Dinner Keynote

The dinner keynote will also be podcast and a link will be provided here. Again, these are my notes on what the speakers said, not my personal opinions. (For those interested I will have those available at my personal blog sometime in the next week.)

Kathleen talked about having been part of a community building movement that was built up in the Clinton administration, but that has taken a back seat under the current president. She told us that the United States is in an angry and mean time right now. She recently watched the Republican debate where they spent the first hour on how to keep people out of our country. The state of Georgia has passed a law saying no public money can be spent on Spanish language materials. This has made her change her point of view and approach. She no longer wants a "place at the table" for libraries. She wants to help reset the table, to help make communities less mean.

She talked about an assignment she gives to her students - to go out and participate in a non-library organization. They always come back saying, we need more librarians involved in X (whichever organization they went to). Some examples: Boys and Girls clubs, historical societies, literary councils, mothers of multiples, greyhound rescue, neighborhood service center, PTAs, womens clubs. The greyhound rescue student went on to coordinate with the shelter to do animal care sessions at the library. Kathleen said that many of her students would wonder about womens clubs - why care about those old ladies, so she had them read and learn that many more libraries were started by womens clubs than by Carnegie. The point of the assignment is to teach us to create allies by being concerned about our community. She suggests providing time within work time to go to one meeting a month not related to your job. If we show up they're usually nice to us, but we can't wait for them to invite us.

She recommended that we examine our communities to see what the main players are and ask ourselves how we can make sure that librarians get involved in as many areas of our communities as possible. She said that many librarians don't know what 211 is. (An aside from Ellie - For those of you in that group - please take the time to visit 211's websites at https://www.211texas.org/211/ and http://www.unitedwaycapitalarea.org/gethelp/.)

Kathleen argued that we need to do an audit to see what organizations need a librarian's input/involvement:

• Social service organizations
• Political organizations
• Cultural organizations
• Human Rights organizations

"The pilgrims were the first illegal aliens."

She gave examples of anti-gay sentiments in libraries (relegating books to adults only, not allowing purchases) and encouraged us to stand up for open access.

Kathleen challenged us to look up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and read it. She said we will find ways to rededicate ourselves to librarianship and humanity. She also challenged us to make a commitment to attend a conference dedicated to an ethnic group not our own. We have not even reached 25% people of color within librarianship, taking people of color as a whole. Library staffs are becoming mono-cultural and it is becoming acceptable to say that we don't want to serve certain populations.

If you are an African American librarian over 50 there was a time that you were not allowed to use the public library. We're doing the same to people without papers now. Will we stand up and say we are not going to turn people away? Saying you can't speak English - go away - is not point/counterpoint - it's just hate.