Episode 8: Putting "Friendly Places" on the Map with Roland Barksdale-Hall

In this episode, we talk with Roland Barksdale-Hall, Branch Manager at the Stey-Nevant Branch Library in Farrell, PA and an author, activist, historian, and griot. Our conversation touches on forging deep community connections, confronting biases, being true to oneself, active listening and making people feel seen, and the huge impact we can have on others. Roland shares his own inspiring story and the active work it took to truly become “the friendly place” in his community. The episode is full of concrete advice for library workers at every point in their career. Resources discussed: 

• Roland’s blog post in Librarians with Spines 
• Books authored by Roland  

Date of interview: August 19, 2022
Hosts: LaRee Dominguez and Meredith Farkas 

Transcript

[Intro Music Playing]

Laree Dominguez: 

Welcome to OVERDUE: Weeding Out Oppression in Libraries, a podcast produced by the Oregon Library Association's Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Antiracism Committee. My name is Laree Dominguez. I am the Resources Coordinator at the Albany Public Library, and I am joined by my co-host, Meredith Farkas.

Meredith Farkas: 

Hi, everyone. I'm Meredith Farkas, Faculty Librarian at Portland Community College Library, and today we are thrilled to speak with Roland Barksdale-Hall. Roland is a librarian, activist, historian, griot, and the author of books for children and adults. He's currently the branch manager at the Stey-Nevant Branch Library in Western Pennsylvania. After reading a really inspiring blog post he wrote about fostering community connections and meeting community needs, we really wanted to learn more about and from Roland. Thank you so much for being here today, Roland.

Roland Barksdale-Hall: 

Thank you. I always enjoy sharing my stories.

Meredith Farkas: 

We like to start our interviews with an icebreaker question. You can learn the answer to one secret from history, which do you choose?

Roland Barksdale-Hall: 

One secret, well, I'm a genealogist and one question I had when I asked my mother what was her father's name, and she gave me four different names, four different first names. She became frustrated and she said she did not know. I'm still working on this, but what I've discovered was, and this relates to people searching for their past in libraries, each answer my mother gave me, I have found her father listed with those names, and that's really a case of multiple identities. But the one thing that really impressed me about this was from a Eurocentric perspective, the first name we'd thought have seemed as important, but in this research, I'm uncovering that his first name was a Native American name. Yes, it was a Native American name. I found it listed as maybe success or wealthy, and just recently, I found that his name is a place name. It's a place name of a village in what is present-day Florida.

Laree Dominguez: 

Oh, wow.

Roland Barksdale-Hall: 

Yes. I still don't have the answers to this, but it was just intriguing to me looking, because everyone's searching for their identities.

Laree Dominguez: 

Well, that was very interesting. The place name is really interesting. So you write about your Uhuru journey as an activist, librarian, author, griot in Black Librarians in America: Reflections, Resistance and Reawakening. Would you expand upon the meaning of those roles and the word Uhuru?

Roland Barksdale-Hall: 

Yes, I'll begin with my role as a librarian. My entry into librarianship came through, like many others, I worked in the library as an undergraduate student. I was a work-study student. It was a wonderful environment. The librarian there, I remember one moment, and this is how mentors are important, Dorinda, she had red hair and one of the librarians came back from a trip and had stopped in South Africa, and it was during the era of Apartheid. She had this stylish haircut, and she was just so enamored with her look. Dorinda furiously shook her head and she said, "I would not have stopped there for anything." I didn't say anything, but quietly, I was cheering for Dorinda. We as librarians sometimes have sat quietly and not got involved in social issues, yet, here Dorinda was speaking out and that really touched me. I saw Dorinda in other scenarios where she stood up for the work-study students. Through being in the library and the positive encounter that I had with Dorinda, I felt that all librarians were like this.

Some have been and others have not been, but I just wanted to impress upon others the role that a supervisor could have in recruitment. I became a librarian because of my encounter with Dorinda, but more importantly, I had an interest in research. I have been interested in history and genealogy and I saw librarianship as an opportunity to find answers to my many questions. Secondly, I wear this hat of author. I did not realize that I was a storyteller. There was an event and it was at a church, and I was doing a rendition of the three wise men. After that, one of my mentors there said, "Oh, you're a wonderful storyteller." So many times we can be, I'll say in a process of transformation, and I never considered myself a storyteller, but what happened, I was telling stories and one day I was telling a story and I forgot part of the story. Then I got the idea, "Well maybe I should write this down." When I wrote it down, I subsequently got it published, but I began with this children's series Under African Skies.

What I was trying to do through this series, I was trying to take the wisdom of Africa and to bring it into the Americas, so I would do research. So my second book was Lion Pride and Lion Pride took a story and I weaved together two tales from South Africa and the book honors Nelson Mandela. In this, I have a piece where I show that there were brown lions, white lions, tall lions, small lions, but it was supposed to represent the diversity. But I took the story of the lion that would not listen to his mother, and there was another tale about an ostrich. But in this, it's a romp, but also it shows how we should respect one another. I was very pleased with that, my children's picture book series, and I also have written adult books. The one is a classic, The African American Family Guide to Tracing our Roots: Healing, Understanding, and Restoring Our families. That came out of this quest to find out who I am. Thirdly, I have a book, the one was The African Americans in Mercer County, which was a local history book.

I collected images of social organizations, church groups, fraternal groups, but this led me to a point where I'll never forget this. The library that I'm currently at, one day I was going to the library and I didn't work there and the librarian said that she had received a request from a publisher. The city, came through the city, and they wanted to have a book written about Farrell. She said, "You're the only one that I could think of." So the wonderful experience I had with Dorinda, here, it was another librarian, Margaret, and I'm going to say that she was Caucasian. what happened was the community of Farrell is very diverse, and the community of Farrell was a 20th century phenomenon and it had people coming from various places, and so there was strong identities, ethnic identities there. I'll just say this because I'm just very candid and open.

When I took on this, there was an elder in the African American community who told me, "You had success with The African Americans in Mercer County, but beware, in order for you to do the book of Farrell, you're going to have to have cooperation from all these different ethnic groups." There was a significant Jewish community in Farrell. What I said to this elder, I says, "Well, all I can do is ask," and this began a quest and the quest took me to, we have ethnic homes in our community. There was the first one I went to was a Croatian home, and at the Croatian home they requested that I bring The African Americans in Mercer County. I did not know for what purpose, but I brought it and they asked me to pass it around. The precedent of the Croatian home said, "Look at that book and what he has done for the African American community he wants to do for us. Let's help him!"

Meredith Farkas:

[Laughter] I love it.

Roland Barksdale-Hall: 

[Laughter] Subsequently, what happened, I went to the various ethnic homes and ethnic churches and it was just repeated. This leads to me being the griot. The griot is a term which we could say, or comes from West Africa, but with the griot, the griot was a scholar, historian, genealogist, poet, counselor, mediator, but I've embraced this role. In the Gambia, the term would be jaliya. Some see them in present-day times as someone with a kora, a musician, but from my perspective, the griot is someone who gathers history but then looks at the interpretation of this, and how can we take this facts and this information and apply it to present-day situations?

In the past, the griots had a royal benefactor. Unfortunately, I'm a librarian, [laughter] but what I do have, I do have this sense of urgency, which has led to me being an activist, a librarian, author, griot. All of this leads to Uhuru. Uhuru is a Swahili word which means freedom, freedom or independence. It's embraced as some countries coming independent from colonial powers, so with Uhuru and my library journey, I feel as though I've gone through a transformation and I have become free to help others.

Meredith Farkas: 

That's so beautiful. Thank you for sharing your journey and gosh, everything you've done is just so incredible. Can you speak to the significance of your library's robust community engagement in your success?

Roland Barksdale-Hall: 

First, I must thank those who went before me, like Dr. E.J. Josey, and there was Professor Wendell Ray and even Andrew Jackson or like Sekou, there were various individuals who I have seen working within the context of the community. What has happened, someone has made the analogy of me being like W.E.B DuBois in Atlanta where he was doing his research or in Philadelphia. What I have done, my track has included being a library school professor teaching information literacy in a marginalized community, urban community, three-credit class. So I have been an academic librarian, I've been a public librarian and I've worked in special libraries and health science librarianship. What I've always wanted to do when I was a academic librarian, I presented at the second National Conference of African American Librarians, and it was the library as a cultural center. I had this concept of the library as a thriving place, a center for culture. That's what we've been able to do at the Stey-Nevant Library. One important piece to this was the community forum. About six months ago, [inaudible] I just called some people together. What I began with was Dr. Anthony Mitchell.

He's with one of the universities, but I knew his track record in the field of EDI. He had actually developed a program called Crossing Bridges, which was used for inclusion and equity at his campus, but he also was involved with the city of Pittsburgh. They had a program where they had young African American males who became part of a group and there were cohorts where they went and got their degrees in education and they were placed in various public schools. This was tied to achievement, bringing in underrepresented groups, so I deliberately selected someone who I knew had a track record in the community of being a positive force, and so that was our keynote speaker. Then we had a panel and I selected someone from the church community to be a panelist, someone from a civic organization to be a panelist, someone who worked with young people, pre-schoolers who had a center close to the library. Then I selected another, and this was the last panelist, and they were with another university and with their Peace institute and they were versed in international relations.

This piece was so important because when we want to assess needs of a community, we need to have representation from that community. I did not approach it from the standpoint of, "What are your needs?" We were discussing building cross-cultural connections, so we approached it and what we did, I used that framework because as I mentioned earlier, there were various ethnic groups that had settled. So in approaching something you want to know what was the past of whatever community you're in? From this community forum, we arrived with, I would say an agenda or a platform. Subsequently, what came out of this was to address food insecurities in our community, technology. We were able to have eligible individuals through the Affordable Connectivity Program to receive tablets, I mean free tablets that were already connected. Then the other thing that we did, with health disparities, we wanted to address that, so we approached the Equity COVID Committee. In our library, we had free N-95 masks and test kits. So with the idea of needs, we wanted to go beyond with something of just the information needs.

I would dare say many times in librarianship we've discussed needs, but in my vision we need to go beyond just plain needs. What does the community want? What's the community's wish list? Recently, we had a to back-to-school extravaganza and we served ice cream to everyone. Was that a need? But we served ice cream, we gave out school supplies. We had free haircuts and manicures. That was very successful, but also, the Robust Program relates to seeing the vulnerable in our communities and empowering them. Now, how can we empower them? Just like your wonderful committee has given me an opportunity to present, I've given them an opportunity. During our summer reading program, we had community readers. The community readers were from diverse segments of our population. We had one who owned a grocery store, an African American male. He was one of our early community readers, but then I wanted there to be bilingual readers. The one person, he was so touched and his family was touched and it was shared.

It was a story, a folk tale, of the Taíno, and for people to recognize that there were Indigenous people and they were even in the Caribbean islands, there were Black immigrants. So we had a person who came here and he was from Haiti, and he shared his experiences. Now, we are talking about ethnicity, but I also include age because many times one of the vulnerable communities is our children. I approached one of the high schoolers and asked him if he would be a community reader, and he was glad. Just this week, we had our youngest community participant. He was about six or seven. As we were doing this, because our theme was Tall Tales of the Waterways, he expressed interest in, because a lot of youth were very much interested in who we had to come in, but he said he loved cats. I told him, I says, "Well, we're going to have a pet lover storytelling and we would like you to be our participant."

He climbed under the chair, but he did participate, and then the other children, when we said that this storytelling is in honor of pets and anyone who has ever owned a pet. Part of the goal is to create a level field. So when we look at knowledge, and this is one reason why we had this was about pets so that we wouldn't be talking over the children's heads. So they were all able to share the names of their pets and their experiences. But more importantly, when I came here, my first letter that went out in the newsletter, I said, "Our library will be known as the friendly place" [foreign language] and that's what has contributed, too. We have a vast array of community partners, but we've reached out to them. What also has happened from that community forum, we get referrals. See, from the library, the little simple statement of saying, "We just want to have this community forum," and I encourage everyone to hold a community forum.

What was so important about our community forum, it was not in a time of crisis. You cannot call it a community forum when there's a shooting, and then you say ... That's being reactionary. This community forum was during a time period where it was relative calm and everyone was able to sit there. We had representatives from city council, the mayor's office, and we tried to pull everyone in. I'm thankful because when I started in library school, I carried this inside of me of wanting to have this friendly place. I want to encourage all new librarians, you also can be a change agent and create a friendly place and do not let go of your identity and your culture because they need you. That's what I came to realize that what I had been, I experienced resistance to some of these ideas earlier on in my career and I was ignored. But yet, what has happened is that these very same ideas that I had, which other people didn't want to listen to, now they're applauding, and so I encourage you to be persistent.

Laree Dominguez: 

Thank you, Roland. Everything you've been doing and talking about, they're so inspiring and lots of good ideas, but I love that you are asking people to stay persistent. You have fostered such deep connections with your community. What advice would you have for library workers who are just starting out and to get to know their communities and its needs, especially in the vulnerable populations? You touched on this a bit, but could you expand a little more for us?

Roland Barksdale-Hall: 

Yes. We speak of outreach. We have to have a library without walls. I've spoken with some individuals and they were working in our community and they were working with some of the vulnerable populations and they never even opened up the book, The African Americans in Mercer County. If you're working with the populations, you need to try to read… read some books by those authors. You can attend, there's events. In the African American community there's Juneteenth, there's Kwanzaa, you have to be an active listener.

There's misunderstandings that occur frequently in the area of EDI, but some of these misunderstandings, because I'll say everyone has some level of bias or some ideas about ... because people watch television. In many cases, and I'll say it was tell-lie-vision. I had a friend, a good friend who was from India and he was an exchange student. He said, "If another person asks me do I ride an elephant to school?" Because he was from Mundia, but he was just saying that Americans need to move beyond what they see in the movies to think that they know something about the various places. So make some effort to learn about the other cultures in your communities.

Meredith Farkas: 

That is so important. I think what you talk about with cultural humility and really not making assumptions about community members is so, so important. What is something you wish you had known early in your career that would've made it easier to support the work you do now?

Roland Barksdale-Hall: 

Well, what I did not know that I could make a high impact being the person who I am. It appeared, it was being presented to me, and this happens frequently, that I had some deficiencies. I pondered this because I said, "Well I went to, it was a majority school and I was an honor student." For example, I was editor of their school newspaper and my staff was, there was only one African American, one Native American, everyone else was Caucasian. But then later on, it was being presented, "You had some deficiency in this area."

What I have discovered is that's “gainsmanship,” to try to make the individual to feel less than. I think that a lot of people go through that feeling less than or, "Maybe if I got my haircut or maybe if I dyed it." So when I realized that I did not have to change, that was an empowering moment. Really, I'm here being the best Roland Barksdale-Hall in the world, and I encourage others, too. Be aware, because what I know now and part of my success is within our career, be very careful who you select as a mentor, and also, to realize that you don't have to let go of your culture, because if you’re there, there's a need for what you have to offer.

Laree Dominguez: 

That is so important, and thank you so much for reminding us to stay empowered and be true to who we are. That's very important. How have you processed your past and present experiences with racism in libraries?

Roland Barksdale-Hall: 

Wow. When I was a little younger, someone told me and I had to look the word up, and this was an elder and African American community, they told me that I was vociferous, because before there was the anti-racism, which I support, I was saying, "Something's wrong with this," and I was addressing it. Now in the past, I've actually received letters from individuals and there were signed letters saying, "It was better off when you weren't here, and we were all getting along fine," and in the letters, "We're against everything that you stand for." I've also had my home attacked and there was paint all over my home, and my children, because someone used paint bullets, and my children were inside, my wife, and they thought that someone was shooting at our home.

Well, I'm just going to be candid. You see there's a change in our culture, because even when that happened with my home, I contacted the police. They came and they looked at my house and they said, "Oh, it was just some kids that went down the street." I told him, I said, "Look, look at the other people's house. They don't have paint all on it." What I had to do…I didn't have to do, but this is what I chose to do…I went to the newspaper and I paid to have an ad stating that my home was attacked and this was when and that I was going to give this reward for this, because there has been a silence, a silence of microaggressions or attacks because others, even now when I would say some of these things happen, they'd say, "Really?" I have to go and pull out that ad and say, "Well, you see it happened, and this is a document of this."

I am so thankful today for the work of the ethnic caucuses, because when I was going through these things and me being vociferous, I actually…when I had these experiences, I wrote the American Library Association. I wrote the White House because I knew there was something wrong and that we shouldn't have to live with people sending us letters and everything was not okay. I received a letter back from President Clinton in response to what I sent. But during that time, the ethnic caucus, and particularly the Black Caucus of the American Library Association has been,very much, a support, and so we do need these places where we can go and we can share ideas.

I was just so happy, overjoyed, when I've seen the leadership of the Black Caucus, of the American Library Association in recent times when there were incidents where students were not receiving services and it was questionable what was going on. They didn't sit there silently, but they inquired as the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. I just hope and pray that all of the ethnic caucuses would inquire, contact library systems, or when something is going on or even something potentially because it makes a difference and there's a new level of accountability. In the present times, I'm thankful for your committee and some people coming together and saying that, "We're going to document this and we're going to preserve these stories," and so you're making a big difference in the present times.

Meredith Farkas: 

I appreciate that. It makes me really happy to see how much more visibility the ethnic caucuses is and groups like we here are having in our profession and recognizing that even if we're trying to become more anti-racist in our profession, there is still a need for spaces where people can come together and say, "Did that really happen?" And be with people who have experienced the same things that they have. What recommendations do you have for library managers and administrators who want to support BIPOC library workers and create supportive and anti-racist work environments?

Roland Barksdale-Hall: 

First, I would encourage administrators to be proactive. Even when we discuss, for example, I'll just take the African Americans. African Americans are not homogeneous, so there is a need for first, active listening. Active listening is so critical. As an educator, I'll give it an example of what has occurred. Some of the schools where I taught and I had majority African Americans in my class, there were high failure rates, but when I came in, they were amazed. They said, "The students aren't failing like that anymore." Now, this is what occurred, first, on the first day of class, I said to the students, "I'm your instructor," I introduced myself and I made this statement. "I know that you're here to learn and that you have a loving family supporting you, and I am not the flim-flam man. I'm supporting you in achieving your goal." So first, making a statement that you are supportive, but then you have to have some measurable goals. The reason I say this is many times we fall into preconceptions, stereotypes, myths.

In the African American community, one of those was the lazy librarian, and from my diversity class, there was a myth for every ethnicity, and those administrators need to be aware that those are myths. So in the context of what, and I say measurable outcomes, for example, what I've done with my diverse staff, we have a monthly, it's a pod meeting. It's the purpose of the day, and we start out with a scoreboard, and the scoreboard is some bibliometrics. For example, one of our goals was to increase the number of patrons. We had our meeting and we had a party. We said, "Oh, last year this time, there were like 600 on this one day and now we're to 1100." To go back to the analogy with my success with the students, I would have a rubric. I would have everything spelled out what they needed to do and they would be able to actually grade their own assignments.

in the beginning I would ask them, "What grade do you want to receive out of here?" There was a contract. What we need, we need feedback loops in librarianship, before there's some crisis, if the administrators would come to some of the staff meetings out in the branches, visit those ethnic libraries. We need equity in distribution of funds for collection building, for staffing in these libraries, because librarians are being asked to fix it. You cannot fix it without the human resources and financial resources, emotional support and the active listening. Going back to that analogy with my students, I had feedback loops. The feedback loops, I told them a third of the way through, I was going to let them know what grade they would have and how it was in keeping what the contract was. But more importantly, the supervisors need to meet their team, their staff, meet them as a human being.

What I said to these students, and part of why I had such a high rate, I told them that I believed in them, and  if I saw them getting off track and they weren't going to get their assignments in, I said, "I'm going to say to you, 'Excuse me, can we have a private conversation?'" And I did, and they appreciated that because I was seeing the value in them. Not to say that I didn't have any fail, but it was very few. I could say, I had a case in point where one student failed. They said it was amazing. They said, "When you teach, they said the students who fail and when they're going to take it over, they come back and request to be in your class." The reason is they had the understanding. Like one student, and I remember so clearly, they came and said, "I want you to know I'm taking this."

They said, "I was working a full-time job and I had a full-time course load and that was why I didn't," and this is what they said. "I sat down with my family and we arrived with less work, more study time in the library." So you see, by me meeting them as a person, they felt comfortable sharing this, but also believing in them. Many times, we become a statistic and that's what was happening with some of the students. But when I said, "I understand that you are here to succeed, and I understand that you're part of a supportive family who's also cheering," These networks are so important. What I would say within the context of libraries, don't project deficiencies on the staff or on the vulnerable communities. They do want to succeed, and the supervisors and administrators need to be supportive. One thing that I had within my staff meetings, which has been very helpful, we call it the muddiest moment, the muddiest moment.

I told them, I said, "Just envision, you're just all dressed up and you're getting ready to go out to a dance and then you slip and you fall in the mud." I said, "That's the muddiest moment." Every month, we discuss what was the muddiest moment. What this does, this gives us an opportunity to share in a non-judgmental way which you feel challenged by, and we work together to address these things. So I hear them sometimes say when something happens, they say, "I think this might be the muddiest moment for this month," because this is a stressful world that we're in. Supervisors and administrators can make it less stressful for us all, because I dream of a better library world and I want to be part of that better library world, and I know that you are part of it. My dear Max, who he encouraged me to go forward with that blog piece. What I've found is there's sojourners on this path who are speaking out and they're getting into new roles. It's an exciting time in librarianship.

Meredith Farkas: 

Oh, I'm so inspired by everything you've said here. [Laughter] I think probably everyone listening to this is like, "Oh, we wish Roland were our library director or our LIS instructor."

Laree Dominguez: 

I'm thinking the same thing. and I keep thinking, "Oh, I can't wait to be able to listen to these stories and these inspirations and how we can help ourselves again and again." Thank you so much for sharing, Roland, so that we can listen to them over again on the podcast. Awesome work.

Roland Barksdale-Hall: 

Well, I really want to thank you because it's like with my style, see, everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and this is part of one of the things. We all have strengths and weaknesses, and sometimes when we get into anti-racism, someone wants to point out our weaknesses, but all that means is that you're a human being because they have them. But through these communities and even through my staff, we're able to take our weaknesses and put it right on the table and what we say is, "We'll help one another." I think that I have the best library in the world and I think I have the best library staff in the world, because I believe in them. That is what's really needed in the library profession is for someone to believe in you as a librarian and more importantly, as a valued human being, and so thank you.

Meredith Farkas: 

Oh, thank you. That's really powerful and you've given our listeners so many actionable things that they can do moving forward. Thank you for being here.

Laree Dominguez: 

Thank you so much, Roland.

Meredith Farkas: 

Wow. Roland was absolutely amazing. I was touched in so many ways by just his sharing his journey and just so many actionable tips that librarians, library workers, library directors, people at any level in any library could really take to heart and create really positive change. I think the thing for me that really stuck out the most is that you never really realize the impact you could have on someone else. I'm sure that the woman who inspired Roland to become a librarian because she spoke up and spoke out and was in solidarity with others, and I'm sure she didn't know and didn't realize in those moments the impact that she was having, but she still did something incredibly important for him and someone telling him, "Oh, you are such a natural storyteller," and he'd never thought of himself that way.

Finding ways that we can be in solidarity with our colleagues, that we can speak up when an injustice is happening, even if it doesn't necessarily impact us directly, if we can be in solidarity with our colleagues, with our community, with our friends, and really building a culture of appreciation where we really see people for the good that they bring to our workplaces, to the world, rather than focusing on the negatives. So I guess my challenge for our listeners would be to think about ways that you can support and be in solidarity with others to make them feel seen and appreciated. I think that is a really powerful way to go through life thinking of how can I positively influence others in ways that maybe I won't even ever understand that I did? Laree, did you have any good takeaways? I know this was such a rich conversation, so hard to choose just one.

Laree Dominguez: 

It was. One of the things that really stood out to me, I will say I feel so empowered and inspired by not only Roland's journey, but also the way that he talks about it so openly and honestly and really shares real things that happened so that you can absorb those, it's very helpful. But one of the things that really stood out for me was that he encourages people to believe in themselves and to persevere. For many of us, that's I think something that we forget, it did remind me that my grandmother used to tell me, "You have to continue. You have to keep doing what you're doing and no one, no matter what, can ever take that away from you." That's something that often, I think, is easy to forget. No one can take those things away from us and if we don't project the deficiencies in others, it helps us to persevere and look at the good. It was so empowering.

I think one of the things that stood out for me that gets a lot of discussion and a lot of talk when libraries are talking about outreach and that I would think that everyone would be able to take this on and think about it a little more is a library without walls. I thought that was so powerful, and encouraging people to be active listeners, and sometimes there are misunderstandings, but if you make an effort to learn about all of the cultures and all the human beings that live in your community, it would really make things much easier. I think there's a lot of outcomes that would be so much healthier for all of us if we could just remember to look into a few of those things and be active listeners. I just love the perseverance and the library without walls.

Meredith Farkas: 

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Because he talked about it being the friendly place, and we all want our library to be the friendly place, but he realized that that was a really active thing that required getting out in the community, letting people share their stories, getting them to co-create the library, partnering with others, just so much inspiration, right?

Laree Dominguez: 

Yes, and his community readers.

Meredith Farkas: 

Oh, I love that idea.

Laree Dominguez: 

I do too, and that's something we can all do occasionally.

Meredith Farkas: 

Yeah.

Laree Dominguez: 

Yeah. I love how he has done that with all ages.

Meredith Farkas: 

Ah, so inspiring.

Laree Dominguez: 

He is. It was amazing. I'm so happy we were able to have this conversation with him and that we could be involved.

Meredith Farkas: 

Yeah.

[Voiceover] 

This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services through the Library Services and Technology Act, administered by the State Library of Oregon.

Este proyecto ha sido posible en parte por el Instituto de Servicios de Museos y Bibliotecas a través de la Ley de Servicios de Biblioteca y Tecnológia (LSTA), administrada por la Biblioteca Estado de Oregón 

[Voiceover] 

We would like to take time to acknowledge historical injustices. We recognize Oregon was established as a white sanctuary state with the intent to exclude African American and black people on ancestral land stolen from dispossessed indigenous peoples. We recognize and honor the members of federally recognized tribes and unrecognized tribes of Oregon. We honor native American ancestors past present and future whose land we still occupy. This acknowledgement aims to deconstruct false histories, correct the historical record and disrupt genocidal practices by refocusing attention to the original people of the land we inhabit, the slave trade enforced labor that built this country and to the oppressive social systems interwoven into the fabric of our national and regional heritage. We ask that you take a moment to acknowledge and reflect as well.

[Outro Music Playing]