role on that committee. I was not the chair of it. That was a guy named Joe Thompson, who at that time worked for Baltimore County Public Libraries. He's been elsewhere. He's been director at places by now. But I was the person that brought each meeting to a close by saying, yeah, now we've all listened to each other and we've heard a lot of good ideas, but we got to get something done. Let's turn those into some action assignments for the next, for the next month. And who's going to do this? Who's going to do this? Who's going to do this? And so I was the enforcer that made meetings not be unproductive. So that was, I was very proud of that. But after that service opened, I was also the Prince George's liaison to it. So I got a chance to look at every question asked by a Prince George's customer to the whole worldwide group and every question answered by a Prince George's librarian from the whole worldwide group of customers. And to coach up a lot of people on reference work by seeing with a transcript in front of me, how they approached a particular question, to praise when praise was, was all that was needed. And you don't forget to do that if you're a good supervisor. I wasn't really their supervisor. I was their coach, more or less. But supervisors should be coaches as part of their role. But also to say when someone could have done better, that was really good for how far it went. But think about what would happen if you had done this. And so in general learning, general coaching, I was never Bobby Knight, to never, never threw a chair at anybody. I wanted to sometimes, but never did. And so, but the way I started out, also, I would advise other people who didn't work for me to start out, although it was better advice back in my day because it was a better newspaper back in my day, to to read the Washington Post every day, read all of it.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">38:54 Paul: Wow. Really?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">38:55 John: Yeah, if you don't, if you never read the business section, because you don't care about it, read the business section, read every article. If you never read when they talked about the fashion industry, because you don't care about it, read all the fashion articles in the style section. The Post isn't as good a newspaper as it used to be. They've cut a lot of, they've cut a lot of their sections out, but it's still good advice. What else to do with that? Say you read an article in the post, and it's about how some states are strengthening their building codes in reaction to climate change. But it doesn't mention Maryland at all. Make up your own reference question. What is Maryland doing? Or you're going to find out, Maryland doesn't have a state building code. It leaves it up to the county. So then you, of course, what does Prince George's County use for their building code? That's basic information that it's awfully good to know if someone walks into that information desk and asks you a question about the building code, that it's the county adopts these codes that are made by associations of code administrators, and then amends them when the county council likes to, feels like it, in a certain section of the county ordinances. </li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">40:28 John: And then you can go on to look at those and see if the newest addition has things that you can attribute to being a reaction to climate change. That's heavy duty reference librarianship. </li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">40:46 Paul: Yeah that is a very complex question</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">40:46 John: That's how you get really good at it is make up hard questions before they throw them at you. Because they ain't pitying you. If they come in and they ask us and you're like, well, I don't know. I never really thought about the building code. They're like, well, what the hell are you doing here? I want to know.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">41:06 Paul: Yeah, like I said before, they are very demanding in that kind of thing.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">41:10 John: So, and they have their right to be, you know, whether their taxes really come to us or not.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">41:16 Paul: Okay, in your opinion, what makes public libraries important in our communities?</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">41:21 John: And again, I'm not going very much new, but I'll see if I can go a little bit deeper. I already talked about community building when we talked about special collections, but that's true of all library services, not just the special collections. Special collections pin that community building on knowledge of local history but the community building can be anything that brings us together, all the programs we do, all the materials we collect. So, because our motive is not a profit motive, we're not unless we artificially make it, some stand in for profit that really isn't. And say, well, we're going to go, at one point it used to be, everything was, we would be able to quote you on the first day of each month, what the circulation in the branch had been for the previous month. You can't do that anymore, because it's not an artificial value now of, you're better if you had 51,000 and they had 50. We always had the highest one by a little bit over. So you can artificially declare a profit motive, a quasi profit motive, but in real life, no, when a person comes to us, we're not figuring, well, what's in it for us, we're just figuring what's in it for them. And that's what makes it a community building institution. It enables people to participate as citizens, as informed citizens, it enables people to fulfill themselves as human beings by providing access to literature, access to information, access to community activities. At a deeper level, because I like to think about things deeply, there's this concept called entropy. Came out of physical sciences really. And it's, it was the observation that over time, systems tend to wear down. Systems that operate at a certain high level, over time, the level at which they operate decreases. And that's, that's called the law of entropy came out of physical sciences. But then people started to apply it to communication science, and therefore to societies generally, and see the same things over time. Social groupings tend to erode, to wear down to what happened to the Mayans, what happened to the Romans, et cetera. </li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">44:26 John: The main way in communication science that one combats entropy is by information. Information replaces structures that are eroding, reinforces structures that are eroding. We do information. We did, I did information, partly to combat entropy, to make the, to make the community not erode. So that's, that's, that's way deep, but think about it. </li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">45:13 Paul: Okay, yeah. Good. So finally, is there anything that we didn't ask you about today that you want to share, some probable experience that we didn't get to?</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">45:27 John: Well, I kind of saved this because it could have been part of the last answer. But one of the other things that a library can do is it can encourage innovation. Everybody prizes innovation. Well, we got to keep progressing. We got to have new ideas. To me, innovation comes when two things happen. When the innovator has a thorough understanding of how things are and have been and when an innovator synthesizes that with a new idea of how things might be. The deeper and more sophisticated a materials collection a library maintains, the more innovation it fosters. Why? Well, the thorough understanding of how things are and have been, that comes from the hump. If you think of information as a hump with a long tail. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">46:37 Paul: 8Okay. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">46:48 John: The new ideas are out there in the long tail. What they call outside the box thinking. Okay, the box has, and you got to know what's in the box before you start bringing ideas from outside the box or they don't, they don't synthesize right. A library that does what Prince George's did during the last decade of my service cuts off the long tail in its materials collection. So where do the new ideas come from? Where do the outside the box ideas come from? We used to judge books to use a shorthand for vehicles that render information whether they’re books or DVDs or websites or whatever by what information was in them and develop expertise in knowing what information is in them. We went from that to saying, oh, we want to be data driven. Okay, there's nothing wrong with being data driven. But it's not a good excuse for cutting off the long tail. So we said, we will make an algorithm. Algorithms are magic. This is where artificial intelligence isn't going to take us.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">48:03 Paul: Yeah</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">48:04 John: We will make an algorithm that judges books not by the content of the book, but by its turnover rate. And we've used that algorithm to get rid of books. They were bought and paid for books, so it's not budget. And say, well, if it doesn't get checked out X number of times over X period of time, get rid of it. And we've seen the library collections shrink from. At one time we had 160,000 or so volumes in adult, in Hyattsville’s adult collection, I bet we don't have more than 50,000 now. So that's a significant, that's a significant amount </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">48:51 Paul: Significant amount</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">48:52 John: of ideas that were in the long tail, where they only get looked at once in a while that we've cut. And just look at kids and George Orwell, bright kids gravitate towards reading Orwell. We provide Animal Farm*. We provide 1984*. We used to provide Road to Wigan Pier, Down and Out in Paris and London, Homage to Catalonia, everything. Some of those are where Orwell's long tail ideas were buried. We no longer have that sitting there tempting a kid. You can get it on Marina* for somebody, but that's different, especially for kids. Kids are buried now in instant gratification, but if you have this stuff there, and you got to say, oh, you know, read one more Orwell, read, read this one next. That's where they may find the long tail idea and start Jacobin Magazine.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">50:08 Paul: Okay, yeah, yeah, it's no way to think out of the box if we don't have access to the information and the sources of the knowledge. And it's no way to try to understand the algorithm if you don't get access to that information. And the information had to be public. And that is the reason that the public libraries are here. </li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">50:32 John: Yeah, I just, I regret the downsizing of the collection. And anytime the library has ever, in my experience, asked people through surveys, what do you want from the library? There's only ever been one number one answer.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">50:58 Paul: What was the answer? </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">50:58 John: More books. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">51:00 Paul: More books, yeah.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">51:02 John: And, you know, people have looked at that and said, well, that that answer doesn't count because that's the old way of thinking about libraries. Doesn't mean it's the wrong way of thinking about libraries. It means it's the way people think about them. Who are you to say that's the old way and therefore it doesn't count? Why did you ask? I don't want to say too much about that because I can get on a hobby horse and be more negative than I should be. There's still lots and lots that people can learn at every Prince George's County Library and lots of good staff that are ready to introduce it and lots of new stuff that you can pick up off the internet. I mean, using the library magazine databases now compared to when we had 300 and some magazines physically is night and day. I mean, we have access to way more information there. But I like books. So does the public.</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">52:12 Paul: Okay. So thank you for being with us, John. So it was a wonderful time. Thank you for share your experience. </li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">52:17 John Thank you. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">52 :19 Paul: Okay. Bye-bye.</li> </ul> Notes: * Maria Escobedo: Former Librarian I at the Hyattsville Library * Susie Misleh: Library Associate II at the Hyattsville Library * Nicola (Nici) Ray; Librarian I at New Carrollton Library * LATI: Library associate training institute * Hannah Erickson Librarian II at the Hyattsville Library * Animal Farm: Novel by George Orwell * 1984: Novel by George Orwell * Marina: Maryland Interlibrary Loan Program Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Paul Moreno Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed John Krivak Location The location of the interview Hyattsville Library branch Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Krivak Interview Part 2 Subject The topic of the resource PGCMLS Oral History Description An account of the resource Interview with John Krivak about his experience as a Librarian III in Adult Services in the library system. Part two of two. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource PGCMLS Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Special Collections Staff Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Apr 10, 2024 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" title="In Copyright" rel="noreferrer noopener">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .Mp3 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Digital audio Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 200012 Adult services book talking Bookmobiles CLIC program extension services immigration services Librarianship Oral History PGCMLS History public libraries Readers' Advisory reference special collections https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/85676/archive/files/186aba6bed8f24acfc427d9b874abb1d.jpeg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=U0a188Qb70cC1M5EL4gfVr36TQw25nmEYAfN88uaT3nJzFEEc3OzQk9yhaKYP4azbs5u-PwYXRhVpQDtaDgb5K8RsqzGphcJypRbW3yW0ZDdy4B85j7QKDalAOAXfhEWBQKABngXs6u1%7E1iAVLkOsJ0iM09exNnhslCFnmP%7Efa5%7EPzIVG6ZIAJCYP2IwqbZK-xotrdEDkNqRoWaCc7JYWsT8zfLGmMDVbY6GdMj7mpSlEVLC5lYbSPfVBNH50uodZPm1JEQcglpDFYwwckgDO3izKB5dH28v1nap1qgKH-uZST2sFihJZtpPnlIDMD%7EIQRnILXj6ccki8M49XAfJiw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 78fd89b2f3210cd84e7ef6a90aa75374 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/85676/archive/files/d37271ab9951207be19f2387f80c5454.mp4?Expires=1773878400&Signature=f8sVIJW%7EQkXkn07CpHs5T9ufx52J6mwUmWsgxNiMIOOF8cGIe2RDVX42r8yAg4iDqGO3aw-A9-iU3zC-MTU8%7E6ytscw6hUbdhsOn3NlFuqfBvNUsNO4rCDG8klmhz3WEJtX%7EBbfXNYLTpFYRk96%7EV4ekRSsvMH7iQEHMpBH2FD72N0S0XAvkVjouSKdaEThXwT1xcvtMt0jRsKaKUiuFyGQedw-33FyNnxN5R1snp2xzuJ2Z7VjlbmhNXOxgLpM0LEoM8nA7VVtEBFbsb7Nc4XbI8zf4a3CoSDW2c2kfZ5BI67IxzQOPFacq1N-TaarCZ9YjocJlM8lNmrojyx5WXA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM d2a80d2235c2a484b0bb207f3a490426 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Prince George's Memorial Library System Oral History Project Subject The topic of the resource Library System Oral history Description An account of the resource The PGCMLS Oral History Project is an initiative with the goal of documenting the voices and experiences of current and former staff members employed by the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System. This oral history piece is one facet of a large project of presenting and recording the library system’s history comprehensively via photographs, documents, and other primary sources. Established in 1946 in Prince George’s County, PGCMLS’s nearly 80 year history and generations of staff represent decades of institutional memory and service to the communities it serves. These interviews are intended to capture some of these stories and memories for both current and future use. In addition to providing an archive of PGCMLS staff experiences, this collection of oral histories acts as a tool for people interested in library work to hear firsthand accounts of what it is to work in a large public library in a variety of settings and departments. Disclaimer: The digital content exhibited in these collections is presented as documentation and perspectives on history and past events; they may reflect personal memories, opinions, and perspectives that are not necessarily the official position of Prince George’s Memorial Library System or any other Library staff. Some material may contain subject matter or language that may be considered sensitive or upsetting. These collections are copyrighted and are intended for educational purposes. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Special Collections Staff Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available PGCMLS Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource May 5, 2024 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-NC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" title="© Copyright" rel="noreferrer noopener">© Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .WAV Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Digital sound Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data .wav Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 43:48 min Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Paul Moreno Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Kofi Bart-Martin Location The location of the interview Hyattsville Branch LIbrary Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound roject: PGCMLS Oral History Project Chapter: Kofi Bart-Martin Interview Date: Mar 6, 2024 Participants: Interviewer: Paul Moreno. Interviewee: Kofi Bart-Martin. 00:05 Paul: Today is March 6th, 2024, at the Hyattsville Branch Library of the Prince George's County Memorial Library. My name is Paul Moreno, Librarian I, and I'm here with Kofi Bart-Martin, Library Associate II, at the Sojourner Truth Room. We are recording an interview with Kofi as part of the PGCMLS Oral History Project. Welcome Kofi. 00:27 Kofi: Thank you very much. 00:28 Paul: Ok, Let me ask you, could you introduce yourself and tell us a little about yourself, your roots, where you start to work, what are your preferred readings, whatever you want to say? 00:43 Kofi: Good. Thank you for that. I'm Kofi Bart-Martin. I was born in Ghana, and I have had so many incarnations. I went to school in Ghana, trained as a teacher, went back to the university, then came to the U.S. I was still very young. I didn't even have a single gray hair, came to the U.S. to study for graduate school, and originally I studied the religions: theology, philosophy and religion, so I was coming to get my PhD. and go back to teach in Ghana at the university, and then I got stuck in America doing all kinds of things. I taught in an Afrocentric school in Washington, D.C. I taught languages and social studies. I used to teach, there was a weekend program at Howard University Divinity School that I used to teach Hebrew scriptures to them. I've done my own business. I worked in distributing. I've done all kinds of things, and I kept going back to school. I end two Masters degree that I have paper to show for it but I did about three other Masters. I finished the coursework. I never did my comps to get my degree, and then I started a Ph.D. I didn't have money, so I abandoned it. But then I came into the library system in 2000, December 17th. They interviewed me at Old Hyattsville, which AO was, at the Old Hyattsville branch. They interviewed me, and about two hours later, they called me and offered me a position at the Oxon Hill branch to be part of the Sojourner Truth Room because of my background, and I said, I'd love it. Since then, I've been at the Oxon Hill branch and at the Sojourner Truth Room. So this is basically part of me. 03:31 Paul: Okay, so you have a lot of experience teaching in the university, so but can you tell us about your early experiences working in the library, or this is your first time working in a library? 03:43 Kofi: When I was a student in college in Ghana, I was a student librarian. An American librarian had come to reorganize our college library, and I was her assistant in helping reorganize the library. So when I came for the interview in 2000, I told them about that. They said, good, so you have library experience. And I said, yes. So basically, I had that experience before I even came to this country. 04:24 Paul: So you have to sort the collection over there, or something related to the catalog, or what was your experience? 04:30 Kofi: Yeah, Basically, we were, we were changing the catalog and system. Those who set it up had a different catalog and system, but our new librarian from America wanted to make it simpler, I think probably it was Library of Congress, but those days I wasn't so versatile with the Library of Congress system. But she wanted to make it an easier system, so she used Dewey, the decimal system. So that's my first encounter with Dewey, the decimal system, and so we were changing everything. We didn't have a computer, so everything we wrote down and then sorted the books according to that. 05:29 Paul: Yeah, I remember when I was in the college, it was the same. So it's more related to Dewey, but all the collection was in little cards that we need to go to the reference room and try to find what is the title, what is the order, and try to find the book that we are looking for in that little cards. Good. Ok, good. So, what is the most, what is the most challenging aspect of working in adult service? 05:57 Kofi: I love working in adult services. It's more fun that way because intellectually you can relate to people, but it also changes from branch to branch. When I came into the system, it was system-wide, so system needs came first. So they used to ask for subs from any library. Most people didn't want to come to the south, but I lived right here in Hyattsville, and so any time any of the northern branches needed a sub, and they brought a sub request to Oxon Hill, and I said, I'll go. And so by the time I was six months in the system, I had subbed at so many of the northern branches. And those days we used to have Staff Day in the evening, and it was a time of fellowship and eating. And so many people knew me, and so somebody said, you must have been in this library for a long time. And I said, no, I've only been here for six months. And she said, how do all these people know you? And I said, if I come to your branch, you'll know Kofi has been there. So, down at Oxon Hill and compared to somewhere like Bowie or Laurel or Hyattsville, because right now the Hyattsville area, many immigrants have moved to this area. But when I first moved to this area, down where I live, West Hyattsville, there were mostly white people who lived there. But then as the immigrant community started moving there, included a large Latino community, most of the white people moved away from the area. We used to have Koreans there. They even had a church in West Hyattsville, but they also sold their church and moved to Rockville. So that is the movement of the people. So those branches, in terms of the intellectual challenge, challenge you as a librarian to search for information through reference work, it was more exciting. Whereas down at Oxon Hill, it was not at that high level, but it was in terms of your ability to help customers seek the information and sort it out and help them move it to wherever they want to. So that's the difference between the system as I came into reach. 09:17 Paul: If someone is interested in working in libraries or adult services, what would you say to encourage them to start their career? 09:29 Kofi: It's often people have come to me and I say, how do you get a job here? And I said to them, well, never worry about the type of job. Do you have a college degree? Some will say, yes, that's good. If they don't have a college degree, some say, oh, I'm still going to college. I said, you know, we have, depending on our schedule, we have pages and we have clerical aides and we have clerical assistance. Those are high school basis for employment. But then if you have a college degree, and a library and library associate position is not open, you can still come through the clerical aid or clerical assistant position because when there are openings, they advertise it first internally. And if they don't find anything, then they advertise it externally. And so, and then in the meantime, know how to organize and if you have customer service experience, it helps in your interview because some of you taught class or worked in the daycare center dealing with people. It helps you interview that you can easily transfer those skills into the job place and be sharp on your feet as they interview you to answer those questions by adapting your experience to the question. Okay, so a few people who asked me, got jobs in the system. 11:29 Paul: What words of advice would you give someone who was starting out and wanting to follow the current path similar to yours, for example, to someone that immigrated or someone that wants to start a professional path here in America because it's difficult for people as an immigrant to start a professional path. So, tell us about your experience? 12:02 Kofi: Okay, when I came into the system, we had a few immigrants, but not that many. The manager at Beltsville was from the Caribbean. We had somebody from Ghana who was the circulation supervisor at Largo, and I was at the Oxon Hill branch at the Sojourner Truth Room. We were the only literally and then we started getting some Latinos and some Asians in the system. And so, it's all your willingness and openness to deal with people because people will infuriate you. Some people will insult you. Whenever new younger librarians come to the Oxon hill branch, they often ask me, people tell you the Oxon Hill branch is very difficult. How come you’ve survived there so long? And I say, it's not that it's a difficult place. It depends on you, the person, because you don't come to work to take things personally. I don't go to work to make friends. I'm friendly with everybody in the branch, but nobody is my friend that, oh, let's go and hang out here. No, but I'm very friendly with everybody in the system, they know me, people who have been here, they know me. And so, whenever they see Kofi is here, Kofi is here, they see it. And so, some people say, well, I say, how did they know you? And I said, I make them laugh. You see? And it is not easy coming in and just trying to throw your weight about. You have to be humble to learn, one, If you are humble to learn, now, computers came after I had grown up. I learned people over the years when I'm teaching people, when we do the computer classes for people. And they asked me, how do you know so much about computers? Did you study computers? No. But those days, when the kids come to the library, between 2002 and 2005, I spent a year and a half at Bladensburg, and six months at Glenarden, and when they were renovating the Oxon Hill branch. And kids will come and I'll be walking around, and I see them doing something, and I go, how did you get there? And they show me, I learned a lot about computers from kids. And then, as soon as I walk away from there, I go and sit at the staff computer, but nobody is coming. And I say, okay. Then I take notes. That's how I got to know a lot about computers that people often think I’m a computer geek. No. I learned a lot of people watching people asking questions. I say, so that's basically some of the things that if you come, you are humble enough, and don't think you know it all. From others, ask for help. Always ask for help. It won't kill you. It will never kill you to ask for help. And then if somebody knows more than you know, I acknowledge them, it's okay. Yeah, no, you don't. So can you help me? And I think you'll make it if you do it that way. 16:09 Paul: Yeah. It's a learning experience. It never ends. So yeah, we learn from the patrons and from the kids. The best teacher is the experience, definitely. You have worked for quite a while with a special collection called Sojourner Truth Room. Would you tell us about this collection and your experience working with it? 16:38 Kofi: Yeah, the Sojourner Truth Room was one of the four collections we used to have. They let me start from the north. Bowie had a special collection on horses. Greenbelt had a special collection on planned communities because Greenbelt was one of the first planned communities after the Second World War, when the soldiers were coming back and they needed to build houses. Hyattsville had the Maryland Room, and Oxon Hill Library was built in the mid-60s, and that was the height of the civil rights movement and the Black and Proud. Now, the grounds where the Oxon Hill Library stands, there used to be a school, a black school, called the, actually it was a Negro school, those days it's called a Negro school, called the Sojourner Truth School. Post Brown versus Board of Education, when integration came, most of those Black schools closed down and they were integrated into the majority white schools. But the county decided to place a library in that location because it was also the height of the civil rights. They decided to put a collection on African-American life and thoughts and name it after, the collection after Sojourner Truth because the Sojourner Truth School used to be at that, leaving some of the old wall of the school were left in the building of the new library. And so we have people who come thinking it's all about Sojourner Truth, and I explain it to them that it's not about Sojourner Truth, but because of the school we named the collection. It wasn't a small room, smaller than this room. But when council members, they got us, they helped us to get a grant and the money to renovate the branch, they would decide to renovate and have the Sojourner Truth Wing. The new wing, I don't even know, a lot of the staff don't know that it's called the Sojourner Truth Wing, but the new wing is the Sojourner Truth Wing. So we have the Sojourner Truth Room. We originally were going to have our staff through staff area there. After we renovated, so you go into Polaris*, it looks like it's a separate branch. And so we had a staff of four. Right now I'm the only staff person left in the truth room. 2001, I joined the *Truth Room. We were only two. We had a huge budget. They gave the branch staff $20,000 dollars a year. And we used to order most of the materials. Then as the money got tighter, we went to $10,000 a year. Then we went to $5,000 and went to $1,000 and now we have zero. Materials Management* orders books, and these days they don't even order any books for us. So that is the arc of the change we have experienced. But it's been an exciting time working in the Truth Room. I've done so many things. Genealogy workshops that I've done, I've had people come in and do talks about DNA. I've done like a reading marathon of the Truth Room materials, people come and they read only a few pages of their favorite. So many things. And then when they decided to add the Prince George’s incorporated towns, African American incorporated towns, we did oral interviews of the people, some of the people in those incorporated towns to learn about those incorporated towns. They also added a STEM section to the traditional Truth Room. That is we did the Hip Hop Architecture. We have got people to come and help us. And the young people who may be interested in architecture from the high schools, middle school and high school came and they went through the Hip Hop Architecture. I'm trying to find resources to redo the Hip Hop Architecture phase two, one of these days, if I find the money. 22:07 Paul: Good, interesting. In your perspective, what is the coolest item in the Sojourner Truth Room collection? 22:15 Kofi: Gosh, I can't just mention just one thing, but for instance, during the times of slavery, when the master gave a slave his freedom or her freedom, they were given what is called Manumission Paper. We have a slave's Manumission Paper that somebody in New York donated to us. So it's been put on a glass, it's in a locked cabinet. So and then we have a collection of music from slavery times to modern times. And recently, we've got the Grand Piano move to the Sojourner Truth Room. So I'm working on having some piano recitation by musicians as a program with the music in the Truth room, not just any music, but the sheet music in the Truth room. I've already got one retired concert pianist who's willing to do that for me. And we have a good collection of slavery and the slave trade. We have, in the 400s, we have a good collection of African American vernacular. And we have a good collection of poetry and drama. So the Truth Room has almost everything that is exciting is then in a locked cabinet, we have some very rare books, some are from the, they are fragile, but some are from the 1700s in the Truth Room. So if you come there, you will get, you will never be disappointed, you'll get excited to see the material we have, and we are always willing to help you discover the materials we have. 24:42 Paul: In your opinion, what makes the Sojourner Truth collection important in our communities? 24:52 Kofi: Definitely, the Sojourner Truth Room is very important in terms of the collection and what it contains. It chronicles the earliest African American history. We have, I mean, some books, if you know the transatlantic slave trade, and several people who ended up in Euro-Britain and in the Caribbean and South America passed through Ghana, what the so-called slave castles, philosophically I call the captive castes because when they were the castles, they were not slaves, they were captives. They ended up as slaves when they entered this country and the Caribbean and South America. And so I've even bought a few books when I've gone to Ghana and donated to the Truth Room I sent to my friend and they catalog it and we put it in the collection. So one can find all those things. I've been lobbying for more than 10 years that the room should be changed to an African heritage collection, so that because we have Afro-Latinos, Afro-Caribbeans, Afro-Canadians, we have the largest number of Africans who are not on the continent in Brazil. And so it will be great. There's a library in New York, called the Schomburg. Schomburg is an African heritage library. If we could do the same for the Sojourner Truth Room, then we can also collect the historical materials of all these hyphenated African people who are in the diaspora. It will be great to move the Sojourner Truth Room to that place. But as even as it is, in terms of the African American heritage, it covers a large swath of information from the African American information, religion, social sciences, language, the 500s, applied sciences, 600 business, 700 arts and crafts, 800 literature, 900 history, and the biographies. So we cover all the gamut of the Dewey Decimal system. Almost everything we have. Then we have very rare materials. We have some artifacts. We have a collection of African American commemorative stamps that I've been pushing to get a display case for a long time so I could display some of those. So it is probably, and it's also the largest special collection in the county. Okay. Two, the Pratt has an African American collection and then the Sojourner Truth Room. I think those are the only African American collections in Maryland. And so, it makes it significant that those of us in this southern part. But even we often get calls from outside, I've taken reference questions from Indiana, from Texas, from Wisconsin, from Illinois. The people looking for information and now copy, scan it for them. These days with email, I'll email the oldest. I'll tell them I'll send it to you and you send me the postage payment and people will actually send the postage payment. So we don't even serve just Prince George's County. We serve across the bridge to Virginia, Northern Virginia, District of Columbia, and other parts of Maryland and other states. So I think it's still a very important collection that if we were to get more money, I hope we can continue to buy books and resources, databases for the collection, and probably continue to have a dedicated staff, if we wouldn't have the four we had, at least two or three who fully take charge of the Sojourner Truth African-American collection, or if it becomes the African heritage collection too, I'll be so glad. 30:22 Paul: Good. And based on that, so can you tell us about a special program or activity that you had led in the library related to the African American collection? 30:38 Kofi: Oh, yes. I alluded to some before. For instance, when I did genealogy and DNA as an integrated system, I got a professor from University in Virginia who had done his genealogy and traced his ancestry to his mother, grandmother or great-great-great-grandmother because her great-great-grandmother passed through Canada. Canada, they have more accurate slave records than the U.S. So because after tracing, they discovered and so she discovered the ship, exact ship her great-grandmother came on. And so his knowledge and skills and this doing that helped a lot of my patrons who came to the genealogy. Genealogy workshops used to be the most favorite because people keep asking me and I said I'm going to plan a new one. When the COVID came, it messed up a lot of the planning because I had some that were supposed to come but hopefully later this year I may do at least one before this year is out. I've had choral groups come and perform for the branch including there's a very big youth choir from Ghana. They were traveling in this country and made arrangements with the friends of the library to sponsor them to come and they came to perform Ghanian choral music. I've had another Ghanian, about two different Ghanian choral groups perform at the library. I've had a Cameroonian group come and perform at the library. So we've had fun with our program. Not everything is basically intellectual. We used to have done some writing projects. They brought in a part of our online thing to help people write. So I did a workshop to help people learn the system and we tried our hands up on writing but that system didn't stay long and it took it away. So these are some of the stuff that I've done for the… 34:00 Paul: Wow, a lot of programming. Good, good. So you have a good relationship with your embassy and with another country's embassies to bring some cultural choral performances. Or they are part of the community close to the library? 34:24 Kofi: No, the embassy is all the way in the northwest DC but when they have had events that they open it to outside, they have always publicized the information at the branch so that people, some of our customers have gone to those events and some of the staff. In the past, I've also done during the time of the COVID. In 2019 was the 400th year of the first Africans who were brought from West Africa to North America. And so our president of Ghana declared it the year of return, the 400th anniversary so that Africans in the diaspora can come back home. And so some Africans from the Washington area went, African Americans. So I interviewed two of them for the system as a program during the COVID when we were closed but we were still working online. So it's one of the interviews I did for the system and it's online. And in the past, people have always expressed interest in African Americans so I've taken people on tour to Ghana several times since 1996 but only two staff persons have gone with me on tour. They were both branch managers. Roy used to be the branch, was a branch manager at Bladensburg and at Largo, at Oxon Hill, at Laurel. And I think Roy was also at Fairmount Heights. He was branch manager until he retired when they brought in the area manager system. 36:51 Paul: Okay. Can you tell us about a special memory or anecdote in your works? 37:01 Kofi: My first branch manager was probably the best manager one could have. And she used to say it when I came in and the staff meeting and she would tell the staff, don't be afraid to take risks. If you make a mistake, we will discuss it to learn from it. Evelyn Tchiyuka, she became the acting director for several years until she retired. And so that has always been at the back of my mind and so when new customers come and I've helped train a lot of our new staff, especially everybody who has been at Oxon Hill, I have trained them in the Truth Room procedures and I always told them the same. My first branch manager told me, don't be afraid to take any risk. If you make a mistake, we will learn from it. 38:39 Paul: Good. Wise words. In your perspective, what makes PGCMLS libraries different from other libraries, if anything, or what makes libraries here in America different from libraries in Ghana or in your experience as a teacher? What is the most interesting thing about the PGCMLS libraries? 39:07 Kofi: When I've taken, when Roy went with me and Faye went with me to Ghana, I took them to see the public library and the books we were weeding because they've been on the shelf for two years or something and they saw encyclopedias on the shelf in the library in the second larger city in Ghana, Kumasi. And they both, I took them on separate trips but they saw and they both said, oh gosh, if we had money to ship books, all these books we get rid out of because the books were ancient from the, they were, and there was an encyclopedia from the late 50s. You see, and in the 2000s when I took them on the tour. So these were the information in it totally useless but they were guarding it. So that's in terms of the, my own hometown in Ghana, the, we have one central library, the central library which is like the original library. It's as big as Glenarden. Have you ever been to Glenarden? 40:47 Paul: Yes, yes. 40:48 Kofi: So it's as big as Glenarden library. It's not, you see, but that's the original library which is like equivalent to what, Pratt. And the books there, the shelves there are like the weeded collection at Oxon Hill right now. And so they are hungry for learning and books. People in Ghana say young people don't want to learn anymore. People there are really hungry except when the money is there, the books are not there. Excuse me, and if you found the materials you mean to ship to them, the books, how to, the money to ship is the problem. Other than that, we could easily buy, like even in our bookstore, because when they put the books in the bookstore, they are very, a dollar for the hardbacks and the paperbacks, 34 a dollar. If I found money enough, I could buy a lot too. But if I bought them, even the shipping, that's the problem. And so, but even in our own county, each library has its character. I worked in all the branches except the prisons. And I go to each branch. There's no branch as exciting as Oxon Hill, I tell people. That's why I've stayed there all these years. But I've been to libraries in Montgomery County, Anne Arundel County, Howard County, and Northern Virginia. And they are all unique in their own ways because of the area, the funding, and the clientele. 42:48 Paul: Okay, so finally, is there anything that we didn't ask you about today that you want to share, some relevant experience we didn't get to? 43:00 Kofi: Hmm. I think we've covered a lot. And so, people who will listen to this, will take a gem of wisdom and knowledge out of it. And if it doesn't happen, it's not the interviewer. It's me. And maybe my brain fogged up, didn't recall a lot of things, but I think it's been a good time together. 43:39 Paul: Okay, thank you for being with us, to share your experience with us, your personal history. Okay, bye-bye. 43:45 Kofi: Thank you, and you're welcome. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Kofi Bart-Martin Subject The topic of the resource PGCMLS Oral History Description An account of the resource An interview with Kofi Bart-Martin about his time working in the library system in Adult Services and with the Sojourner Truth Room Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource PGCMLS Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Special Collections Staff Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Dec 12, 2023 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Mp3 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Digital audio Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 200008 Adult services Librarianship Oral History PGCMLS History public libraries special collections https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/85676/archive/files/055918c61456193637eccb3e27a69196.mp3?Expires=1773878400&Signature=Y0AmNajydeuPTfgm5rqVSFPYqvn5QMdgz4pUrnpYw655Eyriqh0qDOAI6qFBLej9AiSsuGHvw1qBIA4PxVzj3VNwkG4mqfDYGxnvy3bh2dVGPFuPfWbUwLOeZa011U7SVqwTnLzfOoG-SpnYgUPEd0fUb8JLM5oCuNkzyVeCH6p08nx6LBDEBxHFiaKrYeXBZdZqkpVaSRxgYvoka5pDm4Agk6VxvWuqgYCg2kq77iF2o2024uyBBGoot715ajWwqvPtiPnODVzzwjdbyZIE2rUnaBmpB9GDBliYEEMqFZHBwAL45Uor7gnRtapS7IIQFsUotQjmySLeqwJk1XE4kA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 374a1da1b931a2cdb2e61c1fc3f7abb7 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Prince George's Memorial Library System Oral History Project Subject The topic of the resource Library System Oral history Description An account of the resource The PGCMLS Oral History Project is an initiative with the goal of documenting the voices and experiences of current and former staff members employed by the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System. This oral history piece is one facet of a large project of presenting and recording the library system’s history comprehensively via photographs, documents, and other primary sources. Established in 1946 in Prince George’s County, PGCMLS’s nearly 80 year history and generations of staff represent decades of institutional memory and service to the communities it serves. These interviews are intended to capture some of these stories and memories for both current and future use. In addition to providing an archive of PGCMLS staff experiences, this collection of oral histories acts as a tool for people interested in library work to hear firsthand accounts of what it is to work in a large public library in a variety of settings and departments. Disclaimer: The digital content exhibited in these collections is presented as documentation and perspectives on history and past events; they may reflect personal memories, opinions, and perspectives that are not necessarily the official position of Prince George’s Memorial Library System or any other Library staff. Some material may contain subject matter or language that may be considered sensitive or upsetting. These collections are copyrighted and are intended for educational purposes. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Special Collections Staff Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available PGCMLS Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource May 5, 2024 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-NC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" title="© Copyright" rel="noreferrer noopener">© Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .WAV Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Digital sound Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data .wav Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:04:26 min Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Project: PGCMLS Oral History Project Chapter: María Escobedo Interview Date: May 23, 2024 Participants: Interviewer: Paul Moreno. Interviewee: María Escobedo. <ul><li style="font-weight:400;">00:05 Paul: Hoy es mayo 23 del 2024 en la biblioteca de Hyattsville del condado de Prince George's. Mi nombre es Paul Moreno Librarian I, y conmigo está María Escobedo, antigua bibliotecaria del sistema de bibliotecas. Estamos grabando esta entrevista como parte del proyecto de historias orales de PGCMLS. Hola María, ¿cómo estás? </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">00:24 María: Muy bien, gracias por invitarme.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">00:26 Paul: Ok, bueno mi primer pregunta es ¿nos puede hablar un poco sobre usted misma? ¿Cuáles son sus pasatiempos, sus lecturas preferidas, sus aficiones, si tiene alguna?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">00:38 María: Soy una bibliotecaria retirada de este sistema donde trabajé 17 años. Nací en Colombia, llegué a este país hace más de 30 años y bueno mis aficiones, pienso que tengo más pasatiempos que aficiones, si hay alguna diferencia.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:06 Paul: Ninguna diferencia, puedes hablarnos.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:12 María: Pues me gusta hacer jardinería, y ahora que estoy retirada pues me he dedicado a cosas que tal vez no se hubieran ocurrido hace unos años, pero que estoy disfrutando mucho. Entonces siempre me interesaron los textiles no solamente por ropa, no creo que se hubiera relacionado con ropa, sino para utilizarlos en diferentes maneras. Entonces he estado tomando clases en cómo utilizar los textiles para crear escenas, para crear paisajes, para crear, no sé, escenas de una ciudad. También otra cosa que decidí, esta sí la decidí desde antes de retirarme era que iba a hacer algo con música. Soy buena oyente de música, pero no interpreto nada. O sea, si me pones a leer una partitura no te puedo decir nada porque no entiendo nada, no sé nada de notas. Entonces dije yo, bueno, cuál será la cosa que se me facilite a estas alturas de la vida y que lo pueda hacer. Entonces estoy tomando clases de castañuelas.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">02:28 Paul: Wow, de percusión. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">02:30 Sí, de castañuelas con una con una muchacha que ha estado tocando castañuelas por muchísimos años, da conciertos en Colombia y me los da por Zoom. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">02:43 Paul: Ah, por Zoom, wow. Mira rompiendo fronteras a través de la tecnología. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">02:50 María: Sí, exactamente. Mis lecturas preferidas, bueno, a ver, yo leo casi de todo porque son pocos los temas que no me gustan, ok. Tal vez la ciencia ficción nunca me ha llamado la atención. Pero el problema conmigo es que yo soy muy indisciplinada para leer. Yo te estoy leyendo tres a cuatro libros a la vez. Entonces terminar uno me toma muchísimo tiempo, ¿no? Y es un hábito que no he podido romper la verdad. Entonces ahora mismo estoy leyendo cosas relacionadas con este interés mío en los textiles, ah, estoy leyendo el libro Póstumo de García Márquez, ah eso lo estoy leyendo en compañía con mi hermana y mi prima. Y estoy leyendo, releyendo la verdad “El infinito en un junco” de Virginia Vallejo* y otro libro de ella que ahorita no me acuerdo el nombre. Son ensayos cortos. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">03:57 Paul: Interesante. Ok, ¿Qué la llevó a interesarse en trabajar en bibliotecas? ¿Cómo empezó su carrera en bibliotecología? </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">04:09 María: Bueno, las bibliotecas para mí fueron siempre unos lugares muy especiales, ¿no? En Colombia principalmente para estudio. Pero cuando yo llegué aquí fue como encontrar una maravilla. No podía creer que hubieran tantas bibliotecas tan completas con unas colecciones tan sólidas, tan accesibles, ¿no? En mi época te prestaban los libros por dos semanas. Ahora el periodo de préstamos es más largo, pero para mí eso fue la maravilla. Entonces empecé a interesarme poco a poco en las bibliotecas, en participar en los programas y conocí a una bibliotecaria latina que creo que en esa época tal vez sería la única. Nos hicimos amigas y ella empezó a entusiasmarme para que estudiara bibliotecología. Entonces entre mi interés y su y su diríamos a darme ánimo me me me llevaron a decidirme por este hábito. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">05:28 Paul: Esa bibliotecaria era de ese condado, ha vivido usted siempre en este condado.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">05:33 María: Yo siempre viví en este condado y ella y ella sí, ella era bibliotecaria aquí en Prince George's County.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">05:41 Paul: Oh interesante. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">05:42 María: Sí.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">05:43 Paul: ¿Cuál cree usted que es el mayor reto para un inmigrante para iniciar una carrera profesional en este país? </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">05:53 María: Bueno, pues yo creo que son varios. Yo diría que son varios. Y dependiendo de la situación de cada persona pues, van a variar, verdad. Basándome en mi experiencia yo podría decir que y resumiendo yo diría que son dos de tipo académico y de tipo cultural. Venimos y esto. Volviendo sobre esto de si se trata de un inmigrante adulto. Si llegas tú aquí como un adulto es tú tienes ya muchos conceptos formados, verdad. Te pueden ayudar, sí, pero pero a veces, otros no te pueden ayudar a moldearte, a hacer un poco maleable a ese nuevo entorno en el que tú estás, ¿no? Cuando esto ocurre en el en el ambiente académico diríamos tú vas a poder encontrar ayudas, en lo que se refiere a lo puro académico. Para mí fue un choque un poco la diferencia entre el sistema académico aquí y el que yo me acordaba en Colombia, porque yo empecé a yo volvía a estudiar aquí después de casi 20 años de haber terminado mi carrera en Colombia, si ves entonces era era es es una un intervalo bastante grande bastante largo, y encontraba que el sistema de lo que yo me acordaba en Colombia era más un poco más personalizado, diríamos que acá</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">07:47 Paul: Qué pena, ¿nos puede comentar que estudió en Colombia cuál era su profesión?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">07:52 María: Oh, ok, estudie idiomas, filología e idiomas, y pues pienso que si bien no había tantas opciones de ayuda como las hay acá, eran más estaban más a tu alcance eran más más era más rápido de identificarlas encontrarlo es menos que aquí tal vez entonces eso para mí fue fue algo difícil al comienzo. La parte cultural es algo que ya requiere más de ti yo pienso, porque es es entrar en un proceso de adaptación que de alguna manera tú tienes que adaptarte y yo le diría a esa persona bueno tómese su tiempo no tiene que correr entré en ese proceso que si si lo hemos hecho tantos en ese país seguramente una persona que es consciente de que hay que atravesar un proceso entrar en un proceso lo va a lograr a lograr no no no pienso que haya una persona que que tenga tantas no sé visiones tan tan tan estrictas en en en su en su forma de haber crecido o haber sido educado como para no poder adaptarse a una cultura diferente,</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">09:30 Paul: Son las limitaciones, están en uno mismo muchas veces</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">09:34 María: Si.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">09:35 Paul: O sea, después de que usted llegó aquí a los cuantos años empezó la carrera de Bibliotecología?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">09:40 María: Como 20 años, </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">09:40 Paul: 20 años después</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">09:42 María: Pero era porque yo tenía que atender otros asuntos verdad, tendría que atender este primero estabilizarme un poco económicamente, yo no quería no quería hacer préstamos no quería hacer préstamos entonces era averiguar si había ayudas y y demás no, y a no ser que tú estés digamos dedicado a investigar a mirar pues se te hace todo como un mundo ¿no? muy nuevo, si no nuevo muy foráneo para ti </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">10:18 Paul: Y es costoso estudiar en este país, es muy costoso hasta para las personas que que son nativas de acá de este país, dicen que es costoso ir al college, para una persona inmigrante es una cosa es súper difícil o sea primero hay que acomodarse económicamente como usted lo dice y luego pues entrar a estudiar es algo que necesita estar usted estable si, porque pues también es es tiempo es a veces trabajar y estudiar no es muy fácil </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">10:50 María: Exacto, si no, y en eso mi esposo me ayudó mucho</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">10:55 Paul: Que bueno, si no, es el caso de muchos de nosotros, a mi también me tomó bastantes años decidirme si volver a entrar a estudiar, y bueno cómo se iba a financiar, como se, como se encontraban los recursos para hacerlo</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">11:10 María: Sí, sí, sí bueno yo fuí afortunada que a mí la la la universidad me dio una una lo que llamaríamos una beca en español, y eso me ayudó mucho eso me ayudó mucho</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">11:23 Paul: Guau, que bueno, ¿nos puede contar sobre sus primeras experiencias trabajando en bibliotecas tal vez en su país de origen o si su primera experiencia como bibliotecaria fue acá?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">11:37 María: Sí sí, fue aquí la verdad pues fue intimidante, bastante intimidante es, pues sobre todo al comienzo lógico, no como todo pero bastante que te diría yo también interesante, no tú vas tú tú vas de un de un entorno puramente una experiencia puramente teórica verdad cuando estás estudiando, y de pronto te encuentras en en una en un entorno de práctica donde tienes que atender público verdad, entonces yo lo encontré eso al comienzo un poco intimidante, y o sea un poco de todo intimidante, interesante gratificante muchos antes, y y que y también con con con el hecho de que añadirle el hecho de que yo en esa época si recuerdo bien era la segunda bibliotecaria latina entonces era como una curiosidad no era como una curiosidad como algo extraño ahí</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">12:51 Paul: Algo exótico. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">12:52 María: Sí como algo extraña ahí, entonces eso a veces añadía un poco de estrés al asunto pero, pero luego pues cuando tú empiezas a sentir más cómodo cuando te empiezas a establecer más en tu trabajo en tu rol ya lo empiezas a disfrutar mucho ya ya ya ves que la la la contraparte es esa satisfacción que da a ayudar a alguien a encontrar información no, y luego bueno pues el trabajo que hicimos con la con la comunidad latina fue supremamente para mí gratificante </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">13:36 Paul: Sí, es difícil porque pues igual uno es foráneo no es tu cultura no es tu trabajo, entonces es, si lo deis usted que era la segunda persona latina o sea me imagino que fue súper difícil para mí que hay una cantidad de latinos afortunadamente digamos en en esta en esta biblioteca* y en este área, creo que en esa época debió de ser un choque bastante cultural fuerte de o que está a tratar de entrar a ser parte de la comunidad a comprender cuáles son las necesidades de la comunidad y y con los mismos colegas</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">14:16 María: Sí, sí, sí, sí, sí, sí fue fue de nuevo un proceso un proceso como como todo pienso yo</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">14:26 Paul: Interesante, ¿desde su punto de vista en qué destacan las bibliotecas de Prince George’s County frente a otras bibliotecas por ejemplo las bibliotecas de su país de origen o de otras bibliotecas que usted tenga idea o conocimiento?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">14:43 María: Sí, ahora no no conozco mucho a fondo no podría hablar mucho a fondo de las diferencias entre este sistema de bibliotecas y otras en el área si en Maryland por ejemplo, ahora sé o supe por medio de de clientes que me comentaban de algunas diferencias no, por ejemplo me decían que venían a aquí a Prince George’s porque sentían que aquí les daban un una atención más personalizada que en otros sistemas y eso me lo dijeron varios varios clientes bueno hace eso era hace unos años no entonces. También pienso que la colección que teníamos, ya no la tenemos, la colección que teníamos atraía mucha gente; teníamos una colección muy sólida en referencia, en clásicos en audiovisuales, personas de diferentes condados inclusive estudiantes de la universidad de Maryland venían a consultar nuestra colección de audiovisuales, era una colección muy completa.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">16:12 Paul: Si mucha gente ha hablado de esa colección y dicen fue una lástima y una gran pérdida para el sistema no conservar esa colección</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">16:21 María: Si, si, yo creo que los que la conocimos y la perdimos pasamos por un duelo bien largo.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">16:32 Paul: Si, si yo lo he sabido no la conocí pero lo que me han comentado todo el mundo habla con una con un pesar y con un duelo de fue era una colección excelente y fue una lástima que no se no hiciera nada las oficinas por conservar ese material</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">16:51 María: sí, sí, sí en referencia también si bien pues dicen que todo se encuentra electrónicamente no sabría decirlo con seguridad pues no soy una experta pero, pero también fue una una perdida grande y sí y los que la apreciábamos nos dolió mucho, nos dolió mucho. Con respecto a las bibliotecas en en Colombia pues una gran diferencia verdad, yo viví dos periodos de las de las bibliotecas en Colombia, o sea el periodo en que las bibliotecas eran las bibliotecas públicas eran casi como algo inexistente, no no había sino en Bogotá la una que valiera la pena que era la biblioteca del del Banco de la República, la Luís Ángel Arango* dónde pues había que ir a leer el libro tú llegabas si yo tenía que hacer un trabajo yo tenía que llegar antes de que abrieran y quedarme allí hasta casi hasta cuando cerraban, porque porque los libros, tú llegabas a un salón inmenso llenabas una ficha le dabas la ficha a una persona que te iba a buscar el libro y si el libro estaba en uso pues tenías que esperar, o sino mirar haber otra vez en el fichero a ver que encontrabas que pudiera ser relacionado con lo que estabas buscando no, y luego con los años pienso que fue tal vez tú estás más al tanto que yo, en dos mil, 1999 cuando se crean las las la BibloRed en Bogotá</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">18:56 Paul: BibloRed, no fue mucho más antes, comenzó con unas bibliotecas pequeñas y para el dos mil fue un proyecto mucho más grande que fue cuando se construyeron las grandes, las tres grandes bibliotecas porque, es que fue la de el banco, Virgilio Barco El Tintal y Tunal, ya si la última que se construyó fue la que queda en, la que fue donación de </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">19:24 María: De Santo Domingo</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">19:24 Paul: Si, Santo Domingo que queda en la calle 170. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">19:28 María: Si bueno, pues yo las vine a conocer cuando ya las grandes estaban, digamos e incluso hice un trabajo independiente cuando estaba en la universidad acerca de BibloRed, y de nuevo fue fue casi como cuando yo llegué aquí descubrir las bibliotecas y acá verdad porque porque fue una cosa maravillosa saber que finalmente teníamos esos recursos allá, sin embargo, sin embargo en mi opinión, si bien están haciendo una labor maravillosa en en en todo sentido y en trabajo de extensión inclusive mucho más que aquí, muchísimo más que aquí en Estados Unidos, con esto de las cajas viajeras de llevar las cajas con libros a las fábricas y demás, a los a los parques </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">20:25 Paul: Personalmente yo trabajé yo trabajé en dos bibliotecas de BibloRed, una pequeña una como del Barrio Las Ferias y en el Tintal, y trabajé en servicios de extensión entonces íbamos a hospitales, íbamos a cárceles,</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">20:42 María: Exacto </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">20:43 Paul: Muchos lugares donde la gente, la misión era la biblioteca tiene que ir donde la gente no puede llegar</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">20:49 María: Claro.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">20:49 Paul: Entonces se creó como un departamento y había personal en cada biblioteca que sólo trabajaban eso, en servicios de extensión, pero era como de cada biblioteca entonces era mire en en su localidad, como Bogotá está dividida por localidades, era mire en su localidad que personas no pueden ir, entonces era ir a lugares donde habían centros para gente invidente por decirlo así entonces ellos no pueden ir a la biblioteca vaya y usted leales en voz alta, a los hospitales es un programa muy bonito es impactante porque pues leer en una en un pabellón de niños con cáncer es una experiencia fuerte</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">21:28 María: Me imagino </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">21:29 Paul: Pero es una experiencia como dices tú, también muy gratificante porque pues los niños ven los libros y es un servicio muy bonito pero tú sales también con el corazón roto porque sabes que a veces hay niños que tú a una siguiente sesión ya no los ves, es muy terrible eso, y vas a comedores comunitarios donde hay gente con con recursos muy escasos por decirlo así, entonces también la gente rota y uno dice oh mira este niño estaba muy enganchado con la lectura y no la familia se fue, la familia es desplazada, bueno entonces es es es es un trabajo muy fuerte, pero es un trabajo un trabajo que cuando yo trabajé allá en como el 2005 al 2010 era un trabajo muy Comunitario, ahora ya no es tan comunitario porque también hay como un tema de presupuesto no hay mucho dinero y era un programa medianamente caro porque pues el desplazamiento con con las cajas viajeras como decías tú, a veces cuando yo llegué acá cuando y digamos los recursos que tiene aquí, digamos las bibliotecas de aquí de los Estados Unidos uno dice como es diferente sin embargo los servicios también son diferentes porque la comunidad obviamente también es diferente</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">22:45 María: Claro se puede desplazar si fácilmente exacto si, pero pero una cosa que encuentro yo que le falta y puede ser puede ser presupuesto, pero también puede ser el modelo de diseño no sé, a las bibliotecas de allá es una colección que sea más como para lectura de entretenimiento, se me hace a mí que están muy orientadas al estudiante, pero no al adulto que quiera aprender algo no, creo que alguna vez te lo comente yo</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">23:33 Paul: Si, no y totalmente de acuerdo, las bibliotecas en Colombia es general y es algo de la población o sea, la gente en Colombia ve a las bibliotecas como lugares de estudios, no como lugares de recreación, o un lugar comunitario, entonces las bibliotecas siempre las piensan es como para que los niños vayan y hagan tareas, es para que los estudiantes vayan a hacer sus investigaciones, pero no lo ven como un lugar de ocio y un ocio sano sí o sea es como entonces es es una cosa cultural de que el ocio es malo entonces crear esos programas en esa red de bibliotecas comunitarias como le decía antes es difícil porque es cambiarle la mentalidad de la comunidad y es algo que digamos cuando yo me moví aquí vi que sí somos diferentes comunidades porque aquí la biblioteca ha existido casi que históricamente, entonces la gente tiene con la biblioteca como un valor de su comunidad como un valor que hay que cuidar, en Colombia la gente también le preguntan usted quiere gastar el el erario público en esto, en esto, lo último siempre va a ser la biblioteca, acá es una visión mucho más política de ey cómo se va a gastar la gente está más pendiente de que se invierta en bibliotecas en unos condados más que en otros en otras ciudades pero siento que sí es una visión de comunidad de que la gente si ve como la biblioteca es una institución pública y de la comunidad, en Colombia y en mi poca experiencia también porque pues yo no se puede hablar de Colombia en general porque pues yo solo vivía en Bogotá pero en lo que poco trabajé y en colombia en lo que vivía acá es lo que vivía allá y cuando vine a comprarlo acá dije wow sí acá la gente la gente ve la biblioteca como una entidad pública, como una entidad de la comunidad, en Colombia nos falta ese ese imaginario</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">25:23 María: Si porque es más bien es más bien algo reciente ¿verdad? si bien las bibliotecas empezaron desde desde la colonia, allá tuvieron un carácter completamente diferente verdad, era era donde se iba a educar o leer un día a leer la élite la verdad y yo pienso que tal vez eso explica un poco el carácter que tienen ahora, o sea no nos hemos sacado de la cabeza todavía esa esa esa mentalidad de que el el la biblioteca es para todo el mundo.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">25:59 Paul: Si no, el acceso a la información, lastimosamente puede haber acceso a la información pero la gente no no no lo adquiere, eso es algo que acá sí lo tiene digamos acá la gente sí sabe no; hay que ir a la biblioteca, ahora que la gente no quiere ir, es diferente pero la gente sabe, en Colombia no saben que hay esos lugares en los que usted puede utilizar el ocio de una manera sana, no ven la biblioteca como un lugar de recreación, primero las bibliotecas en mi época están administradas hasta por la por la secretaría de educación, entonces ahí también hay otro margen de que si las bibliotecas no están también administradas por una secretaría de cultura y de recreación pues también van a adquirir otro aspecto, entonces siguen siendo muy académicas siguen siendo muy orientadas hacia hacia ayudar a la escuela, hacia la alfabetización, entonces es muy difícil cambiar esa mentalidad</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">26:57 María: Bueno aunque está bien, ese debe ser</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">26:58 Paul: Sí claro ese debe ser uno de los de los pilares pero no puede ser el único, </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">27:03 María: Exacto</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">27:03 Paul: Porque pues ahí nos quedamos de que la gente cuando no va a la iglesia cuando no va a la iglesia cuando no va a la escuela cuando no va a la universidad dice pues ya la biblioteca pues no porque pues yo no estoy estudiando pues aquí que voy a buscar allá, esos para los estudiantes, entonces eso sí fue algo que yo vi muy marcado en Colombia, ojalá haya cambiado mucho y que nos costó mucho mientras trabajamos y pues toda una tarea por hacer en ese aspecto porque es un aspecto muy cultural si es una idea que ya tiene la gente</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">27:37 María: A bueno coincidimos, </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">27:40 Paul: ¿Cuál cree usted que es el aspecto más complicado o difícil de trabajar en servicios para adultos en bibliotecas públicas? </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">27:51 María: De nuevo, son varios no, cada cada persona llega con una necesidad de información diferente no, pero yo diría que es en en general y tal vez estoy haciendo lo muy lo estoy simplificando mucho, es lograr llegar a ese a esa comunicación lograr establecer esa comunicación que te permite entender que lo que la persona necesita, y importantísimo poder proporcionárselo verdad, poder ofrecer lo que esa persona está buscando, son son de acuerdo de acuerdo al cliente, de acuerdo al usuario usuario vas a tener diferentes desafíos de ese tipo, o desafíos, pero para mí se se se podrían resumir en ese aspecto lograr esa, ese momento feliz en que tú logras oh ok, ya no no estoy hablando de vengo a buscar el libro tal no donde te dan toda la información y no hay nada más que encontrarlo y dárselo, pero si es otro tipo de consulta, ese para mí es un desafío.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">29:33 Paul: Si alguien de la comunidad está interesado en iniciar una carrera en bibliotecas públicas o servicios para adultos ¿usted qué consejo le daría para motivarlo a iniciar una carrera en esto?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">29:48 María: Bueno, si es si es una persona que está interesado en trabajar con público, yo le diría yo le diría que este es el lugar idóneo para hacerlo, porque además va a tener la satisfacción de ayudar a alguien a encontrar información no. Pienso que principalmente la persona tiene que asegurarse de que verdaderamente quiere trabajar con con el público no, pienso que no todos, no todos, no todas las personas están interesadas en eso y </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">30:39 Paul: Es una vocación </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">30:41 María: Es como una vocación exactamente, es como una vocación entonces asegurarse porque alguien me decía, una persona que trabajó aquí y que luego vino a participar en el club de conversación en español, me decía que ella concluía que había dos tipos de bibliotecarios: a los que le gustaba leer, y a los que le gustaba trabajar con la gente; y digo yo bueno será que es que no se pueden combinar las dos cosas no se dan las dos cosas en la misma persona, no sé, puede ser que no, puede ser que no, puede ser que sí, pero pero puede ser que sí te inclina más hacia hacia la lectura entonces pues sí puede ser bibliotecario pero tal vez no en una biblioteca en una biblioteca pública, </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">31:36 Paul: En una biblioteca especial con una colección especial o en una sala de referencia especial</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">31:40 María: Exacto, exacto, pero una biblioteca pública tiene un carácter completamente diferente a mi modo de ver.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">31:46 Paul: Si, definitivamente el tener vocación de trabajar con la gente es algo que, es algo que es difícil de adquirir y es más creo que es algo que le falta mucho a los currículos en las universidades. Yo ahorita que estuve en la universidad, te enseñan mucho como referencia pero no te enseñan, ahora es difícil enseñarlo pero no te dicen como las bibliotecas están es para la comunidad, usted tiene que ser abierto y usted tiene que también hacer mucho trabajo de salir de los muros de la biblioteca y conocer a la comunidad que usted está sirviendo, ahora si usted solamente está dentro de los muros de la biblioteca conociendo los títulos y conociendo los libros creo que ahí, ahí, como usted también está creando como barreras para conocer qué es lo que la gente necesita y qué usted le puede ofrecer porque a veces la gente no sabe qué necesita, y usted necesita ofrecerles y ellos se encuentran respuesta en usted, porque pues como lo acaba usted de decir, o sea es fácil para la persona que llegue te dice nombre título del libro y autor, pues es fácil decirle tengo estos estos libros, pero es difícil a esa persona que está en busca de información, que está perdida, que no conoce cómo acceder a la información, que no sabe cómo pedir información creo que ese es el uno de los valores más grandes que tienen las bibliotecas que es que encuentran como alguien amable dentro de todas estas instituciones que hay que pagar mucho,</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">33:19 María: Exacto, exacto </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">33:20 Paul: En las bibliotecas hay gente que te puede recibir amablemente y decir, mire usted puede comenzar a buscar su información así, usted tiene que ir a este lugar, a veces la gente lo que más aprecia de una biblioteca ni siquiera son todos los libros que tiene, sino que encuentra una persona que le puede ofrecer información sobre determinado tema</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">33:42 María: Exacto, si estamos de acuerdo es, es yo pienso que es uno de los pocos lugares no sé de otro, pero tal vez los hay, de los pocos lugares donde donde puedes llegar y encontrar una persona que está dispuesta a escucharte que está dispuesta a ayudarte a, generalmente amablemente, y donde tú no estás pagando un centavo, gratis.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">34:11 Paul: Durante su tiempo al servicio de las bibliotecas usted realizó muchas actividades enfocadas a la población latina ¿nos puede contar un poco más sobre esa experiencia, programas, actividades, eventos?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">34:22 María: Bueno no, yo diría que fueron varias pero se hicieran, parecían muchas porque se repetían, si empezamos el club de, algo que no existía, el club de conversación en inglés, para personas que que estaban aprendiendo inglés. Lo empezamos con siempre, yo lo coordiné la verdad, no no lo conducía muchas veces porque pues yo es mi segundo idioma, inglés es mi segundo idioma, yo quería que las personas pudieran oír a un hablante nativo verdad, y y qué, pero siempre supe fui supremamente afortunada, yo tuve unos unos unos voluntarios muy dedicados muy amables personas que nos ayudaron por años por años por años siendo voluntarios, entonces empezamos el club de conversación en inglés, yo empecé el club de conversación en español, no tiene nada que ver con la comunidad latina pero fue una una una de los programas que hice, también participé en la lectura de cuentos bilingüe, hacíamos trabajo de extensión mucho trabajo de extensión, íbamos a las escuelas, a casa de Maryland, eventos continuamente, también empezamos las clases de computación básica en español, fue un programa que disfruté mucho. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">36:13 Paul: Si, John Krivak* mencionó ese programa y dijo que fue pionero a nivel casi que a nivel Maryland, me decía ni siquiera en otros condados tenían ese tipo de programas, </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">36:27 María: Y a veces lo hacíamos a veces lo hacíamos bilingüe, porque otras personas venían a a que a inscribirse, personas de la comunidad de por ejemplo de países como tuvimos gente del Congo, de Senegal de Paquistán, entonces lo hacíamos bilingüe español-inglés</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">36:58 Paul: No, y probablemente durante su tiempo trabajando acá ya que fueron bastantes años usted vio cómo cambió la comunidad ¿no?, mucha gente me ha comentado que hace años atrás no había tampoco mucha comunidad latina esto ha, este condado y especialmente este área alrededor de Hyattsville se comenzó a concentrar muchas mucha comunidad latina, desde los años 2000 para acá creo</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">37:25 María: Yo pienso que, a ver, si finales de los mediados finales de los 90’s, lo digo por esto, yo vivía en Riverdale y en esa época que fueron los comienzos de los 90’s finales de los 80’s a nosotros, yo vivía con una tía y mi primo que vivía al frente con su familia éramos los únicos latinos, ahora tú vas y yo pienso que ese área es</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">38:01 Paul: Y Riverdale es una cantidad de comercio latino, restaurantes</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">38:04 María: Yo pienso que es 80 por ciento latino </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">38:06 Paul: Sí </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">38:08 María: 80 por ciento latino sí, o sea que cuando yo empecé a trabajar aquí, fue el 2004 sí sí se veían se veían familias latinas viniendo pero era muy poco, era muy poco, y los adultos un poquito recelosos como entrar a la biblioteca, como que no sabían qué era lo que había que hacer, pero los niños los traían, los niños traían a los papás, y ahí fue donde nosotros. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">38:51 Paul: No, y los niños no están en esa vergüenza o ese miedo de preguntar ellos son más</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">38:55 María: Exacto. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">38:57 Paul: No, y lo digo en mi experiencia como inmigrante también, a mi me daba pavor el primer año que estaba preguntarle a alguien porque me respondían y me confundían más, la respuesta no me clarificaba las cosas sino me confundía más, entonces era ese temor a preguntar, ese y tratar de buscar esa información por otros lados pero que es, porque es el choque con la cultura y a las costumbres de otro de otro lugar entonces los adultos son como más prevenidos</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">39:29 María: Yo me acuerdo, yo me acuerdo la primera vez que entré y fue graciosísimo, yo sería la primera vez no me acuerdo bien, tal vez no sería la primera vez pero la primera vez que yo busqué un libro porque siempre estaban los libros en pues disponibles para ti, no como en Colombia que estaban detrás de una puerta lo que fuera, no entonces para mí eso fue un descubrimiento maravilloso, y un día se me ocurrió mirar buscar en el por un libro y yo vi un fichero yo vi un fichero entonces yo me puse a mirar en ese fichero y alguien se me acercó una bibliotecaria se me acercó a mí ¿le pudo ayudar? y si estoy buscando un libro, me dijo: no ese fichero es es algo que ya vamos a sacar, eso ya no está en uso no sé qué cosa, yo ahh bueno entonces por allá claro que era todavía en esa época para hoy ese sistema estaba pasado pues es muy anticuado era con, creo que era como con unas filminas que ponían en una pantalla y ahí miraban el barcode de el catálogo para para encontrar el libro, pero pero yo pues acostumbrada a los ficheros pues yo vi un fichero y ella me fui a mirar y resulta que no que eso ya no no estaba en uso. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">40:52 Paul: Si, no y volviendo a lo que comentaba, eso fue uno de los primeros impactos de las bibliotecas de BibloRed en Colombia porque la gente estaba acostumbrada a lo que usted dice a colecciones cerradas, la gente no no tenía acceso a los libros sino era a través de catálogos, cuando se abrieron estas bibliotecas comunitarias la gente vio las colecciones abiertas de que podían sacar meter un libro bueno eso aquí se venía haciendo desde hace mucho tiempo atrás entonces claro para nosotros es como guau el libro está ahí para que usted.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">41:28 María: Exacto, exacto.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">41:29 Paul: A la mano</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">41:31 María: Exacto, porque qué cosa mejor que tú mirar qué es lo que hay, tú puedes llegar con una idea de un título de un libro y te traen este libro y ahí hasta ahí llegó el asunto.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">41:4 Paul: No, a mí como estudiante, o como estudiante a veces era busqué un tema entonces uno iba a una biblioteca y entonces uno iba a los ficheros y buscaba un tema complejo como por decirlo así cáncer, me pusieron la tarea averigue qué es cáncer, va uno saca un libro súper especializado que te habla de unas cosas y uno </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">42:06 María: Técnico, muy técnico</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">42:07 Paul: Técnico, entonces ese acceso a tener un bibliotecario en estas bibliotecas que te pueda decir a ti, bueno usted para qué quiere el libro que lo que usted está buscando está buscando: cómo tratar el cáncer, usted está buscando un research usted está usted está buscando sobre un tipo de cáncer es ese acceso a esa comunicación con un bibliotecario creo que es el plus que tienen las bibliotecas públicas en este país, en Colombia creo que para cuando yo me fui también era difícil porque allí era más que todo como también en el computador busqué y a veces las personas que te buscaban el libro pues son personas que son como voluntarias o son personas que no les pagan lo suficiente o no tienen educación o están ahí en un trabajo que no es muy bien recompensado entonces ellos no tienen esa vocación por decirlo así de ayudar a la gente porque pues no tienen las las herramientas.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">43:03 María: Ajá, ajá pero bueno ahora en BibloRed tú tú tienes, al menos en Virgilio Barco, que es a donde yo voy cuando estoy allá, tú tienes acceso a los libros también tú lo ves en los estantes ahí</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">43:19 Paul: Si los estantes están abiertos, no eso es un cambio del cielo a la tierra, como venía en una biblioteca como la Nacional o la Luís Ángel Arango, a pesar de que la Luís Ángel Arango tiene algunas colecciones abiertas ¿no? son muy pocas la mayoría de los libros están en los sótanos. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">43:36 María: Si </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">43:36 Paul: ¿Nos puede, nos puede compartir un recuerdo especial o una anécdota que haya marcado su experiencia como biblioteca, como bibliotecaria pública?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">43:47 María: Varias pero bueno a ver una que me acuerdo fue en la la clase, de la clase de computación básica; me dejó muchas satisfacciones y hay recuerdos muy bonitos, este es en especial de esta señora mayor ella, porque resultamos con una clase la mayor parte de las veces de adultos mayores, la mayoría eran adultos mayores y, y la mayoría tenía muy poca escuela, habían ido muy pocos años en la escuela en sus países. Y había esta señora, ella yo diría que tenía como setenta y pico de años, está muy nerviosa supremamente nerviosa, yo no sabía cómo calmarla ella ella cogía el ratón y le temblaba las manos. Pues con el tiempo oye que logró abrir su cuenta de correo electrónico y se comunicaba con sus parientes jóvenes porque eran los que usaban las computadoras verdad, ella era de México, y y luego también fue capaz de de hacer carticas cortas usando word y a adjuntar fotos y qué sé yo, eso para mí fue una satisfacción muy grande.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">45:22 Paul: No, aún ahora mucha gente viene a estas clases de de alfabetización de computadores porque ahora hay más acceso a la tecnología pero la brecha se hace más grande porque todo el acceso lo tienes ahora en los teléfonos, entonces la gente sabe cómo manejar pocas cosas en el teléfono y el computador es como otro mundo a pesar de que tú muchas de las cosas que haces en un computador las puedes hacer en un teléfono, pero el computador es como un mundo aparte</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">45:55 María: Si, es como otro animal</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">45:57 Paul: Sí es y entonces mucha gente no sabe lo que acabas de decir tú, cómo adjuntar una foto, como cómo revisar, como cosas en un computador, y todo lo hace muy automático desde el teléfono, y no ven como todo el proceso que hay detrás, y les les colocas un computador y es como si fuera otra cosa</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">46:16 María: Es muy difícil esta transición muy muy difícil</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">46:19 Paul: A pesar de que como te digo ya tienen acceso a las, porque antes el problema era pues un computador de algo muy costoso de algo como como que no se le veía como el uso, pues ahora un computador es lo más necesario y, y probablemente en muchas casas hay un computador acá, pero sí muchas personas en la pandemia muchas personas no sabían cómo utilizar un computador y cómo entrar a Zoom y a estas cuentas para comunicarse durante la pandemia entonces fue sólo tengo un teléfono, el teléfono no no me sirve para para hacer una vídeo llamada para entonces eran </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">46:56 María: Si es ese es esa brecha tan tan tan grande verdad que sigue existiendo, y que para mí siempre va a dejar a un grupo grande rezagado, rezagado, rezagado, y a veces ayudamos a que eso </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">47:13 Paul: Sí, no, todavía y aquí salen personas muy agradecidas de entender qué es lo que hay como detrás, cómo funcionan las cosas</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">47:22 María: Sí, sí, sí esas clases como te digo me dieron mucha satisfacción, y fueron bueno hechas muy rústicamente no, porque nosotros no teníamos salón de de computadoras ni nada eran en el área pública entonces tocaba empezar antes de que abriera la biblioteca y había que cargarse una una pantalla para para para abrir y sí pero bueno lo hicimos, lo hicimos eso eso </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">47:54 Paul: Durante su tiempo como bibliotecaria en el sistema probablemente usted presenció muchos cambios, por ejemplo cambios en los programas, cambios en el sistema como se se entregan los libros se sacan los libros, eventos, o cambios en las instalaciones. ¿Puede compartir con nosotros cuáles fueron los cambios más significativos que usted vivió durante su época trabajando? </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">48:17 María: Si pues, está relacionado con lo que acabamos de hablar no, osea cuando cuando yo empecé a teníamos una colección bastante sólida en en escrita, pues en papel, a impresa, y oíamos a hablar o yo por ejemplo había oído hablar de libros electrónicos y libros audiolibros electrónicos pero eso era todavía algo como raro no</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">48:47 Paul: Una novedad</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">48:48 María: Si, una novedad y y mucho menos digamos recursos electrónicos a través de la de la página web no, pero luego poco a poco eso fue volviéndose algo como común algo como común y lo mismo con los recursos electrónicos a través de la de la de la página web, y otras cosas que se ofrecen ahora que no se ofrecían en mi época como bueno si antes de salir de salir yo a de retirarme ya estábamos ofreciendo tabletas verdad, para para para préstamo, todo todo eso fue todo eso fue, al comienzo novedoso pero luego ya se vuelve como algo común pues para para las personas. A, a nivel de programas a ver bueno este no es tanto un programa más un servicio, que para mí yo lo encontré yo lo encontré un poco foráneo para las cosas que hacemos nosotros que es la expedición de de pasaportes, ¿no sé si ustedes tienen ese servicio aquí? </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">50:05 Paul: No aquí como estamos tan ocupados desde que se abrió este nuevo edificio no se abrió la oficina de pasaportes, mucha gente se ha preguntado porque usualmente es así en el en el antiguo edificio pero no, se hace es en New Carrollton, </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">50:22 María: Ahh ok, Si para mí fue no sé, algo que me sentí completamente fuera de lugar con esa actividad.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">50:35 Paul: Si, a mí yo cuando llegué también acá me dijeron los pasaportes se sacan en las bibliotecas, yo decía pero es que los pasaportes los emite una entidad diferente a la entidad que es la biblioteca, o sea porque la biblioteca no porque pues es un lugar de la comunidad, le queda cerca la comunidad, ok makes sense </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">50:55 María: Pero si pero para para muchos de nosotros tal vez, ahora ya no, pues para muchos de nosotros fue, o algunos diría mejor, fue un fue algo que que encontramos muy como como fuera de de nuestro, nuestra zona de confort diríamos porque</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">51:16 Paul: No, igual y si usted está formado como un bibliotecario, en ninguna universidad le dicen uno de los servicios importantes de las bibliotecas y sacar pasa expedir pasaportes, no eso no te lo enseñan</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">51:29 María: Si, eso era como peras y manzanas, no hace una cosa así como extraña si, eso es lo digamos los los que yo recuerde. Con, con respecto a las instalaciones si, tuvimos dos cambios, y estuvimos trabajando en la que fue la antigua biblioteca de aquí a la mayor parte del tiempo, pues la mayor parte del tiempo que yo fui bibliotecaria y luego, ¿tú estuviste allí verdad? en esa instalación pequeña detrás de </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">52:03 Paul: Ohh si yo sólo trabajé en esa instalación la que fue temporal, yo conocí la antigua biblioteca porque yo cuando me moví a esta ciudad yo me mudé aquí a Hyattsville, y pues vine a imprimir algo, entonces conocí la biblioteca antigua pero nunca llegué a trabajar en la biblioteca antigua, osea la conocí como usuario pero no como empleado.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">52:27 María: Ya, si, si, si no y pues todo eso todo eso ya digamos los últimos años en ese edificio fueron fueron un poquito difíciles porque porque ya el edificio estaba muy muy derruido en ciertos aspectos entonces, los los las áreas de de nuestros oficinas eran o supremamente calientes o supremamente frías, se colaba el agua por el techo y demás, sí sí y luego pues tuvimos que pasarnos a esa otra que que era muy pequeña no</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">53:04 Paul: Si muy pequeña para la demanda de gente, Hyattsville siempre ha sido una de las principales bibliotecas </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">53:11 María: Sí, sí, sí, sí fue fue bastante pequeña y siempre hay un poco de trauma cuando hay esos cambios ¿no? </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">53:22 Paul: No, y lo que decía a ustedes digamos de los libros por ejemplo la colección, la gente aquí siempre que ha entrado a esta biblioteca dice pero yo recuerdo que habían más libros es el primer comentario de los de los usuarios más antiguos, osea la primera impresión cuando entran a la biblioteca es, pero y antes había más libros donde están los libros</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">53:45 María: No, era era fabuloso a mi modo de ver, era fabuloso porque yo recuerdo el área de libros nuevos, a ¿ustedes tienen como unos dos estanticos aquí no más de libros nuevos cierto? </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">54:00 Paul: Si están aquí a la entrada, ni siquiera son dos es uno, </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">54:06 María: Ok, pues el área de libros nuevos te voy a decir cuando yo entré a trabajar aquí podía ser todo este salón* o más, y quiero decir este tipo estos estos estantes.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">54:23 Paul: Si no, las colecciones han cambiado mucho o sea, lo de referencia ha cambiado un montón porque casi toda la colección de referencia ahora es electrónica lo que son enciclopedias, diccionarios, todo este tipo de material que regularmente se llamaba referencia en las bibliotecas, aunque creo que no es solamente acá, porque ese material como tiene que actualizarse cada, ehh obviamente ya se tiene acceso a través de enciclopedias online, databases </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">54:56 María: Exacto, </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">54:56 Paul: Que paga la biblioteca, eso hace que las colecciones se vaya comenzando a ver más más pequeñas, pero pues igual ahí sigue habiendo mucha gente que pues es usuario de libro </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">55:11 María: Es usuario de libro y yo creo que, yo creo que, espero no equivocarme pero ciertas hay ciertas señas para mí de que se se pegó ese salto a lo electrónico y se acogió como que hubiera que olvidar el la parte impresa ¿no?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">55:36 Paul: Si mucha gente se ha quejado de eso</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">55:41 María: Y lo veo también a nivel de de librerías aquí tú no encuentras librerías acá son muy pocas las librerías tú vas a otros países y encuentras librerías en todas partes</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">55:57 Paul: Aquí porque aquí lo absorbió Amazon*, Amazon es la principal librería de Estados Unidos, y Amazon o sea, es siento yo que es muy difícil para una persona que quiera montar una librería con competir contra un monstruo como Amazon, y pues Amazon también cambió la forma de adquirir las cosas entonces la gente</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">56:19 María: Ya es más cómoda</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">56:21 Paul: A través de Amazon y quiere que le llegue a la casa y tengo aquí el catálogo, y entonces sí; es difícil es una nostalgia para muchos de nosotros, yo también que a mí me encantaba, el primer lugar que yo buscaba en un centro comercial cuando estaba en Colombia era la librería</li> </ul><ul><li style="font-weight:400;">56:35 María: La librería </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">56:36 Paul: Entonces era las librerías, era </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">56:40 María: Para mi es hasta hoy, </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">56:42 Paul: Un evento digamos como la feria de libro en Colombia sigue siendo un evento súper masivo, y un evento súper importante dentro de la cultura, yo también llegué acá yo me imaginé que este país iba a tener unas ferias del libro con miles de cosas y no, osea que el país se maneja diferente, encontré algo parecido a la feria de libro en las ferias en las conferencias del American Library Association, que van autores llevan sus libros y los firman, y yo decía ohh esta es la nostalgia de lo que yo alcance a ver </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">57:17 Claro, pero sabes que eso existía cuando yo llegué aquí, sí existía</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">57:21 Paul: Y sí, ya no</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">57:22 María: Ya no </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">57:23 Paul: Ya Amazon, sí Amazon es un fenómeno muy grande y pues por precios y todo eso también o sea </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">57:31 María: Comodidad</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">57:31 Paul: Competir contra precios, comodidad, es muy difícil entonces la gente sí, y pues Amazon también está apostando mucho a lo electrónico entonces te dice tiene libro a un click o sea ni siquiera espera que le llegue lo puede leer en su kindle* lo puede leer en el computador, entonces ya eso comienza a cambiar muchas cosas, aunque igual las pues hay pocas librerías pero las librerías de Barnes and Nobles* son librerías aún bonitas acá también donde uno encuentra variedad de cosas, pero sí es es es muy difícil es es un salto que cada vez es uno se da cuenta que se está quedando como atrás que o que va muy rápido y que uno no alcanza a llegar allá, pero sí, y pues obviamente nosotros somos una entidad pública que nuestra comunidad tiene diferentes edades, o sea tú no le puedes ofrecer el mismo libro en el mismo formato de libro a todo el mundo</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">58:31 María: Sí, pero pero yo pienso que ese esa idea de que ok todo el mundo va a preferir el formato electrónico al formato impreso, yo pienso que no es tan válida </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">58:49 Paul Sino, aquí se siguen sacando libros todo el tiempo</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">58:54 María: Aún para los muchachos, aún para los muchachos, a mí me tocó varias veces muchachos que venían a buscar libros impresos, si estaba disponible el el electrónico no, yo quiero el libro impreso.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">59:09 Paul: ¿Qué cambios ha notado en las necesidades de la comunidad y los servicios de la biblioteca?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">59:15 María: Bueno como yo ya no estoy trabajando aquí he perdido esa esa ventaja que te da trabajar en una biblioteca para como tomar el pulso de lo que está pasando en la comunidad, ¿verdad? pero yo diría que esa es una cosa importante que debe hacer la biblioteca y deben hacer los bibliotecarios, es como tomar ventaja, distancia perdon, tomar distancia no no, como diría, no acostumbrarte tú al trabajo diario a la rutina diaria sin ver un poco de lejos qué es lo que estás oyendo tú qué es lo que estás viendo tú de los usuarios que vienen, qué es lo que están pidiendo y ya he oído varias veces que piden tal cosa ok por qué, eso te puede estar dando pistas de de algo verdad de algo que hay de una necesidad que puede haber, entonces si bien no sé cuáles son esas necesidades ahora yo creo que es importante para para los bibliotecarios y para el sistema estar un poco como como en contacto con con la comunidad pues no un poco, bastante con la comunidad pero también estar a diriamos en contacto en contacto con la con el personal qué es lo que están oyendo ustedes qué creen ustedes que está pasando con respecto a no sé a esta nueva comunidad que llegó al área, cuáles creen ustedes que son las necesidades no, y esperar esperar que esas necesidades se puedan se puedan responder no.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:01:33 Paul: Esta es una de las más difíciles preguntas -todo el mundo nos ha dicho-, pero ¿Puede con una palabra o una frase describir las bibliotecas del condado de Prince George 's? </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:01:45 María: Esencial, esencial yo creo que las bibliotecas en general son esenciales para cualquier comunidad, y y más ahora, y más ahora. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:02:09 Paul: Hay algo que ohh, ¿En su opinión por qué las bibliotecas públicas son importantes para lo de la comunidad?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:02:18 María: Yo diría que es uno de los pocos lugares donde la gente puede, que están abiertas para todo el mundo, son gratis, donde la gente puede llegar a buscar información de diferentes tipos, donde puede encontrar que su necesidad informática o tal vez inclusive de otro tipo va a ser tratada va a ser atendida, yo creo. Entonces como decía anteriormente es es una institución esencial en la comunidad.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:03:05 Paul: Ok, bueno ya para finalizar ¿Hay algo que no hayamos preguntado hoy y que usted considere importante compartir con nuestra audiencia? </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:03:14 María: Pues sí, me gustaría invitar a la audiencia a que haga uso de las bibliotecas ¿no?, yo sigo insistiendo en eso eso es lo que hacía cuando cuando íbamos a hacer trabajo de extensión, pienso que es muy importante que tomen parte activa en en las decisiones en la toma de decisiones de las bibliotecas siempre en diferentes momentos las bibliotecas son son blancos de diferentes políticas no, entonces yo creo que si la comunidad tiene claro la importancia de las bibliotecas debe tomar parte activa en que se mantengan abiertas y que sean incluyentes.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:04:12 Paul: Ok pues muchas gracias por estar con nosotros y ser parte de este proyecto</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:04:22 María: Gracias por invitarme</li> </ul> Notas: * Vallejo Irene. (2024) El infinito en un junco: La invención de los libros en el mundo antiguo. Bogotá, D.C., Colombia : Debate * Hyattsville Library * BibloRed, Red de bibliotecas públicas de Bogotá (Colombia) * John Krivak. Anterior Librarian III en la biblioteca de Hyattsville * La entrevistada se está refiriendo a la sala Prince George’s en la biblioteca de Hyattsville. * “Amazon.com, Inc. es una corporación estadounidense de comercio electrónico y servicios de computación en la nube a todos los niveles con sede en la ciudad de Seattle, Washington.” tomado de Wikipedia (2024, July 18). * Kindle es un dispositivo electrónico creado para leer libros digitales. * Barnes and noble es una librería que atiende a más de 600 comunidades en todos los estados de Estados Unidos. Taken from Barnes and Noble website Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Paul Moreno Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed María Escobedo Location The location of the interview Hyattsville Library Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Maria Escobedo Interview Subject The topic of the resource PGCMLS Oral History Description An account of the resource Interview with Maria Escobedo about her experience as a Librarian I in the Hyattsville library and her work with the Latino community. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource PGCMLS Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Special Collection Staff Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource May 23, 2024 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" title="In copyright ©" rel="noreferrer noopener">In copyright ©</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Mp3 Language A language of the resource Spanish Type The nature or genre of the resource Digital audio Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 200017 Adult services Immigration Librarianship Oral History PGCMLS History https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/85676/archive/files/a63d12938c98c195c3dcdbafcccdc11f.png?Expires=1773878400&Signature=I4s8-V3dUSzvHar%7ETSgW0NTPcPsA4jOGfsYGhosBYEI7OL%7E3jh9eQqpYvH7KcHfUO1YYuYbj89Af51I54BG5e-QQipsW6DzpOXklBk8AAknEkSHFj3-0Sro2WChrfC1YSQuiPBUoWyH9l47%7EaZmarAEMeHgDWy7P%7EC7p0rkk6t0s25-JDoBqwxjb7%7E6koTd0mzOwtciuMf67kCMtH7b6aMTRjO0k2Ia-%7EpSq5NJyFEkQCXe4Jxs1q0TkAb3l4GhBtjClwio3sxR%7EAvNNbPl6yQeleAguZl1wC9Xw0nH4f4n4WF5rqgahePUef4jAna6UuidWTAc7L-TIgnb-mPscMg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 43c7e34913b1f4f5ddc7eed4d3ece4b4 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/85676/archive/files/d44a55fab33e80c6d43cad4f7d05e8a3.mp3?Expires=1773878400&Signature=JnsF8PrOPPwsRjmyjiZy7-3YYwuasl4sR2whCNP0DO%7EPzgTKVLSwPToj2Uz16Fh3V55we9Jj6Xex8BmAl2w5L3X8HCgY6plV5dhaAvFQfyyxbxNijH7gxDxqWvN6%7EC92RS%7E%7EdCZZq7kvHBAxE6tDp1iHtSKetZqU%7ED5moAwFL1d1N4KQ-x4oirdIN0U%7ESacBnLTOnwDLgxrre0LDbv6lkos2BLnYHqz-19IYcb0zjeMsBVKIeUErq6GAo%7E%7ECJnDEWrW28yPgODp349r5f0lFztIOA7ecf4tYPdMouXVD84TnS%7EWSyr1oS73gSnH-odqv6Jx6TkjZUm5l3N1yWlALJg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 7c6e0617124b10959f2790b38ae4d67f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Prince George's Memorial Library System Oral History Project Subject The topic of the resource Library System Oral history Description An account of the resource The PGCMLS Oral History Project is an initiative with the goal of documenting the voices and experiences of current and former staff members employed by the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System. This oral history piece is one facet of a large project of presenting and recording the library system’s history comprehensively via photographs, documents, and other primary sources. Established in 1946 in Prince George’s County, PGCMLS’s nearly 80 year history and generations of staff represent decades of institutional memory and service to the communities it serves. These interviews are intended to capture some of these stories and memories for both current and future use. In addition to providing an archive of PGCMLS staff experiences, this collection of oral histories acts as a tool for people interested in library work to hear firsthand accounts of what it is to work in a large public library in a variety of settings and departments. Disclaimer: The digital content exhibited in these collections is presented as documentation and perspectives on history and past events; they may reflect personal memories, opinions, and perspectives that are not necessarily the official position of Prince George’s Memorial Library System or any other Library staff. Some material may contain subject matter or language that may be considered sensitive or upsetting. These collections are copyrighted and are intended for educational purposes. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Special Collections Staff Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available PGCMLS Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource May 5, 2024 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-NC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" title="© Copyright" rel="noreferrer noopener">© Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .WAV Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Digital sound Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data .wav Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:14:56 Min Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Project: PGCMLS Oral History Project Chapter: Monica McAbee Interview Date: June 4, 2024 Participants: Interviewer: Hannah Erickson Interviewee: Monica McAbee <ul><li style="font-weight:400;">00:00 Hannah: Today is June 4, 2024 at the Hyattsville Branch Library of the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System. My name is Hannah Erickson, Librarian II, and I'm here with Monica McAbee, Librarian III, from the Selection Office. We are recording an interview with Monica as part of the PGCMLS Oral History Project. Monica, thanks for being here with us today.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">00:25 Monica: It’s a pleasure.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">00:27 Hannah: Could you start by introducing yourself? Tell us a little bit about yourself, whatever you'd like to share. Could be hobbies, preferred readings, really anything you'd like to do to tell us a little bit about yourself.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">00:41 Monica: Sure. I'm Monica McAbee. I select adult fiction for our library collections and I love to read. I'm sure that comes as no surprise. I love reading. I love talking about what I'm reading. I love talking to other people about what they're reading. So I like to do what you call readers advisory, conversations about books. I don't just do it for the library. I don't just do it for the Maryland Library Association. I do it in my personal life because it's fun. And because I especially like science fiction, I belong to a club, the Potomac River Science Fiction Society. And what we do is get together once a month. And we basically do book talks for each other, we recommend books that we've read. So that is just a big part of my life, is just reading and talking about books. But I do have a few other hobbies I like too, I sing with a chorus. And I used to do folk dancing. And I do like to travel. And one of the best things I ever did that combined all three of those things, for a while, I belonged to the Swiss Folklore Group of Washington, DC.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:57 Hannah: Very cool.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:59 Monica: It was so fun because you could sing in all the languages they sing in Switzerland, so not just Swiss German, but Italian and French and Romance. And oh, I also like languages. So I can find another thing. And we would do the folk dances. And we would travel to Switzerland as a group and attend the Yodel Fests. And sing in competition and everything. And they basically treated us as the goofy American cousins. Which was very appropriate. So that's just a little bit about stuff I like to do.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">02:35 Hannah: So unsurprisingly, very literary book-focused hobbies, but also an eclectic mixture of interests. And I'm a fellow science fiction enthusiast, which we've bonded over in the past.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">02:50 Monica: We have indeed.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">02:52 Hannah: It's fun. Side note, but I love that you were involved in a folklore-focused group. I was just looking at this book and we're recording in the Prince George's Room, a local history room right now. And I found this book on old Maryland lore*. And then in the back, there was a little note. Sorry, this is tangent. But there was a note about like a system of cataloging folklore motifs that had numbers, not Dewey Decimal, but similar to Dewey Decimal. And they had an example of number, letter, something, point, something. And the example they gave what this particular code meant was Headless Revenant.Which I just…</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">03:35 Monica: The name of my next band. Yeah, I love, I've never gone that deep into the study of folklore, but I know that there is that kind of cataloging system that exists. Just the fact that that exists is fascinating to me.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">03:48 Hannah: Same.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">03:48 Monica: I mean, you know, some of us will catalog anything. You know, those of us who are real nerds, we will organize anything we can.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">03:57 Hannah: Who's gonna stop us? No one. So could you tell us about your early experiences working in libraries? Like what positions or positions have you held? Tell us a little about your career path.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">04:12 Monica: Yeah, I'm actually gonna start by saying that I grew up here in Prince George's County. And the Hyattsville Library was my family's local branch. We used the Hyattsville Library when I was growing up. So I have very fond memories. You know, my reading addiction started early and Hyattsville Library was the enabler. And that was the case until the Beltsville Library was open. And I grew up in Calverton. So Beltsville then became the local library, and thanks to that, I got a part-time job at one point, high school or college, shelving books at the Beltsville Library. Back when it was in three trailers, it was not in a building yet. We had a little mice that would come to visit from time to time. It was close quarters, but this also made for a very nice, tight-knit staff. Not many people. You got to know the library users very well. And I was just a page. I wasn't supposed to do reference interviews or anything like that. But I did kind of get sucked into helping people find things from time to time. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">05:30 Hannah: Sure.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">05:31 Monica: Because you're there, you're on the spot. The branch manager was Micki Freeney. Now, she's kind of a legend in Prince George's library history.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">05:41 Hannah: She is.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">05:41 Monica: At one point, she became the director for a while. But she was such a good role model. Enthusiastic, dedicated, knowledgeable, and fun. She just had a great sense of humor and everything. So when it came time for me to figure out what kind of career I wanted to go into I looked back on my days shelving books at the Beltsville Library and realized, oh, this is a perfect fit for me. Because I'm working with people, helping them find books and information, working with other people who enjoy the same kind of thing. So at that point, I finished my bachelor's degree and went right on to library school. Didn't skip anything. I just said, okay, I'm just gonna get the degree. This is going to be my career. I've never regretted it. So I started at Laurel, the Laurel Branch, in the Young Adult Services, what we now call teen. But a lot of people still say YA. And it was an interesting situation because at that time, they had what they called job share. And I was in, I was part-time. I was half-time with another person in the same position as me. And she was half-time. So it basically added up to one full position and we shared that position.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">07:14 Hannah: Oh, interesting. I didn't believe that was something the system did.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">07:17 Monica: At one point, you know, you just try all different things and see what works for the situation.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">07:22 Hannah: So were you both part-time or were you full-time and did different jobs?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">07:27 Monica: We were both part-time, so just 20 hours a week. And that worked for me at the time because I was in library school. So I needed time to go to classes and stuff.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">07:37 Hannah: Sure, working full-time and going to school is brutal.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">07:39 Monica: Yeah, but once I got my degree, I stayed in Young Adult for a while. And then at one point, I had an opportunity to move to children's services because we were going through a budget crunch in the 1990s. And staff were leaving, they were taking incentives to retire or to leave. And so of course, there had to be a lot of moving people around. And I was invited to move into children's services at Laurel. And I said, oh, something new sounds fun. Sure. So I went ahead and did that for a little while and then moved up at one point. I got a promotion and became a generalist where you're doing all age levels, usually in a smaller branch. So I've worked in big branches like New Carrollton and Laurel. I've worked in small branches like Glen Arden. And I worked in Beltsville, the branch where I…</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">08:35 Hannah: The branch that didn't have a building yet.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">08:38 Monica: Yeah, they finally had a building, walls and everything. And after all of that, working in teen, children's, generalist, I then ended up working in selection, selecting adult materials. So it's funny how it kind of spans the age ranges that way. But also I've done, just working in the branches for 18 years, I did a lot of different things. We started providing computers for the public to use when I was at the New Carrollton branch. So I got to learn about computers.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">09:18 Hannah: What was that transition like?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">09:19 Monica: It was interesting, we had three computers. So we had a separate room where we kept them. And there was an Apple and a Mac and probably an IBM PC.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">09:32 Hannah: Oh, so we had different, we didn't just have PCs.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">09:35 Monica: Right.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">09:36 Hannah: Oh, interesting.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">09:37 Monica: Yeah, and there were staff and customers who were Mac fanatics. It's like, I only do Mac, you know, it's the Mac versus IBM silly thing. But it was interesting to see the different personalities that would come in to use the computers because this was a new thing for a lot of people. And you were limited in how much time you could use the computer. So one of my jobs was to manage people when they would refuse to leave the computer. I was like, I just want one more thing to do. Oh, no, yeah, it was fun. So yeah, a lot of working with people, a lot of people's skills, you either learn on the job or if you don't, you're in trouble.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">10:25 Hannah: Trial by fire. So you've done a little bit of everything. Worked with many different age groups, different types of branches.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">10:33 Monica: Yeah, children's story time, adult book discussions, all sorts of fun stuff.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">10:39 Hannah: And yeah, I was thinking about how we don't, I think, divide up children's and teens the way we used to, when it was young adults. I've been, this is long enough to remember when it was more of a children's, young adult, adult. So now it's youth services and 18 and up for the most part.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">11:05 Monica: Right, you can go granular or you can lump things.As long as the age levels are getting served, then that's what's important.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">11:13 Hannah: Definitely.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">11:15 Monica: However you define the divisions.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">11:21 Hannah: So can you tell us about the role of materials management and selection in the library system?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">11:28 Monica: Yeah, so I'm in the selection office, but it's part of a big department called materials management. And just as the name says, we manage the materials. The role of materials management in general is just to make sure that the materials get to the branches.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">11:47 Hannah: We appreciate that.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">11:48 Monica: I'm sure you do. And it consists of different departments. So there's selection, the people who decide what materials are needed. And then there's acquisitions. And they are receiving the materials as they come in, making sure that the invoices are taken care of and that everything that was supposed to be in the order has come in. And then you've got the cataloging department and those folks get the book records into the catalog so that customers can search for books and information and find it. And then the last stop for the materials before they go out to the branches is the processing department. And they just slap on any labels or stickers or whatever that the books need before they get sent out to the branches. So all those different departments work together to make sure that the materials get out to the branches the way they should. And we also take care of materials that have to be discarded for whatever reason. And I do wanna give special mention to interlibrary loan, because they're kind of also under the umbrella of materials management in that they handle sending books out to other library systems when they wanna borrow from us and bringing books in when we, our customers want to borrow something that we don't happen to have in our collection. So interlibrary loan is also a really important part of the materials management for the system.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">13:29 Hannah: Yeah, and it's a wonderful service.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">13:33 Monica: Yeah, they're good, good, good people.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">13:36 Hannah: I remember when I started working the library system, I don't know if they still do this for new employees. I hope they do, but we got a tour of materials management.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">13:44 Monica: Yeah!</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">13:44 Hannah: Got to see, you know, this department does X, it's very cool. It's kind of see the, I don't know, I don't mean to say this in a dehumanizing way, but sort of the machine of here's how the materials, here's how they're chosen, here's how, here's how they're entered in the, you know, all the things that get them from a possibility to a library book or other material that is accessible.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">14:09 Monica: I wish more people would take advantage of that. Yeah, the last couple onboardings we've done where we had new staff being introduced to all our policies and everything, we didn't, we, materials management, did not have time to give them a tour.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">14:24 Hannah: Oh, that's a shame.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">14:25 Monica: Basically, my boss, Blaine Holliday, says, hey, we don't have time to show you around, but please come any time, just give me a call ahead of time and we'll show you around and give you a personal tour. So as far as I know, nobody's taken advantage of that, so I wish they would.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">14:41 Hannah: Oh yeah, I think it's really, I mean, I think we all get caught up to the day-to-day and what our specific duties are, but I think it's really wonderful to be able to understand the other departments, the other aspects that, because one of us couldn't exist or function without the other, it's all part of the same mission.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">15:01 Monica: Absolutely, and a lot of materials management staff like to get out to the branches from time to time. Some of them work in the branches, part-time, they'll fill in, some of them. I don't go physically to the branches, but I belong to the Greenbelt Book Discussion Group, which is a virtual thing.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">15:20 Hannah: Oh, very cool.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">15:21 Monica: So that's one way that I keep my hand in, interacting with customers. So yeah, I would invite staff to ask Blaine for a tour of materials management.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">15:37 Well, it's been a long time since I had a tour, maybe I should ask for a fresh tour.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">15:41 Monica: Yeah, why not? </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">15:44 Hannah: So can you talk about any changes to the selection process or materials management, if you like, over time, both in-house and PGCMLS, and also, if you wish, in the broader landscape of public library collections, technology, and publishing?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">16:04 Monica: Yeah, a lot of people talk about formats, and I'll talk about that in a second, but I would say one of the biggest changes is the selection philosophy. It used to be, we were up in an ivory tower, and we were saying, we librarians know what you should be reading, and we will recommend it to you, and we will only purchase quality materials that will stand the test of time. We don't do that. Now we get stuff that people actually wanna read, because people are different, and there are many, many, many reading tastes, and needs, and reading levels, and for heaven's sake. So I really admire a former director of Baltimore County's library system, Charlie Robinson. He's the one that made a big push in the early 90s to give them what they want. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">16:57 Hannah: I mean, people don't really know what they want to read.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">17:00 Monica: Yeah, and so, you know, paperbacks, series like Sweet Valley High, there was a time when our selection librarians would not purchase the Sweet Valley High series.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">17:14 Hannah: Seriously?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">17:15 Monica: Seriously, because, oh, that's just trash. It doesn't get professional reviews. We don't need to be putting that in our collection. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">17:28 Hannah: This is, if you'll pardon me, and let me go on another brief…</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">17:31 Monica: Please. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">17:32 Hannah: But I was just, so the library system produces a podcast where we reread young adult literature, and we were reading the Babysitter's Club, and we all had a moment of horror when, in the book we were reading, the parent of one of the Babysitter's Club, Claudia, was a librarian who, she was described as the head of a local public library, and she both told her daughter that she didn't want her to read Nancy Drew, and that the library did not hold Nancy Drew, and we were all like, what? This is that in the 80s, what library wouldn't have Nancy Drew? But we thought it was horribly implausible, and now I'm wondering if maybe it was possible.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">18:12 Monica: Oh, Nancy Drew is the classic example of a series that libraries would not carry. At one time, libraries wouldn't carry the Wizard of Oz series.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">18:22 Hannah: That is shocking. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">18:24 Monica: This goes way back to this very snooty attitude about literature and your clientele. So I am very happy to be in a situation where we are actually getting fun books. We are getting what some people might call trashy books. Hey, reading tastes are reading tastes, and let’s let people enjoy what they enjoy. Romance books, science fiction, you name it. I don't know to what extent Street Lit existed before I moved into selection, but I think we were already getting a little bit of it, especially like The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah. That was the big one that really started the modern Street Lit boom. But once I was a selector, I'm very fortunate that I was not required to only purchase materials that had professional reviews, because then we'd hardly have any Street Lit in our collection. And that is one of our best circulating genres.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">19:32 Hannah: People love it. They ask for it all the time.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">19:34 Monica: They want that drama. They want characters they can relate to in various ways. And why would we not want that?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">19:44 Hannah: Well, it seems maybe possibly part of the sort of that, there seems to be a tendency to look down on genre in general, which Street Lit is maybe another example of that.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">19:57 Monica: The great Mary Kay Shelton, I believe she used to work for Baltimore County, but I was once at a dinner table with her and overheard her say, I don't read li-fi. She doesn't do literary fiction. She was all about the genres. So, you know, it goes both ways, but it's all very silly. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">20:24 Hannah: Make literary fiction a genre by itself. I love it.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">20:28 Monica: But also other things that have changed, of course, just the big format change. The rise of audio books and digital books and now streaming books and videos. So that's another big change in selection that has happened over the years because we're no longer always ordering discrete titles one by one. Adam Wall, our online resources selector, he's dealing with subscriptions to materials where you have online databases of all these magazines and periodicals and newspapers and you name it and reference books. So you're often buying a whole bundle of books at the same time. That's a big change from before.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">21:23 Hannah: Definitely. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it used to be that when a print book came out, the audiobook on cassette or CD would follow like six months or more later.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">21:35 Monica: It would take awhile.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">21:36 Hannah: And now it comes out, if it's gonna come out pretty much simultaneously and it's often in, maybe it's in CD, maybe it's in a downloadable audio version, it's very different.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">21:48 Monica: Right. And we've seen formats disappear. I mean, I remember phono discs.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">21:54 Hannah: Did we purchase those?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">21:57 Monica: We had them when I was growing up and I listened to opera on these records I would borrow from the library. It was great. Because who could afford to go to the opera? Give me a break.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">22:08 Hannah: Yeah, not your average person.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">22:11 Monica: Right, so that's why libraries are so great. Exactly. But yeah, so from vinyl to cassettes to CD, and now CDs are starting to go away and it's just gonna be all digital and you can think what you will about that, but this is where the customers are going. So the selection office has to follow where the chief use is.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">22:41 Hannah: Yeah, we don't have, for example, music CDs anymore. We do have, still have audio books on CD, but it's shrinking and I believe the circulation numbers are not what they used to be.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">22:51 Monica: Exactly, and it's just following the general trend country-wide, you know, cars are no longer made with audio, CD, disc slots and all of that stuff.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">23:04 Hannah: So, like when they stopped making cars with cassette players.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">23:08 Monica: Exactly, you have to pay attention to the trends and put your money where it'll do the most good for your community.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">23:15 Hannah: Yeah. What is the most challenging aspect of working in selection?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">23:20 Monica: That was a challenging question and it was hard to think of what's the most challenging.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">23:25 Hannah: If you have more than one, we're not gonna cut you off.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">23:27 Monica: Yeah, I would say though that the most challenging is the fact that there's no crystal ball to tell the selector what books are really gonna take off and which ones will just sit there on the shelf like duds. It's the same problem publishers have, you know, they don't know. They'll put a lot of money on something that might just go nowhere. So it's always a guessing game and you make the best educated guess that you can. I'll talk later about resources we use. But we like to say there's no crystal ball, do the best you can based on customer requests and usage patterns and all of that. But other challenges, one of them is just time management because there's always more coming out. Keeping up with the titles is a never ending journey. And you really have to be comfortable with never feeling caught up. And for me, that's fine. I like knowing that I've always got more to do. But it is a challenge. And I would also say it would be a challenge trying to defend our materials, except that we are lucky here in Prince George's. So far we have not had the kinds of censorship attacks that other library systems in other areas are getting. It may yet come. And we'll talk about that later too when we talk about intellectual freedom. But so far we have not had organized political groups inundate us with hundreds of titles that they want us to remove from the system. So fingers crossed that this is gonna die down sooner rather than later and that the Freedom to Read Act here in Maryland will also help.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">25:32 Hannah: Yes, that just got passed which was great news.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">25:35 Monica: Yes.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">25:40 Hannah: So in your perspective, what makes the PGCMLS collection stand out from other library systems? If it does, I shouldn’t assume.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">25:50 Monica: Yeah, I think it does in some ways based on some things I've heard from people who use other library systems. Partly the fact that we do purchase popular materials and we don't always worry about if it's self-published, if it has reviews or not, especially for adult fiction. It's less so for nonfiction because you wanna make sure that it's authoritative information, less so for children's. You really do wanna be more careful with what you're purchasing for the children's collection. But my philosophy for adult fiction is this is recreation for adults. They can read what they want.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">26:24 Hannah: They are grown-ups. They can make their own choices.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">26:25 Monica: Exactly. If someone requests something that doesn't have any reviews and I have to buy it from Amazon because it's not even carried by our distributor, that's okay, we can do that. And I have had colleagues thank me for that because they will use interlibrary loan to get materials from us, from our collection because we have these odd little things.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">26:50 Hannah: But colleagues from other counties.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">26:52 Monica: Yeah, exactly. Like Calvert County, an avid reader has told me, you have the best stuff. Another thing that I think might distinguish us from some of the other counties, although not all, is our early emphasis on Black authors as our population changed. And our African-American population grew and became the majority in the county. Again, the selectors pay attention to who is in the community. And so going certainly back before I was a selector and who knows how far back, we've been purchasing a lot of Black authors to the extent where some of the branches would make displays and say, come on, look what we've got here. And these days, it's just almost a given that if you come across something that's coming out by a Black author, unless it's something that nobody would be interested in, we're definitely gonna consider it. So I would say that is another thing that distinguishes us, again, less so these days, as people put more emphasis on diversity in their collections. And publishers actually pay attention to diversity in what they're putting out.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">28:13 Hannah: It's about time that they did that, for sure.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">28:19 Hannah: Can you tell us what the PGCMLS policy about banned and challenged books is and how the system is defending books from censorship?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">28:29 Monica: Yeah, basically our policy is we're gonna uphold the First Amendment rights of our customers. Free speech has a corollary, which is the right to receive information. So that's why the First Amendment comes into play in library service. Customers have a right to access information. They do not have a right to restrict access for other people, and that includes other people's children. And our policy is that we will purchase a wide variety of materials with different viewpoints, representation of many different kinds of people, and we're not going to remove them just based on the viewpoints of the author. So you can't say, well, I disapprove of this author's viewpoint, therefore, this book must go, or I disapprove of the way this author expressed themselves. Therefore, this book should not be here. Free speech, freedom of expression. So we are defending the collection, partly by being prepared. We have written policies and procedures, that is so important. I can't believe there's still some library systems or even school systems that still don't have a written policy of how they're going to respond to challenges, and that kind of leaves you floundering if you're not ready for that. And of course, another very important way is we train the staff. At one point, I put together an intellectual freedom page on Connect, which is our intranet for the staff to access so they can go online to this particular page and read about intellectual freedom, policies, philosophy, procedures, all of that, if they need a refresher. So we train, we make sure we update our policy as needed, we at least revisit it every now and then based on changing circumstances.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">30:45 Hannah: Let's give it a look over.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">30:47 Monica: Oh yeah. And also, the selectors are always ready to defend what we've selected because there's always a reason that we bought these things. So we're ready to respond. And we respond in a way that is consistent and thoughtful and respectful of the people who are challenging the books because some of these challenges, even these days, still are earnest, genuine concerns that the person has. We've seen a lot in this country in the last few years of very politically motivated challenges, but there are still individuals who have their own outlook on things and they have the right to express their concerns.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">31:36 Hannah: Sure. It might be a good faith concern.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">31:45 Monica: Rather than a performative outrage.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">31:47 Hannah: Yes, thank you. Those are the words I was reaching for. Have you done any other work related to intellectual freedom and censorship?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">31:57 Monica: Yeah, so several years ago, before I was in selection even, I went to a program that was sponsored by the Maryland Library Association and it was about filters, internet filters in libraries, and whether libraries should use these things because isn't that censorship if you are filtering information that the public can see. So there was this big argument. The MLA, Maryland Library Association, the group that was sponsoring the program was the Intellectual Freedom Panel and they had a panel of people from all different viewpoints on this subject. So they had people who were pro-filter who said this is just responsible librarianship, making sure that only appropriate material on the internet gets accessed and then there were other people pointing out that filters were way too broad.They kept locking information that was perfectly valid, constitutionally protected expression. You can't do this. So I was fascinated by this.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">33:10 Hannah: It is a tricky debate.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">33:11 Monica: It is, it really is. And a lot of librarians, the libraries finally came down on the side of having the filters. Partly the filters did get a little bit better. Partly legislation came along, which pretty much forced libraries into doing this. There aren't too many ways you can get around it. But anyway, that was my introduction to the Intellectual Freedom Panel. So I joined because I was always very anti-censorship and I served as their secretary for several years. I was the Intellectual Freedom Officer for a few years, kind of like the chair of the committee, but I've been on the, in the group for a long, long time. And we do things like, we do training for library staff on responding to challenges and a lot of other things that deal with intellectual freedom, whether it's privacy, the privacy rights of your customers, or equity of access, copyright, is that a censorship issue or no, depending on how you're wielding it, just all sorts of topics that are fascinating and can kind of get beyond the day-to-day library service. So we've done, we've written statements supporting libraries and authors when they were being challenged. I remember at one point we wrote a letter to a school out in the Midwest somewhere that was banning John Green's book, Looking for Alaska Very, very popular book for teens.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">35:01 Hannah: John Green's very popular…</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">35:02 Monica: I support John Green and his right to write books for teens and their right to read it. So we've done a lot of stuff like that. </li> <li style="font-weight:400;">35:10 Hannah: Going back to the internet filters, yeah, without taking a particular stance on them, I think the classic debate is, well, they block, you mentioned they block legitimate information. A classic example would say somebody's looked up information on breast cancer and blocked a website with information about that, but so let's take an inappropriate website through.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">35:37 Monica: And yeah, that's the other thing about filters is they did not block everything that you would want them to block if you were saying what we should only allow, what we would select deliberately. They're not, they can't get everything.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">35:52 Hannah: No, I can tell you as someone who works in a branch, they do not get everything you might hope that they do.And they do sometimes get things that you hope that they would not block, but…</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">36:03 Monica: I always thought that the real answer would be privacy screens that you can put on each computer.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">36:09 Hannah: That's an interesting idea.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">36:10 Monica: Yeah, some libraries want that route because if you can't see what the person's looking at, and probably you shouldn't be able to see what somebody's looking at, it's their privacy, as long as their behavior is acceptable in the library, they're sitting there looking at the computer, why should we know what they're looking at?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">36:29 Hannah: I do think some of our customers would like that in general, just even for things like banking information or their social security number.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">36:39: Yeah, so it's a tricky one. I was gonna say something else, but no, I forgot, but… You can cut that part out.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">36:53 Hannah: I derailed you with the internet filter.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">36:57 Monica: That's fine.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">37:00 Hannah: But, yes, as a branch staff member, I can say I appreciate the training on how to respond to calls for removing a book from the collection or other challenges.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">37:09 Monica: Yeah, and we're gonna do that training again later this year. We're gonna try to keep doing it at least every other year, if not every year, because people need refreshers, but also lots of new people come in.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">37:18 Hannah: Definitely, I know I could use a refresher. And like you said, we have a lot of new staff.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">37:23 Monica: Yeah, and I remember what I was gonna say when we were talking about blocking medical information. And now this is happening with books, with these goofy groups that keep trying to challenge books in schools that deal with sexuality in any way whatsoever. Some of the groups and legislation try to make an exception for health and medical information. Some of them don't, and it just gets ridiculous.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">37:51 Hannah: And you could argue that books on sexuality is health and medical information.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">37:57 Monica: Yes.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">37:58 Hannah: Pretty much most of the time, if not all the time. Yeah. It’s information people need.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">38:05: For sure. Including young people.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">38:07 Hannah: Yeah.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">38:08 Monica: You know, as appropriate, but they're using the word age-appropriate way wrong.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">38:14 Hannah: Yeah, it seems like it's a weaponized term.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">38:16 Monica: Yeah.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">38:17 Hannah: But yeah, young people desperately need that information.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">38:21 Monica: Yeah.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">38: 24 Hannah: So what sort of professional tools and source of information do you use to keep informed on what to select to purchase?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">38:31 Monica: Yeah, all sorts of stuff. One of the major tools that the selectors use are professional review journals. So things like Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews. We look at those to get an idea of what's coming out and what the appeal might be to our library users. So especially Library Journal and Booklist, which are library-oriented, they're very good about saying, oh, you know, this is for people who like to read, da, da, da, da, da, whatever. This will be good for book clubs. This is good because… Publishers Weekly and Kirkus, though, also help because they just, they'll cover, they might cover some titles that the other two didn't, so we can pick up more titles. All of these review journals do starred reviews, so you can really look for those and make sure you're not missing something special.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">39:30 Hannah: Does that mean that they recommend it to an extra degree or tell me what a starred review will mean?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">39:34 Monica: Yeah, a starred review just means that we think this is worthy of attention and has merit. Okay, this is a well-told story, a well-put-together biography, whatever, so it has to do with the quality. And you will see it, one of the reasons we read all these different review journals is you will see different reviews have different opinions on the same book. One reviewer will give it a starred review, the next reviewer will pan it and say, this was terrible. So we do have to do some triangulating when we're making decisions, but that's just one resource we use. We also look at publisher emails. They will spam us with all sorts of emails and we welcome that. Publishers do webinars now where they will promote books that are coming out. And I love watching those things. It's fun to just get an idea of what's coming out in the future. And we also get advanced reader copies, not so much for children's or teen books, but we get a lot of adult advanced reader copies sent to us from publishers. And these are books that are not the finished published version, but it's a paperback, almost finished, what you might call a galley of the book. And it's meant as a promotional tool when they send these to bookstores and libraries as a way to get these books in front of librarians and other decision makers so that we can say, oh, this debut, okay, let me thumb through this book and do a little speed read, a paragraph here, a paragraph there, look at the blurbs, look at who is blurbing it.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">41:31 Hannah: Just giving you a heads up that this is coming out.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">41:33 Monica: Yeah, and you can get a taste for, especially if it's a new author, is this somebody that our customers would be interested in? So I love advanced review copies. When those boxes come, it's like my birthday.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">41:47 Hannah: They are fun. You feel like you're getting a sneak peek into something before anyone else.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">41:53: Yeah. So we do professional reviews, we do publisher information, we look at what's in the media, what books are being talked about in the media, and what topics are being talked about in the news because books on those topics are gonna be popular. And then most importantly, feedback from staff and customers. We do have a way for customers to request books and suggest titles that they'd like to see in the library. We don't always get it. We're not always able to if it doesn't really fit our selection criteria or our budget. Well, that's part of the criteria. But we get what we can. And the staff, the branch staff are really helpful about giving us an idea of how the collection is being used out in the branches, in the communities.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">42:42 Hannah: So I know that there's that suggest a purchase form on the website. I've sent many a customer to that. I'm just sort of curious, what, how many submissions do you get on a weekly basis? Oh, what does it look like on that, on your end?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">42:59 Monica: It can be a lot. What do you call it? It comes and goes. We have a few who will occasionally get all excited and send in 20 new suggestions all at once. And you just have to manage your time. But yeah, we do get maybe not hundreds every week, that would be a lot, but I would say at least a hundred every week among the three of the selectors.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">43:33 Hannah: So it's significant.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">43:35 Monica: Yeah. People use that tool. It's a good thing that they do. And then we look at them and see if we can get it or not.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">43:43 Hannah: Do they tend to be titles that have come out recently? Are they older titles?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">43:47 Monica: Oh, it's a mix. Yeah, it's a mix. We will get requests for things that are coming out too far ahead. Like it's in our next fiscal year and we can't even buy that yet. And we will get requests for books that came out a decade ago that are available still from other library systems. And especially if the book is available from a Maryland library system, we're not gonna buy it all over again. We're gonna say, oh, you can get this through interlibrary loan. Go into what we call our Marina system and borrow it from another library, another county. And that just saves money. I mean, Maryland librarians like to call Maryland a library heaven because we are very collaborative across the state. And our Marinaand interlibrary loan system is one example of that. It's wonderful and it's just a way of sharing all our collections with each other.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">44:49 Hannah: I think I don't always have the best sense of what other states or libraries, places other than Maryland have or don't have. I know that Marina and interlibrary loan are wonderful, but that's a nice idea.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">45:04 Monica: Well, I think it's easier for Maryland, partly because we're a small state geographically, right? And we're well populated. So it is certainly easier to organize all these collaborations.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">45:17 Hannah: Sure, I'm imagining like, I don't know a lot about, imagining a state like California or Texas where they're just huge. That would be a lot harder to do. We're a lot more compact.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">45:27 Monica: For sure, so we use it to our advantage.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">45:30 Hannah: For sure. If someone is interested in working in libraries in general, what would you say to encourage them to start their career?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">45:50 Monica: Oh, I would say first make sure you're using your local library. They probably already are if they're interested in doing this as a career, but go in, look around, pay attention to what the library staff are doing. I mean, this is how it worked for me. If you can get a part-time job just to make some money and shelf books or whatever, do that. Don't wait to get your master's degree in librarianship to then start trying to look for a library job. Get in wherever you can at whatever level you can. And wherever you can. You might be able to work in your college library. You might be able to work in your local public library. Anything you can do. Even volunteering, if you have the time for that, you can try doing that in the library. So just to get a feel for what it's all about. And while you're there, you can ask the staff questions that you're curious about. Ask the staff who've gone to library school. Ask them about it because it is expensive. It is time consuming. So you wanna figure out if this is gonna be worthwhile for you and what you wanna do. And be aware of all the different kinds of libraries that there are. Most of us know about public libraries and academic libraries in the universities, school libraries when they exist. Which unfortunately they don't always.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">47:09 Hannah: They are not doing very well these days, makes me sad.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">47:11 Monica: But there's all sorts of special libraries for the government, for corporations, for science, whatever. And you might find something that just fills just the niche for you.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">47:24 Hannah: I've seen advertisements for very specialty libraries. Like I think I saw one for a librarian of the Galapagos Islands.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">47:31 Monica: Oh, cool.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">47:34 Hannah: And also there was one sort of wine librarian. I don't know. The things you see go by in listservs and you're like, it catches your eye and you're like, in another life.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">47:43 Monica: I don't. I don't. Yeah, for sure.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">47:49 Hannah: I think I saw something that was said owl librarian. I think like a bird, but it was an abbreviation for some sort of special service. And I was like, oh, nevermind.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">47:55 Monica: Well, that's not as much fun.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">47:48 Hannah: You're not working with nocturnal birds, nevermind.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">48:01 Monica: I would say another thing about advice for library staff wannabes. Certain traits I think will serve you well. Among them, I would say curiosity is a real good one. Curiosity, you gotta be a people person. If you're gonna work in a place that serves people, be a people person. You can't just say, well, I'm gonna be a librarian because I like books. You have to like people, too, because you're connecting people to books and information. And flexibility is the other one I would say. Because librarianship changes over the years. We've talked about that a little bit, but so much changes. And you wanna be flexible enough not only to deal with changes within a library that you're working in, but also maybe for your own career advancement, you might need to get a position in another county or another state. And the more flexible you're able to be, the better. Obviously not everybody's gonna be able to travel across the country to take a job if they're already in an established situation where they are. But if you can do that, it really does help.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">49:21 Hannah: That's really good advice. Yeah, especially the people person part. I mean, I think that's, you don't have to be an extrovert, but you have to be able to interact with people.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">49:35 Monica: There are introverts who can deal with people. I can tell you.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">49:38 Hannah: Definitely.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">49:39 Monica: We are here.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">49:41 Hannah: Yes, we definitely are.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">49:42 Monica: I think introverts are great in the library because of our thoughtful approach to things, our attention to detail, you name it. But yeah, you can be an introvert and interact with people very comfortably, especially the more you do it, the easier it gets.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">49:57 Hannah: Yes, and I think people conflate introvert with shy and one can be both. But they're not necessarily the same thing. It's about how you recharge, not how you interact. And I think introverts will understand what other introverted customers might need. Yeah. Potentially a little better than an extrovert might understand.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">50:18 Monica:Very, very well observed. Yeah.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">50:24 Hannah: So on a similar topic, if someone is interested in working behind the scenes in materials management, what do you think are skills that they should develop?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">50:37 Monica: Probably mostly just general good work habit skills. Attention to detail is a big one for materials management, especially if you're somebody like a cataloger. That is the most detailed work, for sure. All of them, because you're dealing with what subject terms should we deal with here and what exactly are the alternate versions of this author's name and which authors, which countries list the author's last name first and vice versa and you know. So yeah, there's a lot of attention to detail, but also if you're just working with the materials, you wanna make sure that you are getting every step of the process correct. Time management, again, the work never ends, so have good time management skills. There's certain technical systems that you have to work with, but you can learn that on the job, you can be trained. So I would say be comfortable with technology, of course, but beyond that, I would also say, very important to have good communication skills because you're communicating across departments within materials management, as you're talking about the materials and what needs to happen with them. And you're also talking, communicating with the branches, with the branch staff, so communication skills are really helpful too. So that's all very general good work skills to have and they all apply to materials management too.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">52:24 Hannah: I was thinking what you said about cataloging and, cataloging is, I mean, I think this applies to pretty much everything you said about materials management. We wouldn't, without every single aspect of, from selection to cataloging to processing, without any of this, we would not be able, the library would not be able to exist in the way that it does. But with, I think you said about cataloging with the detail, like cataloging has to do with how findable, the way something is cataloged makes something how findable is it?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">53:02 Monica: It's crucial, crucial work, absolutely.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">53:04 Hannah: The choices that are made, yeah.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">53:07 Monica: Yeah, and I also should say, especially for selection librarians, if you wanna go into that work, good skills to develop, I would say analytical skills are important because you're making lots of decisions every day, one after another after another. You have to decide, am I gonna get this book or not? And why or why not? And you have to be able to do that quickly without mulling over it for too long.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">53:39 Hannah: That's, yeah, that must be challenging, especially since budgets are finite.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">53:42 Monica: Oh, yeah.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">53:45 Hannah: Because I imagine that you have an infinite amount of things to purchase, in a sense, and you have a not infinite amount of funds with which to do that.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">53:53 Monica: Exactly.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">53:55 Hannah: So making those decisions must be incredibly difficult at times.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">53:57 Monica: Yeah. And speaking of the budget, rudimentary math skills don't hurt. Because you do have to keep track of where you are within the fiscal year and what's happening with the budget. And especially when you're dealing with book distributors who give you a discount, the way that we get our discounts is you get them, they get entered into our budget after the fact. So there's a little bit of math-ing to do.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">54:26 Hannah: Oh, I never…</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">54:27 Monica: Figuring out how much money you actually have left.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">54:29 Hannah: I never knew about that. So you, so what you're purchasing something for is more than what it will actually end up being when everything has come through in the wash.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">54:41 Monica: Yeah. The retail cost is gonna be more than usually what we’ll end up actually paying.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">54:46 Hannah: Oh, that sounds messy.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">54:48 Monica: Now, let's talk about physical materials from a particular distributor. That does not apply unfortunately to Overdrive, for instance, with our digital books. Those are hella expensive.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">55:01 Hannah: Yeah, that's a whole different cost structure.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">55:05 Monica: But again, you have to be able to do the math with the digital books and say, what lending model will make the most sense for this particular title? Is it gonna be popular enough that I can spend all the money to get like 100 checkouts at one time? Or is it gonna just maybe do okay and I can just like buy one lending license for now? So there's a lot of analytical, numerical stuff that you need to pay attention to. It's all strategy.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">55:41 Hannah: Do you mind talking a little bit about the lending models for eBooks?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">55:45 Monica: Yeah, it's funny. I think when libraries first started being able to lend eBooks, I believe the model was you would buy the lending license and then you would have the eBook in your collection forever. That was it. But then publishers started getting really nervous about lending digital materials because they were afraid that it would be too easy for library customers to pirate them or they were afraid that too many library customers would use the library's eBook instead of buying the eBook. Never mind that libraries are one of the best publicity arms for publishers that they don't seem to realize.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">56:40 Hannah: So you're gonna find out about a book that you don't wanna purchase?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">56:43 Monica: Yeah.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">56:44 Hannah: If you're not an author, you don't necessarily wanna purchase a book without giving it to you.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">56:48 Monica: So what the publishers started doing was they started limiting how long we would get to have that title. Some publishers decided, okay, you get it for two years and then you have to buy it all over again if you still want it. Other publishers said, okay, you can have it for 26 checkouts and then you have to buy another 26 if your customers are still wanting to read this book. So there's probably about 10 different lending models at this point.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">57:17 Hannah: How did they come up with 26 as the number for checkouts?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">57:20 Monica: I think they tried to decide how many checkouts a print book would get in a year in a library. They were trying to compare it to print books which is kind of silly, but it was a time of experimentation.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">57:34 Hannah: The lifecycle of a print book varies so widely though. I mean, you almost could assign a random number generator to it.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">57:44 Monica: Yep, this is true. So yeah, and they've tried things like not making the e-book available to libraries at all or delaying when they would make it available. Poor MacMillan, the publisher MacMillan got in big trouble with the libraries a few years back when they decided they were gonna put a moratorium on new books coming out. Libraries couldn't get them for six months for e-books. And some libraries started boycotting MacMillan entirely, including their print titles. We decided not to do that. We thought that was gonna be too extreme and not really very effective. But we made our displeasure known. And it wasn't until the pandemic happened that MacMillan turned around and said, oh, well, in the greatness of our hearts, we're going to make our books available as soon as they come out, aren't we nice?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">58:52 Hannah: It wasn't working for them, was it? I mean, how did they think that was gonna end?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">58:59 Monica: And I am very pro publisher. I'm not trying to pick a fight with any one publisher, but sometimes they have to remember that libraries are their friends.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">59:11 Hannah: I mean, we're, yeah, it's, we're, you know, complimentary. Yes. Well, I don't know if industry's the right compromise.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">59:21 Monica: Yeah, and the libraries are here for the people who do not have the money to buy from you, Mr. Publisher. If you don't let the libraries have your book, that doesn't mean that everybody's gonna then go and buy the book, not everybody can.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">59:37 Hannah: Like most authors love, love libraries because it's a way of, you know, your book is out there getting read by more people.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">59:46 Monica: Yeah, the authors might pick it up, have a much better take on libraries than some of the publishers. Authors realize, and one of the things I didn't mention earlier that selection librarians do, one of the things we do is assess submissions from local authors. They send, they'll send their book to us, hoping that we'll put it in the library collection. And most of the time we do, but we still have to, you know, look at it and make sure that, you know, it doesn't have bad, like outdated information or anything like that. But, you know, we put a lot of local author books into the collection.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:00:24 Hannah: I do like that we have a process for local authors specifically. We got a whole page to share with them so they can follow the process.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:00:32 Monica: Absolutely.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:00:34: Will we be able to purchase their book?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:00:36 Monica: For sure. Well, and in most cases, we're not purchasing them. We are accepting these as donation because, again, our purchasing decisions are led by customer demand and interest. And for the most part, local authors are self-published or they're published by a very small publisher and they're not able to get the kind of publicity and attention that traditionally published authors can. This means that there's not much demand for their books unless they themselves are doing something to generate interest.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:01:16 Hannah: I see.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:01:16 Monica: So we can't really justify spending money on books that aren't gonna get circulation, but we will take donations of local authors' books, put them in the collection. If the author wants to, excuse me, I'm getting rough here, I'm gonna get water. If the author wants to publicize their book on their own, then, you know, that will help them because the book will get circulation and won't get discarded after, say, 10 years. We give local author books much longer, we won't weed them out right away. I haven't talked about weeding at all, but if a book is sitting in our regular collection and not getting any use at all for several years, we need to make room on the shelf for other books. But we won't do that so much with local author books because they're special.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:02:20 Hannah: We'll be a little gentler with them. Can you tell us about a special memory or anecdote in your work?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:02:29 Monica: Oh, I have a funny one. So this just is an example of how your special interests can come into play in your work life. There was a customer one time, he liked to borrow a lot of music from us. I think it was even cassettes back then, I can't remember. This was when I was working out in the branches. So he would come in and he would say, oh, what is the music that goes bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, I wanna borrow that. Well, fortunately, because I like classical music, I would always identify what he was, because he was always interested in ones that were pretty well known as far as classical music goes, so thank goodness. But I would say, okay, here we go, here's your Mozart, here's your Beethoven. So you just never know. And if you didn't know, you would just have to say, I'm sorry, let's try and see if somebody else can help, but another musical interaction I had was with one of my fellow chorus members. She came into the library, came up to the desk, we had just started our next season, we had this big work, we were gonna be singing. And she came up and said, do you have a recording of, and I said the name of the piece, we were gonna be rehearsing. And she said, yeah, my boss was standing next to me at the desk and she said, do you have ESP or what? So yeah, the job can be fun, because you just never know.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:04:20 Hannah: I paid my telepathy bill this month.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:04:22 Monica: That's right.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:04:24 Hannah: So yes, yes I do.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:04:26 Monica: But you never know what interests of yours will come into play, because people come in and ask all kinds of questions.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:04:32 Hannah: That's so true. On a semi-related note, what words of advice would you give to someone who was starting out and wanted to acquire and maintain strong skills in the area of reference services?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:04:44 Monica: Oh yeah, I would definitely say, again, be a curious person. Read or view a little bit about as much as you can, like you were preparing for a trivia contest or something. It's fun, as long as you have this kind of personality, be a trivia nerd, be a reference nerd, find out as much as you can about all kinds of things, simply because that will help you search for information when you're trying to help somebody find stuff. It'll just help you make those connections between the information they're asking for and where it's likely to be found. And on that same note, I would say, develop your vocabulary and your logic skills, because that will help you with search strategies. I mean, yeah, Google's pretty good, but anything you're searching, whether it's our catalog or any search engine or special databases that you can search, the more synonyms you can think of to use for search terms, the better, because you never know what something might be tagged under. And the more you know about how to formulate a search term, a phrase, several different search terms together, using, okay, I'm gonna throw around some jargon, Boolean terms, if you are in a database that allows you to combine terms, like saying, I want to search for this term and this term, they have to be related and this is a way of searching to get both terms into the results. Or if you're doing, you know, trying to widen the search and using, I want to look for this author or this author or this author, just as an example, then you wanna get all of those results. So just knowing about how searches work and a lot of that is just logic. So that would be helpful.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:07:06 Hannah: Yeah, Boolean searching is, I think, it's a really good concept to understand. And it's, I think the first time you encounter it, it's a little counterintuitive.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:07:13 Monica: Yes.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:07:14 Hannah: But once you get that down, it will serve you.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:07:17 Monica: Why does and narrow the search and or widens the search?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:07:21 Hannah: Exactly. So it melts your brain a little bit, it does.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:07:25 Monica: But the other, again, though, coming back to communication skills, that's the other thing that would help you as a reference librarian or information librarian. When you're helping customers find information, you want to be able to have a good conversation with the customer to find out really what they're looking for. Because customers don't always know how to explain it. So you need to be able to know how to ask them open questions and kind of guide them to thinking about what it is they need to know so that you can then put your search together and make sure you're getting the right information.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:08:05 Hannah: Those are all, that's fantastic advice. I think it's, yeah, it's really difficult to, especially if you don't know the person that are coming up and they're trying to find something and they don't know you and you don't know them and you're trying to connect with them enough to get on the same page so that you can help guide them to hopefully what they're looking for.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:08:22 Monica: And being a people person helps.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:08:25 Hannah: For sure.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:08:26 Monica: Yeah.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:08:27 Hannah: In your opinion, what makes public libraries important in our communities?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:08:32 Monica: You know what? I would say one of the main thing is expertise because we don't just provide the information or the books, we provide expertise, we help customers, we guide them to finding the information or finding their next good read. We get trained in doing effective programs for the community. We're not just coming in and saying, well, here it all is, here's our warehouse of material, knock yourself out. So I think the guidance is the big thing because again, you can go online and try to find information and often you will find some information but then you have to be good at figuring out, okay, is this correct information? Is it authoritative? Is it useful to me? And all of this stuff is what a librarian is gonna be thinking about as they try to guide you to what you need to know. So I would say the expertise is the main thing. Other things, of course, are the fact that we are supported by the taxes so we're a public institution and anybody can come in, the library is for everyone. We don't care what beliefs you're bringing in with you or whether it's political or religious or just what you think about other people. You can think whatever you want to and you can look up whatever information you want. We're going to be open to having people come in. And I would sum it up, I guess, by saying that we're a portal to connection and success for our communities.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:10:28 Hannah: Well said.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:10:30 Monica: Oh, and I would also say, I thought of another thing. We attract staff members who are very service-oriented, at least nine times out of 10. And I think that allows us to be highly customer service-oriented and really good at getting people what they need and getting them to want to come back. And also, I think that we are flexible enough that as service needs change in different situations, we're able to provide extra things like when we were passing out COVID tests, eclipse glasses, you name it. Making available health services, food services in partnership with other organizations. So again, I think our very strong focus on service, it's not always just about the information, it's also just about supporting the community in various ways and as an organization, we're set up to be able to do that. Obviously, we can't do everything, we can't be everything to everyone, but when we can take advantage of our staff being here and able to help in those ways, I think it's good that we do.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:11:53 Hannah: Definitely. So, last question. Is there anything we didn't ask you about today that you wanted to share? So, in all of it, experience we didn't get to, any closing thoughts?</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:12:05 Monica: I would just say, yeah, I don't think you missed anything, but I'm gonna close by just coming back to customer service. When I started in 1984, we were known for our customer service. Customers would come in and they would have used neighboring county library systems and they would tell us how much better we were. And it was stressed to me as a new staff member, you are here for the customer, you are approachable, you're ready to help. Once they've asked their question, you walk them to the stacks of books or you walk them to the computer and make sure they're getting what they need. I haven't been in the branches in a long time, this might be harder now that we are so short staffed, but it's still the gold standard.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:13:07 Hannah: I think, well, as someone who's still in the branches, we still try to do that. It can be harder, but when I came on board in 2007, that was very much emphasized. You walk the person there. I mean, if they don't want you to, you respect that, but that's the default. And we still really try to, at least in my observation, I'm not at every branch, I don't know. But that's, I believe what we are striving to do.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:13:39 Monica: Yeah, I hope that still gets stressed with brand new people because that's what's gonna keep people coming back. Libraries worry about staying relevant in this age of the internet and it's all about the people skills, the one-on-one help, the expertise, being there for people and making sure they're getting what they need and treating them with courtesy and being pleasant and all of that stuff.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:14:06 Hannah: Yeah, thinking of the person in front of you.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:14:08 Monica: Yeah, and I am going to, and I'm gonna wrap up by putting in a plug or a good word for our union. We are a unionized library and I think that's turned out to be a really good thing. I think staff are treated better now than they used to be in several ways. And I especially want to thank our staff members who are shop stewards for the union representing us. Thank you, thank you, thank you, all of you.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:14:41 Hannah: I think that's a great note to end on. Thank you for being here with us today. We appreciate you.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:14:47 Monica: Thanks Hannah, this is a fun thing. I'm glad you're doing these oral history interviews.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:14:50 Hannah: It's been really enjoyable.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:14:52 Monica: It's awesome.</li> <li style="font-weight:400;">01:14:53 Hannah: Thank you.</li> </ul> *<a href="https://catalog.pgcmls.info/polaris/search/title.aspx?ctx=1.1033.0.0.3&pos=1&cn=84786">Maryland Folk Legends and Folk Songs by George G. Carey</a> Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Hannah Erickson Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Monica McAbee Location The location of the interview Hyattsville Library Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Monica McAbee Interview Subject The topic of the resource PGCMLS Oral History Description An account of the resource Interview with Monica McAbee about her experience as a Librarian III in the PGCMLS Selection Office, as well as her past experiences working in branches across the library system. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource PGCMLS Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Special Collections Staff Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Jun 4, 2024 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" title="©Copyright" rel="noreferrer noopener">©Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Mp3 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Digital audio Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 200016 Adult services Librarianship Oral History PGCMLS History public libraries Readers' Advisory reference Selection