LESLIE KNOPE (Parks and Rec clip): Well, it was tough going, but it was lively. What'd you think of the open forum?
This meeting of ugly people yelling? It is like torture.
That's one perspective.
In Caracas, the government moves like a hot knife through butter. What you see here, listen to people yelling. These fat faces turning all red. Are you kidding me? We're like kings. We walk down the street, and they treat us like rock stars. We answer to nobody.
Well, in a true democracy, we believe that the input of our citizens is extremely valuable.
Hey, these pretzels suck.
Thank you. See.
[THEME MUSIC]
You are listening to WREK Atlanta, and this is Lost in the Stacks, the punk ass book jockeys show. No, the research library rock and roll radio show. I am Charlie in the studio with-- well, it's a tight crew today-- Ameet, Fred, and Matthew. Each week on Lost in the Stacks, we pick a theme and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk. Whichever you're here for, we hope you dig it.
That's right, Charlie. Today's show is called "Libraries as Convivial Spaces."
Oh, that's very nice.
Wait a minute, Ameet. A topic like that needs a little bit more of an enthusiastic introduction.
Yeah, you're right, Fred. I'm not doing this justice. Today on the show, we talk about libraries as convivial spaces!
[CHEERING]
[CHIMING]
I feel much better. I'm feeling pretty [TOOTING].
Oh, yeah. You're looking good, man. Now, I've recently learned from our guests that the word convivial actually has a different interpretation than what I thought.
Wait, we just went through all of that for nothing?
Well, it doesn't matter. I'm going with it.
OK, good. Good.
If you want to join the conversation or add some definition of convivial to our lives, the hashtag for this show is LIT 457 for Lost in the Stacks, episode 457. Feel free to tweet your thoughts, questions, or alternate definitions of conviviality with those hashtags.
And our songs today are about interactions, connections with people and things, and growing the convivial experience.
Yay!
A convivial experience will often start with a friendly greeting, some kazoos. So let's start the show with 1, 2. This is "Salut Les Copains." [TOOTING] "Salut Les Copains."
Wow, dude.
"Salut Les Copains," which roughly translated means hey, friends--
[CHIMING]
--by the band Eux Autres, right here on Lost in the Stacks.
[WHISTLE]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This is Lost in the Stacks, and joining us in the studio are two guests Oscar Gittemeier from the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System, and Sandjar Kozubaev, a PhD student here at Georgia Tech. Welcome to you both.
Hello. OSCAR GITTEMEIER: Thanks for having us.
So let's begin with just a little introduction here. Oscar, I know you do outreach, but give me a little brief of what that entails for AFPLS.
So the one thing I just want to say is we actually we just changed our name recently, so we are now the Fulton County Library System.
Oh, whoa. All right.
So with Fulton County Library System, we just got two brand new innovation stations, and so it's imagine the bookmobile. So half of the van is books. The other half is all technology. So we do a lot of tech literacy, a lot of digital literacy, showing people how to use 3D printers, laser cutters. We also do a lot of work with people in detention, so we do regular programs with the men's jail, the women's jail, lots of literacy stuff. So basically we just bring the library to you.
So wherever the patrons are, we just bring the programs to them. And we've been really tasked with trying to get people that are non-traditional users and just getting them to get a library card and use our resources.
Great. And, Oscar, do you want to talk a little bit about what you're doing here-- I'm sorry, Sandjar, about what you're doing here at Georgia Tech.
Of course. So I'm a PhD student in the digital media program. I study design, speculation, and futures as it pertains to library and public spaces and civic institutions in general. And I'm affiliated with the Experimental Civics Studio, which is under the direction of Dr. Carl DiSalvo. It's actually a studio that's relaunching this year.
Excellent. So how did your worlds collide because I would say this is a nice match, but I imagine that there was some kind of serendipitous encounter that connected you guys. So, Oscar, do you want to--
So-- it-- I actually came in contact with this whole project through my colleague Amanda Densmore that does community engagement as well. And Sandjar came and did a workshop at our staff development day, and that has evolved where he's now working with the outreach committee and we're doing a lot of ongoing projects right now. But it was all born through a colleague and then you coming to our staff development day.
Excellent. So today's show is called "Libraries as Convivial Spaces," and I will cop to the fact that I had to look up the word convivial. And I got to say I liked what I saw. But let's begin with the basics. We're using this word. What does the word mean in the context of libraries?
So, yes. So it's a very beautiful world-- word in my opinion, convivial-- conviviality. And I think people interpret it in different ways, but broadly speaking, it's this idea of people coming together in some collective action, some meaningful collective action whether it's political action or just everyday action.
And so it's often attributed to this philosopher Ivan Illich, who wrote this book in the '70s on conviviality and with this call to think about how are we as society acting together as a community. How do we interact specifically when we're interacting with people who were not necessarily community members all together, so strangers. Think about last time you did something with a stranger that was meaningful.
It's different when it's your community like your church or synagogue or your neighborhood, HOA, or whatever else. But we are not doing it all. We don't work as much with strangers anymore, and so that's the problem that he was he's talking about.
So I'd like to-- as a digital media student, you're probably familiar with open source tools. We're using Audacity to edit this very show. Isn't that an example of-- would that be an example of a convivial collection active-- collective action project? SANDJAR KOZUBAEV: Yeah, absolutely. So it's interesting mentioned a piece of software.
As a design researcher myself, one of the things I'm interested in and it's something Ivan Illich talked about as well, it's not just the interaction among people, but it's interaction among people in their environments. So here it's an interesting combination of people, objects, software that is coming together in these interesting relationships and creating something that's good for everybody. Earlier we were setting up mics.
Mics, microphones, and other objects exert certain power and agency over us. They make us sit a certain way and make us look a certain way. And so that's as a design researcher, these are the kinds of interesting-- the kinds of things I'm interested in in public library settings. So what are the kinds of objects librarians use to create these open spaces, to create this access. It's not just about books. It's about the space.
It's about some of the outreach programs that Oscar will talk about as well. Yeah, I'm curious to hear more about the innovation centers that you described, Oscar, because-- are they on wheels? Is that right?
They are now. We just got these two brand new vans, but prior to that, we were literally just popping up with tents and tables in all kinds of spaces. So I've literally set up in front of thrift stores, in public parks, in what are considered what I would call pseudo public space so a lot of these private parks that you will see in shopping areas. So it looks like it's a public space, but it's not really. It's privatized.
And so we would go in, and we would set up pop up libraries in those spaces. And for me, what's so transformative about the public library coming into those spaces specifically is that you're creating public space within these private spaces. And so we're setting up loungers and chairs and tables, and we're encouraging people to gather in these spaces where there are literally no loitering signs directly behind us.
And so we're able to interrogate that idea of private space and really encourage people to come together, gather, and hang out with each other in those contested spaces.
Yeah, I guess if you're challenged, you could say, we're not loitering. We're being convivial.
Yes. Yeah.
Well, if you're just joining us, we're talking about libraries as convivial spaces on Lost in the Stacks. And we'll be back with more with Oscar and Sandjar after a music set.
File this next set under Z679.5.L52.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
"Hotel Yorba" by the White Stripes. We will see you later. And before that, "Nightclubbing" by Iggy pop. I want everyone to know that Ameet is dying to know what the atomic bomb is, the dance. So if you know, you could tweet that, too, and that would really help him out. Those are songs about places where people and things interact.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Welcome back. Today's Lost in the Stacks is "Libraries as Convivial Spaces." And we're talking to Oscar Gettemeier and Sandjar Kozubaev about how libraries create fun experiences for the public. It is about the experience of being in the library, and I think, Sandjar, in the first segment when you were speaking to Ameet, you talked about libraries are not just a place for books.
And in academic libraries, we're realizing that, but that really taps into I think a rich vein of angst for librarians. We're always thinking about, well, libraries are changing. What are they becoming? What are you finding out in your studies in design? What are libraries becoming?
Yes. One of the things that was really amazing and inspiring when I started working with Oscar and his colleagues is all the different things and programs that librarians offer to their community and the incredible level of connectedness that the librarians feel towards their community. So they're very aware of who they are, what's unique about that particular community, what kind of members do they have, what are their needs.
And I also realized that one of the ways to think about libraries is these labs for democracy, small-d democracy, so not the kind of democracy where you go and vote for a politician or somebody.
You're not talking about they're just used as polling stations. SANDJAR KOZUBAEV: Exactly, exactly. Which they actually are polling stations, and there's reasons for that.
But I'm talking about these small experiments, many of which fail, but some of which succeed in configuring relationships among the community members, introducing new kinds of technologies, introducing new kinds of ways to-- for people to sustain themselves whether through technological literacy or through education or through something else.
And so I think if we start thinking about libraries not just a place where you go borrow things such as books but think about libraries as a way to enrich our democracies in new, unexpected, and really rich and interesting ways, I think that really shifts the mindset. Are there specific examples that come to mind when you think of a library as a lab for democracy, something that you've seen in your observations or studies where you think, oh, this is what a lab for democracy is all about?
SANDJAR KOZUBAEV: Yeah, absolutely. And, Oscar, feel free to jump in here, too. One is very basic, which is informational literacy. We are living in very interesting times as far as information and media is concerned, and so teaching people how to disseminate, how to discern accurate information from inaccurate information is a huge service.
In addition to that, when people have certain kinds of unique needs-- so I remember a story-- somebody shared a story with me about somebody trying to find something-- do some research about a very rare form of cancer. Well, not only does the library have access to different kinds of databases that you can't get through places like Google or search engines, but they also taught that person how to actually conduct research on such a specific and such a complex topic.
And other examples include just doing maker sessions, button making sessions, or doing things with little digital tools that teach kids how to construct toys, digital toys. Things of that nature I think are very unique when they are-- when they happen in a library because of the openness of the space and because of the friendliness of the nature and because of the local knowledge of the librarians.
Some things that libraries aren't traditionally known for but it's becoming more and more common in libraries, Oscar, I want to bring you in on this. Is there been I guess inspiration or examples that you found around the Atlanta area of convivial space outside the library environment but something that you brought in to the library environment?
I feel like even just-- and I know we were saying a little bit that it's not just books, but I do want to give one example where I think it is directly related to books. And that's one of the biggest uproars we had recently was over Drag Queen Storytime. So a lot of the community was opposed to that and actually came and protested in our library and took up seats so that families that wanted to attend couldn't.
And so I think that when we're doing programs, even those traditional ones you think of like storytime at the library, that we're in those spaces. We're deciding what our culture is. We're deciding how we treat each other and what we're going to choose to respect in society. And it's where we decide our humanity. And it's like if you don't have that public space to debate over, then those conversations aren't happening. You need public space for those arguments to happen.
And we have books that are contested pretty regularly. So it's like there are people that don't want certain books on our shelves. And so just having that public space for that conversation and that debate I think is part of that little d democracy you're talking about. But also just like you said, bringing the things in, it is-- it's all about that trans literacy. It's about not just getting the information but accessing it through technology.
So if you need access to your local newspaper but you don't know how to get the AJC on your tablet, we're going to come to you. We're going to show you how to access that local, reliable information that is helping that big D democracy.
So the library I guess is going to be-- it sounds like in your mind or in your ideal, the library is the example convivial space for a community.
I can't think of any other public space that exists in the world that is going to provide you free-- accessible information that's for everyone like you were talking about. There's your HOA. There's your-- all these Girl Scouts, Cub Scouts, baseball, all these things. But the public library is literally everyone. It's every-- and that doesn't exist anywhere in the world.
So when you try to get everyone in one space and to have those people agree on what information is reliable and accurate and trustworthy, that's just such an interesting space that I just don't see existing anywhere else in the world.
So in about a minute we have left in this segment, there's-- libraries have space already usually in communities, and there's usually some sort of funding that comes with libraries. What does it take to create a convivial space. Can we do it with what we already have? Do we need more funding, more space? What do we need?
I think, yeah, library funding is a national issue, and it has been for a long time. In my research, I found that support for public libraries has been as high as ever. Somebody tweeted earlier today or yesterday about that there are more people going to libraries than there are going to movies. That's a great feeling to-- no disrespect for the movie industry, but I think it's a great thing that to have that people are going to libraries.
So what I'm also interested is not just the physical space and how we maintain it, which is very important, but also the kinds of objects, especially technology, that we're putting in libraries. So one of the examples that concerns me, for instance, today is how we distribute ebooks within libraries. So borrowing an e-book is a very different experience and a whole different set of attachments and politics and economics behind it than it is to get a book.
And so trying to be aware of the influence of these kinds of technologies on this idea of open accessible space is very interesting.
Well, you're listening to Lost in the Stacks, and we'll talk more with Sandjar and Oscar on the left side of the hour.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Would you be willing to do a show station ID?
Sure. I don't know what that means but sure. Hi, this is Steve Albini. I'm a recording engineer, and I'm in the band Shellac of North America. And you are listening to Lost in the Stacks on WREK.
Today's Lost in the Stacks is called "Libraries as Convivial Spaces." This passage comes from Tools for Conviviality by Ivan Illich, who was mentioned earlier in today's show. People need not only to obtain things. They need above all the freedom to make things among which they can live, to give shape to them according to their own tastes, and to put them in use-- excuse me-- to put them to use in caring for and about others.
Prisoners in rich countries often have access to more things and services than members of their families, but they have no say in how things are to be made and cannot decide what to do with them. Their punishment consists in being deprived of what I shall call conviviality. They are degraded to the status of mere consumers. Whew. File this set under HB241.I for Illich 44.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
"At Home He's a Tourist" by a Gang of Four. Before that, "Where Were You" by the Lounge Lizards. We started off with "Song for a Friend" by The Slaps, songs about connections with individuals and communities and what happens when those connections are lost.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Welcome back. We're talking about "Libraries as Convivial Spaces" on Lost in the Stacks, and our show today is all about these public spaces or maybe pseudo private. Our guests are Oscar Gittemeier from the Fulton County Library System, and Sandjar Kozubaev, a PhD student in digital media here at Georgia Tech.
Both of you have spoken very eloquently and inspiringly about the role of the librarian in an age where there are so many different information bubbles that are being created, and information literacy has become a prominent issue of national and international concern. What are some other ways that librarians are really sustaining our culture?
So when I think about sustaining culture, I guess it's for me when I do outreach, I go out into the community, and the first thing I try to do is listen to what the needs are in that community. So when I first started going to the East Atlanta farmers market, we would do pop ups in that space. And so see people picking up food, and I was like, oh, would you be interested in cookbooks related to whatever like heart disease or whatever the needs were for that community.
And so I try to curate my collection or my programs for whatever those particular community needs are. And so what I've been doing is popping up in different locations, and one of the things we've noticed is there are huge pockets of the city that you don't have a library in walking distance. You don't have a grocery store in walking distance. So it's like what does that particular segment of the population, what's their greatest need.
So we've been partnering with different community partners and trying to get a seed library going where we're actually bringing free books to book deserts. We're bringing seeds to food deserts and just trying to just listen to the community, see what their needs are, and see how the library can help provide some of that.
And, Sandjar, in your interviews, did you pick up on any of these scenarios where librarians were maybe doing some surprising things?
Yeah. Yeah, this is one of probably most interesting revelations for me is the extent to which other non-human entities, other living beings are being figured into libraries in interesting ways. One of them is the one that Oscar mentioned is the evolving role of librarians in this urban ecosystems whether they're distributing seeds or distributing knowledge or hosting seed swaps. So this idea of participating in food justice and food democracy as librarians is a fascinating notion to me.
There were other smaller, like I said earlier, experiments that I've just never heard of. One library-- and these are very, very local. It's not like a library policy. Sometimes librarians just do things what's right for the community. There was a story that one of my favorite, where they had a library goldfish that they would lend to people.
And for-- if it's a library with-- if it's a patron with a good standing and they know them very well, they would give the goldfish for a couple of days for them to experience it. And it's just something that I've never heard of before. Another interesting program is called Reading Paws, which happens in libraries where it helps children with anxieties of reading out loud to read to a dog, a specially trained dog.
And it's, again, this interesting interaction between a human and a non-human, an animal that happens within the confines of a library, within the space of a library that I think is very, very interesting, and there's a lot more could be done to improve those kinds of relations.
OSCAR GITTEMEIER: And just thinking about being in a space with where we just got to tour and see all of your music here, we got to do a Ladies Rock Camp at the library where women came in, they learned to play guitars, drums, all kind of stuff, and our goal for that was to eventually hopefully get the women to form a band. And so three of the women actually did continue to play music after the Ladies Rock Camp at the library, so just all different types of programs.
We did filmmaking workshops where people were actually making their own short films, and we're pretty soon going to start circulating cameras so people can actually check out a digital camera. And they're just little knock off GoPros, but you could take them to the skate park or go hiking or make your own films with them. So that's exciting, too, just thinking about people not just consuming media but creating their own.
Yeah, it seems like that's an element of a convivial space, collective action with the emphasis on the second word there, among people that maybe don't know each other as you describe the Ladies Rock Camp.
Yeah, you had people in their 20s, people in there in their 60s from all over the city. We had people from outside the city driving all the way in just to do it.
Yeah. Well, we only have a few minutes left here, but you're already blowing my mind with a seed swap and rock band training in the library. Is there anything that you want to leave us with perhaps the best example of conviviality, library or not, that you can think of? No pressure.
Yeah. I think there's a lot of things that are going on like town halls where people come and have their neighborhood planning unit meetings, where they're debating what is our actual city going to look like. How are we going to plan this out? Some of our largest meetings are those neighborhood planning unit meetings, and it's literally they're deciding what the city will look like.
It's where the little d meets the big D.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Another one of my favorite examples is-- are the library friends groups. And these are sometimes formal, sometimes informal group of people who are volunteers who come to the library and just help raise funds. They do book sales. They do-- they clean up the grounds, do a little bit of landscaping. There's different ways that they participate. But it's often people who don't know each other.
They come in and do some meaningful collective action to support their libraries, and I think that's just beautiful.
Well, you've given us a lot to think about and a lot to get inspired about. Sandjar, Oscar, thank you so much for being on the show today. We really appreciate it. SANDJAR KOZUBAEV: It was a pleasure. OSCAR GITTEMEIER: Thanks for having us. We've been speaking today with Oscar Gittemeier from the Fulton County Library System and Sandjar Kozubaev, a PhD student here at Georgia Tech, about "Libraries as Convivial Spaces."
File this set under TA167.A37.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Oh, was this-- CHARLIE BENNETT: Did you zone out? I totally did.
It was the Floyd.
It's a little bit too heady, man.
"Apples and Oranges" by, yes, Pink Floyd CHARLIE BENNETT: Not Yes, Pink Floyd. Before that, Farmer John with "Don and Dewey."
You want to flip that?
"Farmer John."
By--
By Don--
Don and Dewey.
And Dewey. Yeah. I thought that's what I said. It's too convivial in here. Those were songs about cultivating the seeds of a convivial experience and seeing it to come to fruition.
[CHIMING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Today's loosey goosey Lost in the Stacks is called "Libraries as Convivial Spaces." Hey, Matthew, let me get you in on this show. MATTHEW (Board OP): Yeah. What's the most convivial space you have ever been in? MATTHEW (Board Op): In recent memory, probably WREK, the station itself, WRK Atlanta. Yeah? MATTHEW (Board Op): Very open. People do a lot of different things, interesting stuff, interesting art-- CHARLIE BENNETT: Mix of activities.
MATTHEW (Board Op): Mix of activities, good people, very supportive. CHARLIE BENNETT: Multifarious purposes. MATTHEW (Board Op): All enjoyment. Fred, what about you?
Well, I-- what comes to my mind is being in a band, which I've been on a couple of times in my life in my much younger days.
Action man.
Right. But people get together in a space either a rehearsal space or a recording space. They're interacting with lots of different technologies at various skill levels, maybe on the lower end for my own particular skill but-- and not necessarily everyone having the same priorities but all going towards the same goal of creating a song or created a recorded piece.
Ameet, what do you think?
The reason I zoned out is, in high school, I was in a carpool, and we listened to a lot of Pink Floyd and Rush. It was Pink Floyd and Rush, and it was very convivial. It led to many, as you can imagine, interesting conversations and experiences in that little Dodge Aries from 1987.
Wow.
What about you, Charlie?
I think it's a toss up. There are two roommate situations I was in. When I was in school, I lived on 10th Street with a couple of buddies, and after school, I lived a little bit farther out Howell Mill Road with a couple of other buddies. And we all were so different and had such different ideas about what we wanted to do projectwise or how we wanted to handle our investigative nature that the houses would mix all these different intellectual desires or cultural desires.
The house on 10th Street, a couple of bands played there one night, and it felt a lot like a club. But the house out the way, guy ran a Linux server out of the living room. So it's a you tell me kind of thing. And with that, let's roll those credits.
[END THEME]
MATTHEW (Board Op): Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between WREK Atlanta and Georgia Tech Library, produced by Charlie Bennett, Ameet Doshi, Woody Hagemeyer, and Fred Rascoe.
Matthew-- [TOOTING]-- was our engineer today, and the show was brought to you in part by the Library Collective and their social and professional network, the League of Awesome Librarians, LAL. Find out more about them at TheLibraryCollective.org.
Legal counsel and an old fashioned non-surveilled cork bulletin board for posting your meetup--
Nice!
Was provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia.
Special Thanks to Oscar and Sandjar for being on the show, to all those folks promoting communitarian conviviality, and thanks, as always, to each and every one of you for listening.
Find us online at LostInTheStacks.org and you can subscribe to our podcast pretty much anywhere you get your audio fix.
Next week on Lost in the Stacks, we will watch as two massive planets collide, and we will see what happens. And those planets are called instruction and technology.
It's time for our last song. I may have had to look up the word convivial before the show today.
We were so happy to ignore the definition you found.
But after the interview with Oscar and Sandjar, I'm now seeing great convivial experiences everywhere including this radio show.
It's true.
We've got to wrap up this episode, but I'm already looking forward to next week and more conviviality with you all here in this booth in the studio and the listeners out there as well. Until then, this is "Friend to Friend and End Time" by Lungfish right here on Lost in the Stacks.
Ameet, I want you to hold my hand and look me in the eye while we sing along to this song.
Have a great weekend, everybody.
[TOOTING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]