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(upbeat music) - May I do that one more time?

(bell chimes) There we go.

Okay, good afternoon and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Thursday, February 17th, and I'm Kristen Baird Adams, President of the City Club Board of Directors, and Chief of Staff of PNC's National Regional Presidents Organization.

It's my pleasure to welcome you to today's forum in partnership with our friends at the Cleveland Public Library.

On this day, 153 years ago, Cleveland Public Library was founded and began its unwavering service as a cornerstone of Cleveland's neighborhoods.

It's hard to imagine the library's humble beginnings.

A single room with fewer than 6000 books to the iconic Main Library campus downtown that we know today, and its 27 branches, and millions of books and a multitude of other resources and programs.

No question our library has grown into much more than shelves of books.

It links people to one another and opportunities to learn and grow, serves as a safe gathering place for children, adults, families, senior citizens and more, and as a hub for continued learning, civic engagement, and professional and workforce development.

And during our city's largest surge in Coronavirus cases, the library stepped up as a trusted public health partner serving as a distribution site for free COVID antigen test kits.

Today, City Hall is seeing many new faces and a change in leadership.

Today, City Hall is seeing fresh new faces and a change in leadership not seen in over 16 years.

How will our Public Library system be part of the changing vision for the city?

And how will the Cleveland Public Library bring our City Hall to the people?

Joining us today to discuss these important topics are; Blaine Griffin, City Council President and Ward Six councilman, and Felton Thomas Jr, Executive Director and CEO of the Cleveland Public Library.

They of course will be in discussion moderated by the City Club's very own, Dan Moulthrop.

As in every city club forum, you can participate with your questions.

Text them to 330-541-5794.

That's 330-541-5794.

You can also tweet them to @cityclub or of course ask them live here at today's program for all of you in attendance, and we'll do our best to welcome them in.

So members and guests and friends of the City Club, please join me in welcoming Council President Griffin and Director Thomas.

(congregation clapping) - So thank you.

What a great room this is!

It is so nice to see everybody here.

Thank you all for joining us today.

I thought we'd start by singing Happy Birthday.

Just kidding, just kidding.

Felton Thomas, Director of the Cleveland Public Library, congratulations!

You don't look a day over 152.

(congregation laughing) But seriously, this is a kind of, you think about institutions and the power of institutions, and something with this kind of staying power.

It must mean a lot to you to be thinking, to be recognizing the 153 years of service of the Cleveland Public Library today.

- It really does.

You know, I always talk to the staff about the fact that, you know, this day is like a day of gratitude.

Usually, this would be our patron Appreciation Day, right?

You know, COVID has kind of changed that and we'll be back in 2023.

But it's always an opportunity.

I think, you know, when we get to the founder date, it's an opportunity to show gratitude for the folks who have helped us to get to this point.

And then actually, it's an opportunity for us to look forward, right?

It's continuity of transformation that so many folks have worked so hard for us to get to this point.

And now we start doing the work to get another 153 years behind this, right?

So I want to take this time, you know, this would be, if I had done a speech, I would have started with like, acknowledgments, and I got to do them because a lot of these people are my bosses.

So, right?

(congregation laughing) First, start with a big (mumbles) as much gratitude as I can to our Board of Trustees right here.

If you would mind standing.

(congregation clapping) They're led by Maritza Rodriguez here, and they have done a yeoman's work of providing direction to this community.

And we have a former board president, Valerie Branham with us.

So thank you for being with us.

I want to thank, and I was going to start early before, but Dan threw me off, - [Dan] Sorry.

- was going to start thanking the City Club and all that you have done during these two years to continue to provide convening and the work and the great job that your staff does despite having Dan Moulthrop as your leader.

It's fantastic, right?

- [Dan] It's remarkable.

- It is remarkable.

- [Dan] Yeah.

- I must thank our foundation board, led by Greg Stefani over there.

Thank you for all that you guys have done.

(congregation clapping) We have a table of our leadership and our managers, and then our union staff.

And I think they have all agreed on one thing today, and that agreement is that we should bring back limit squares.

(congregation laughing) - [Dan] Bring it.

We had them on Friday.

- To get our union, our leadership agreeing on anything is like you guys have done a yeoman's job in that sense.

And I certainly want to thank our staff where I work, who are viewing this from one of our libraries across the city.

I want to thank them all for their hard work, doing two unprecedented years of really, really just challenging times.

And I appreciate all their work that you have done for us.

And now you can get back to work, right?

- [Dan] Well, they need to hear the rest of your comments.

- Okay, I guess.

Yeah, they really should.

But really you get back to work.

All right, now.

And so that's where we are.

This is an opportunity for gratitude.

But now it is like that moving to that transformation period, like how do we take this and examine all of the transformation that has happened in our libraries.

(mumbles) Madison was going to be here with, Sandra, are the Madison folks here?

Oh, there they are.

Because, you know, one of the stories that have always stuck out with me, as I was talking, we gave Bob Madison the award of the dreamer, of the Year Award at our MLK Program.

And he told me a thing about when he initially was not allowed to go to architecture school at Case Western.

And they made him take a test to become an architect.

He came to the Cleveland Public Library as his place to study.

And he felt so welcomed, he always had that connection with us.

It's that transformation.

I've talked a lot about how the library transformed me and saved my life.

But it was really also awesome to sit down with the Mayor, represented here by Angela Watson.

Thank you, Angela for being here on his behalf.

Our new mayor talked to us, talked to me about the fact that East 1/31 branch was his transformational place where he went, and he felt safe.

And so when he had to choose a place to do his ceremonial swearing in, he chose that library as this place.

Everybody has their library story of transformation or change, right?

And it is so important that it not be like Joe Cimperman, who basically checked out a book on how to win an election and never brought it back.

(congregation laughing) - But fees are now waived, so Joe.

- So he will tell you that is a true story.

But for better or worse, right?

But there are so many transformational stories.

And you know, today I hope I can talk a little bit about how we are going to move in the future by creating more transformational stories.

- We will get there.

Council President Blaine Griffin, you have library stories as well.

I know you have a branch, the Harvey Rice Branch very close to where you live, and it's a central location for your neighbors for the Buckeye-Shaker community in Woodland.

But what I want to ask you to talk a little bit about is like, where do you see the city going in the next four, eight, 12 years?

And how do you see libraries fitting into that vision?

- Well, first of all, thank you.

It's always a pleasure and honor to be able to speak at the Citadel of Free Speech.

And can you imagine that I had to spend an entire week with Joe Cimperman, Dan Moulthtrop and Felton Thomas.

(congregation laughing) I'm still on a recovery from it.

So just to let you know it was great to have this fellowship and this room looks great.

I will tell you that, you know, I wasn't a scholar growing up.

So I won't tell you stories about the library being a saver for me when I was a kid.

I tell people often that some people graduated from school cum laude.

Summa cum laude.

I graduated from school, thank God Almighty.

(congregation laughing) So, what I will tell you is that, you know, mine is a more present day.

(laughs loudly) - [Dan] I'm still in that way.

(congregation laughing) - Mine is a more present day appreciation for the library.

Because, as we talk about how important a library is, I'll never forget a guy named Fernand Hill from one of my elders who I really had a lot of respect for named Paul Hill I used to work for.

He told me about library science.

Now here, I thought it was this Dewey Decimal System on index cards and all of these boxes and was not my thing when I was growing up.

But he helped me understand how libraries and library science was more about promoting democracy, and more about making sure that you have an intersection of social culture, music, innovation, and everything else.

When we first got sworn in on January 2nd of this year, one of the things that I told everyone is that, I want this council and I want this city, and working in conjunction with Mayor Bibb, that I want us to be first.

I'm tired of us being on the list of last.

I want us to be first.

I want us to be the best number two.

I want everybody to talk about how they can come to Cleveland, and do things the best way they can.

Yesterday, we celebrated and I see Augie Napoli here about a coalition that came together to deal with making Cleveland land safe.

But then also, (mumbles) That's huge.

(congregation clapping) So really building collaborative leadership models in the city of Cleveland, and then also being different, being innovative.

Change was on the agenda this past November 2021.

And I tell everybody that you know, change is good, and it's great.

But change is a process, not an event.

And one of the things that I think that the libraries do is they really help promote change, because it's where you can actually take the practical, everyday people issues.

All of the folks that go to the library are just everyday people, that put them together with the academic and the philosophical, and really try to pull together.

One of my favorite libraries, and I told you this earlier, is the Harvey Rice Branch.

It is the intersection of every social race and economic class that you can imagine.

It sits right in the middle of the Shaker, Buckeye-Shaker Woodland Hills area.

And I can just tell you that if you ride down 116th Street, you actually see a microphone by Joe Black, I believe who, - [Dan] Donald Black Jr. - Donald Black Jr, who did the mural and it really has a young person.

- It was a mural we commissioned in partnership with the library.

- And it's beautiful.

And it actually has a microphone where it basically has a voice to the community to say come to us, come speak out loud, come express yourself.

And that's why I think libraries means so much to what we're doing right now.

And that's why it's so much of an honor to be here to just have this discussion with my good friend Felton Thomas and you today.

- To get back to a little bit more though, in terms of where the city is going, what do you need the libraries to do in the next four, eight years?

- Well, I mean, it's being a resource, and what they already do.

I will tell you that I believe the library, and I don't want to steal Director Thomas's thunder, but they're making a major investment in infrastructure.

I believe 100 million over about 10 years to redo libraries in some of the most distressed and abandoned neighborhoods.

And they'll serve as anchors in our community to make sure that you have a fair pay for your workforce.

And a lot of the people that work in the libraries don't live in the suburbs.

They are people who live in a neighborhood like Eric Walker and others that actually live in a neighborhood to make sure that we have fair wages.

So it's more than just about being a resource, but also making sure that they help with our economic viability, our institutional viability, and also doing things like one of the unsung heroes of the COVID-19 crisis at the library is actually passed out COVID-19 tests.

And when I ran out of my office, I told everyone, hey, go to the library, because they have COVID-19 tests.

- [Dan] I walked down there myself.

- Yeah, so those are the kinds of things that I think the library can help us with innovation, they can help us with access.

We know that we have a digital divide, especially in some of the poor BIPOC communities.

So it's important for us to really recognize the library more than just going to get a book.

But how does it help shape our thinking process, our democracy?

How does it help people who live on the margins of society?

And how does it make sure that we deal with all of the things like education, innovation, and also just having a good time?

And make sure being, having a safe space for children to be able to go.

- Director Thomas, can you talk a little bit about the building projects that the Council President Griffin mentioned and the thinking that's going into the design of those places, as you think about the future and transformation?

- Yeah, it's important because we are doing basically a 10-year $110 million Facilities Master Plan.

And the importance of what that is, not only the fact that we are able to bring money into our communities, but it's also about the fact that we are redesigning what our communities will have as an anchor, right, in many cases, and how we can serve as further development for that.

So you look at our Walz Branch, right?

That branch is going to be the bottom of a building, senior housing building that's going to be built right above it, right?

Those are the types of developments you want to create more, continued development.

I do want to go back to the idea of how libraries can work with, you know, the City Hall, and really, like, integrate what we do into what the Mayor and what the Council President have in mind.

So and I'll give you an example.

When we sat down with the Mayor, the Mayor had gone out, and he was very open and transparent about this.

He campaigned on the idea that the library should be the front door to government.

In essence, the front door to democracy, right?

And when we start talking about it, trying to figure out what that meant, was he was just saying, I see how difficult it is for many folks to be able to get downtown to get their birth certificates, to get other kinds of documents that they have to get.

Wouldn't it be great if they could just go to the library that's right in their neighborhood, and be able to get access to all those materials?

How do we create government innovation labs in our libraries?

You guys have the technology, you have trusted staff members, right, which is our number one greatest thing that we have, which is these great staff members, right?

And you have the trust of the community.

So we haven't fully fleshed it out.

We have a meeting next week.

I'm so happy to say that we're going to start talking about what the government innovation labs are.

But it's a way of taking technology and making the lives of our community members easier.

So I didn't answer your question.

- [Dan] Oh yeah.

- I answered the councilman's question.

- You answered the question you wish I'd asked.

- That's very true.

- He sounds like a politician.

- I know, I know.

He'll be running for your office next week.

- That's what you call a pivot.

- Yeah.

But the facilities plan, I mean, that's significant.

- It is.

- That's really significant.

And imagining that a patron can come into the library, and pull a permit for, you know, an application for a building permit, or get their birth certificate, or whichever it is, I mean, that is truly transformational.

- Yeah, but we've got.

- It would also change the design and Bostwick is over there, like, oh jeez!

- I know, I know.

We're very fortunate to have a number of our construction partners with us today.

And we want to thank all of them for being such great partners, and really committing to our diversity, equity and inclusion.

You know, our concepts about how we want to move forward.

So I just want to say with that, that whole concept about what the buildings can be.

The number one thing that we want our buildings to be now, no longer just branches, but campuses, right?

So we want people to come in and see not only a building, but an outside area in which they can connect to their library, to their community, right, within this campus.

So you know, we're starting the process of figuring out how that is going to, what that's going to maybe be a part of.

But wouldn't it be great if all 27 our libraries have this unbelievable outdoor kind of art out display out in front of every one of the branches, so that it drives people to come to their community?

But also it drives, it creates a sense of pride within the community members who are living in our community.

But also then creating spaces for people to perform in outside in these spaces as well, right?

So you got to have that, then you got to look at how do we take our technology and bump it up to the place where we can be these innovation labs for every one of our communities?

- You've been experimenting with some of those concepts though.

I mean, the Langston Hughes Branch has an art installation outside of it that had been at Public Square and was resited over there.

And have you found that that has increased engagement by the community and increased connectivity?

- Yeah, absolutely.

I think our folks have LAND Studio here.

Like, I'm just doing plugs.

- You're just doing plugs.

- That's all I do.

- If you don't get your name mentioned today, I mean.

- I apologize.

I'm trying to do as many plugs as I possibly can.

But no, I just wanna thank LAND Studio, because they made it possible to bring it out to us.

But it does.

I mean, once again, it is like one of those, you know, you want something out in front of your library, so that everybody can say, let's meet at the arts space out in front of the, you know, Langston Hughes Library or.

And we've always had that, and we are very fortunate at our downtown building, to have this great garden that drives everybody to that.

We should have that at every one of our buildings.

And that's what we're working on.

- The Eastman Reading Garden is really one of the best public spaces, little pocket parks in the city.

And it's a gift.

It is a gift to the community, I feel it every time I walk through it or sit in it.

And the art that you and LAND Studio have installed there over the years has always been very engaging.

You know, you've both talked about the role that libraries play and can play in improving and strengthening democracy, improving how government delivers services.

And there's there's some real tension right now between the mission of the library, which is about First Amendment stuff, freedom of expression, and a fearlessness about challenging ideas.

And what's happening in government right now in the House bill that is seeking to restrict the certain things that can be taught, libraries are connected to school districts in this way that is potentially problematic, Director Thomas.

- Absolutely.

Plug, Meryl Johnson is over here, our superintendent here, for us here.

- State Board of Education member representing Cleveland and Greater Cleveland.

(congregation clapping) Retired teacher and longtime City Club member.

- Very good.

- Yeah, Meryl Johnson.

Anyway, you were saying.

- I was saying that she could speak to the fact that how this has really spiraled out of the control, this whole idea of critical race theory.

- Yeah.

- Right?

And we are very worried from the library standpoint that that will fall into what are we, you know, not only are we going to be dealing with them trying to ban more books that we have, which is already a tremendous issue that we're facing, but, right, we're bringing Nicole Hannah Jones at the end of the year, and she seems to be the person that they hate the most.

(congregation clapping) So you start to think about, like, where does this hint?

Where does the sense or thought of that effect that we can't just have conversations around issues, that are important for us to discuss, that are important for communities to hear if they make certain people upset.

And they happen to be in the legislature, and they can make decisions on whether that is okay with them.

Whether it's books, or whether it's authors, or whether it's textbooks or whatever it is.

It's a scary time.

- Yeah, Council President Griffin, when you think about those issues, that set of issues, I mean, is this something that City Council has been thinking about or that you plan to put on the agenda so that the people can understand and where does City Council stand on these issues?

- Absolutely!

One of the things that we're not afraid to do as the City Council is to be vocal, and have our own identity.

And I will tell you that these kinds of issues, we want to promote, we want people to be able to go and have access to the unlimited information and the endless ability to be able to educate themselves on the topics that affect our community.

We don't want an ignorant community, we want a very educated, very strong, very innovative raid, nifty community.

And one of the things we want to do is reroute people to the libraries.

But I also want to pivot to talking about how this could be important for the global community as well.

The library in Cleveland is not walled off to neighborhoods and to a community like we used to be.

And now we have an opportunity to be a portal of information for the world.

So not only do we have to look at Cleveland affairs, we also need to look at how we deal with international affairs.

I see we have our friend, Bock, from Afghanistan here today.

And I know that we have eight new families that have moved to the Buckeye, Woodland Hills community from Afghanistan.

We want to be able to utilize the library so that they can communicate and have information, and conversations with their homeland countries, and be able to look at other kinds of things that can help them communicate and learn languages and learn ESL, as well as Cleveland residents being able to go there to learn their languages and others as well.

(congregation clapping) So it's an exchange of information, and it is the cross-section of culture, education and innovation.

- Director Thomas I know that there's an announcement, a birthday announcement that the library wishes to make.

And as we're getting close to the q&a portion to the end of this part of the conversation, I want to give you a chance to make your announcement.

Shoot your shot.

- Thank you, Dan.

I appreciate it.

So, before I do, I have to do one quick shout out.

Tracy Strobel and Patty Shlonsky for the Cuyahoga County Public Library.

(congregation clapping) Thank you.

Alright, alright, alright, that's enough shout outs.

I could do shout outs all day.

- I know.

Everybody's here because they love.

- Oh no.

But, you know, I want to tell the story.

I was in Slovenia, blame Joe Superman for this.

I was in Slovenia about 10 years ago, and I walked into a public library in Slovenia, and they had a little three-ring binder notebook on the desk.

And everybody was walking in and writing something in it and whatever.

And so I walked over and just opened it up to see what it was.

I couldn't quite read it.

So I asked somebody and they said, what we do here is our libraries, if you have an idea for a program, you can just write it in.

And if eight people sign up for it, we will let you do the program.

And I was like, wow, that's really, really interesting, right?

It's completely different the way libraries do it, because we would never allow our people to give them any freedom to do anything, right?

And so I was like, you know, I came back to the library.

I kept on talking about, that's the way we really incorporate the concept of the people's University.

We turn things back to the people and give them the opportunity to create themselves.

And so we've been working on that with the idea that everyone is going to be the teacher, and everyone is going to be the learner.

So just real quick with me, think about something that is a gift that you have.

Whether it is you have a passion for politics, you could play the piano, you are a master gardener, something that you don't get paid for, though, right?

Everyone has this one secret thing that they're really, really good at that if I like went out and started asking everybody to share their gifts, people would be like, I didn't even know that about you, Carrie Carpenter.

I don't know what that might be, right?

But I know there is something that Carrie is tremendous at that no one knows about.

But Carrie might want to share that with people who might want to give them that gift.

So the announcement is that we are starting the process of transforming the Cleveland Public Library to be the People's University in 2030.

But our first class for the People's University will start in the fall of 2022.

So you are going to see.

(congregation clapping) And I know everybody loves the library, and everyone has their concept of there when they were young, and they went in and they sat in a room, and I really love the concept of the library.

The library remains, but the idea that the library has many doors that people walk through when what they are looking for.

People coming us for health care, people coming to us for legal aspect, people coming to us for language assistance, people coming to us for information, people coming to us for culture and arts.

All of those are encompassed in the People's University.

And it's now an opportunity for us to redesign who we are, and it begins September of 2022.

- So what's the class you're going to teach?

- I am teaching a class on drumming.

Dan has told me he would be one of the eight people who've signed up.

- I'll sign up for that.

- I have no rhythm at all.

- So, well, I might not allow you in.

If I get more than eight people, you might be on the outs.

You might be on the outs.

- Or in the waitlist.

- But I say to everyone, if you have a great gift that you would like to share, it is time for you to become a professor at the People's University.

- Yes.

Felton Thomas, President of the People's University, Blaine Griffin, President of Cleveland City Council.

(congregation clapping) Let's go to q&a, Kristen.

- We're about to begin the audience q&a.

We welcome questions from everyone, City Club members, guests, or those of you joining us via live stream online.

If you'd like to tweet a question, please tweet it to @thecityclub.

You can also text your questions to 330-541-5794.

That's 330-541-5794 and our staff will do their best to work it into the program.

May we have the first question, please.

- So delighted to see Meryl Johnson step up to the microphone, - War Six's finest by the way.

- Good afternoon, it's so good to see all of you.

As was already said, I'm on the State Board of Education.

And at our meeting, just this past week, we had someone coming in doing our public participation, speaking against social emotional learning.

That seems to be the thing that's on the targets, targeted now.

No social emotional learning.

And I'm just gonna say this quickly, one of the things she said she didn't want teachers to do, is to ask children how they feel.

And when I was teaching, if I didn't know how a child was feeling, I might take their refusal to do something as defiance, as opposed to just not being ready to do something.

So my question for you is, how are you dealing with social and emotional learning in the library, when we have so many children who are heavily traumatized by the pandemic?

There's so much going on in their lives.

How do you address that when you have young people in the library?

- That's a great question, Merrill.

And we've been having a lot of conversations with, on my team is Dr. Sadie Winlock.

And she leads our Engagement and Education and Equity Department.

And one of the things that she has been looking at is the whole concept of ACEs and trauma, right?

And how our community is going to be traumatized by this situation.

I think it is a library situation, but in the same way that it is a larger issue, like LED was.

This is a problem that the community has to come around and start to work on together, right?

We can provide those kinds of programs in our libraries, and that's what Dr. Winlock is working on and providing them.

But the reality of this is that the trauma that our children have gone through for this past two years, are going to be living with them for a very long time.

And we as a whole city have to put our arms around our kids, and figure out how are we going to work together in the same way that we did to figure out some answers around LED?

Meaning that it's not one group's problem.

It's not the school's problems, it's not the library's problems.

It's the city's problem, right?

And it's the larger area, you know, the larger county problem that we all have to work on together.

- And then if I could add to that, one in three children, and one in three adults, actually, in this city experience adverse childhood experiences.

And, you know, even I mean, when you look at some of us and how we grew up in predominantly single parent households in the city of Cleveland, you have approximately in the area that I serve, about 70% of the households are single parent households.

You have to be that extension of social emotional learning.

- Yes.

- As a community, we're raising children.

It is not just the tradition of what people are looking at, as a husband, wife, raising children in a nuclear family.

A community is raising them.

And when the library is an extension of that community, we have to be able to have trauma, and be able to deal with those kinds of issues.

That's why we did it with our recreation centers as well, where put $2.7 million into the recreation centers so that it's not just about dribbling the basketball, it's also about being able to deal with trauma-informed care.

I will also add one more thing to that, cultural specific.

It really is important to make sure not just about African-American culture, not just about Caucasian culture, but also Asian culture, Hispanic culture and every other culture, and making sure that what we deal with in libraries have an opportunity for us to do cultural specific social emotional learning.

- And if I can add just one last thing, because I think this is important.

One of the things that Mayor has been really specifically working on, is working with the schools, the libraries, the rec centers to come together so that when we're doing this continuity of work, that we all do it together, right?

So we're all working on it.

So there is a committee being brought together of all of these entities that are going to be providing education for our kids.

And how do we create continuity not that they when they go to school, they get one set of things, when they go to a library it's something completely different, when they go to rec center it's completely different?

That they're aligned in what they're trying to do.

(congregation clapping) - I would like to connect the Cleveland Public Library with the American Center in Pakistan, 8000 miles away.

When I was growing up, that was the place I used to go that I learned about jazz, piano, books, and my love for America.

So it's not just a place where a mind is explored but it is learn new things that to this day, I never played any music.

I'm like Dan, I have no rhythm.

(congregation laughing) Because some 50 some years ago, I watched a piano being played so well, that I bought a piano and took lessons to try to, not to get to that point, but at least do the chopsticks.

So the point I'm trying to make is that, we don't realize how big an impact we have on our children, not just locally, but they think of things that they never imagined by reading and seeing movies and entertainment and others.

So what you're doing is God's work.

- Awesome, thank you.

- Thank you (indistinct) If I could just say something to that, you know, Joe mentioned it earlier, but 24 countries, you know, we have our sister cities and 26 countries across the world, and 24 of them will be coming to Cleveland to do their Sister Cities Conference, which is going to be at the Cleveland Public Library.

And we do that because we see, you know, us as ourselves at the Cleveland Public Library as a connector to many, many international groups within the city of Cleveland and around Greater Cleveland, and with our new folks who are moving here.

So you know, I think it's one of those things that we've always felt like, was really important.

And for those who don't know, Cleveland Public Library has materials in 50 different languages for people to be able to access.

So it's just one of those great things about us.

Okay, that was great.

That wasn't humble at all, but you know.

- [Dan] You're not supposed to be.

Go ahead.

- Good afternoon, you mentioned about there being many doors to access the libraries, and you're trying to provide many different kinds of programs.

And I have noticed in newer libraries, a lot less space allocated to actual books on shelves.

So I was just wondering what the philosophy is, as far as providing access to physical materials, whether that they're mostly being in the main library and then getting distributed to the branches.

So I was just wondering kind of how you see that?

- I would look to my other library directors around who are just the (mumbles) libraries, and we'll kind of put this forward.

I think we always want people to walk in and get that feel like they had when they were young, when they walked in the library and they see these stacks of books.

But there is a reality that when you walk through the stacks, you don't see as much serendipitous looking for titles as you used to, because people can go online.

50% of the items that people check out from our library, people go online and just order it and they come to our circ desk, or they go through a drive thru and pick up the books, right?

Or, and then a good portion of our titles being checked out are being checked out electronically through e-books.

So the need to have, you know, kind of like as when I was a younger librarian, all the people would come up and say we just want warehouses of books.

They would be like, no computers, no anything else, just warehouses of books, right?

I think those days are behind us.

But I think there's still something too.

We want young people to walk into libraries, and know they're in the library because those libraries have stacks of books, right?

They may not be using them, they may be accessing their books in a different way but they're still important for them to access.

And I will tell you, just as I did with my wife, and myself when we were younger, a lot more families are creating home libraries.

And I think that's another opportunity for the libraries to actually be a distribution center for a lot of these families that may not have the opportunity always to get to the physical facility, but can actually make sure that people can populate their homes where children can have books to.

So there's other ways to make sure that that physical component can actually be captured.

- That's a great point.

There's a statistic that the number one kind of determinant of literacy for young people was, did they have a library in their home when they were young?

So us working with the Dolly Parton Library or working with books for children or the Book Bank rather, making sure that kids have books in their home is important.

And that's having books in our libraries for people to check out, I think will always remain, right?

Some libraries across the country have tried the bookless libraries.

They didn't work.

- [Audience Member] Great, thank you so much.

- I didn't even know that was a thing, the bookless library.

- Oh, yes, in Texas, (congregation laughing) of all places.

- It's very innovative.

Texas is very innovative.

I just wanted to ask you too, I mean, the mission of the library is around information needs, which isn't just books, right?

Like, when you look at the whole world of library patrons, how many are coming for books?

How many are coming for other things?

And what are those other things?

- So what we know is, majority of folks are coming in for books or information.

We're looking at roughly around 50% of the folks who are coming in.

But you have another 50% coming in for a variety of other issues.

So they're coming in because they need access.

Like we'll have Legal Aid Society who come in, they'll come in for them.

We'll have health care, they'll have some health care needs, and we'll have somebody from the Cleveland Clinic come in.

Or programming that we do on various programs, they'll come in for our programming.

So the the old school way of the library being this transactional space where somebody walks in, and they say, I need an answer to this, or I need this book, those days are way behind us.

What people are looking for now is access to the great gifts of Cleveland, that they don't have access to.

And that means, beforehand, it was access to these books that will give us this information.

Now it's access to things like, Dance Cleveland coming in and talking to them about dance, that they can't get in the normal way, right?

Or some of the things from the museums that they can't get, an access to the art.

Those are the things that we think are so important.

And that's what we're really built to do, is to share those gifts with everyone.

- Thanks.

Go ahead.

- Hi, I'm Dr. Carmen.

We're from Seeds of Literacy.

And I'm here with our President and CEO, Bonnie Entler.

And you mentioned the impact of having books in the home.

But we also know that the biggest determinant of a child's educational aspirations and attainment is the mother's reading level.

So we work to address the needs of the 66% of Clevelanders who are functionally illiterate adults and we serve about 1000 students a year.

Between us and the other three providers in the area, we only serve 10% of the folks who have the need for adult literacy services in Cuyahoga County.

We have two locations at the west side, West 25th, and Clark on the east side of Mount Pleasant, in the Mount Pleasant building where Angela was previously.

And we are really trying to access students who are on the north side of town who have a really difficult time getting to our sites because of the public transportation.

So my question for you, oh, because we have a virtual classroom, now a lot of students are able to access us.

We've been providing devices for folks, we've tried to connect on to DigitalC, PCs for People for connectivity.

But I would like to know how you're going to make space for adult learners, maybe, to access virtual learning in the libraries.

The 30-minute time limits can be problematic for them.

And to be able to interact with tutors, they need to be able to talk.

So as you're envisioning what you're creating, I hope that you're creating some spaces where they can have access to technology and quiet spaces to connect with tutors.

And also for the Councilman, I would like to know, what are you and the Council thinking about empowering adult learners, especially around educating them for civic engagements?

- So that's a great question, right?

I mean, one of the unfortunate statistics that we have is how many, you know, 66% of the city of Cleveland is functionally illiterate as of seventh grade, being able to read at seventh grade level.

And so we know that there's a lot of work to be doing with that.

We have partnered ourselves with Kiowa County Public Library to create a provider called Aspire to provide the services.

But Seeds of Literacy has always been a great partner in doing that work.

So we have started to rebuild our buildings with that mindset.

How do you create more private spaces for people to be able to have that one-on-one kind of connection with community?

Also, right, what we have been doing is making sure that working with the DigitalC and others, we're providing as much access as possible.

So PCs for people who have been working with us, we've handed out 1000s of laptops or PCs to our community.

We're checking out 1500 hotspots that we have available for people to get access.

Once again, these are all kind of small solutions to big, big problems, right?

You know, in the end, this is a problem that the city and others and the state have to work on, and how do we deal with the fact that the city of Cleveland is the fourth least connected city in the country?

Those are big issues.

But what we believe is we have to do our part, and that's what we've been doing for it to make sure that we can get access.

- And I would just tell you that with Cleveland City Council, one of the priorities that we have, and I can't underscore this enough, partly because of my personal experience, but also because of what we just are experiencing now.

Is that we have a large portion of our city that are single African-American females head of households, that we have to wrap our arms around collectively at this community.

Like Meryl asked earlier, the systems are not talking to each other, and we have to make sure that these systems talk to each other.

And we have to make sure that we have communities of learning.

One of the things that I'm very passionate about is the LED crisis.

And the reason I'm passionate about the LED crisis, is because I moved to five different places by the time I got in eighth grade.

I've experienced where there was peeling paint in a bathroom and my mother would get into it with the landlord, because the landlord wouldn't remediate the land and the house and those kind of things.

Well, the library just had a project where they actually had a community reading session where they all read a book around eviction, and several people join that.

So not just trying to put the sole ownership on that single parent, and that single mother, trying to create communities of learning.

And I think this is where we have an opportunity.

We have areas like Central that the library is also connected, I believe there's about 200, or 300 families that are going to be connecting.

And you have a median household income of about $10,000 per household.

Think about that.

$10,000 per household.

We have to create these communities of learners, we have to have the infrastructure and other things to make sure we broaden that.

Not just because we want people to have access to education, but telehealth is big now.

We also know that industry 4.0 is here.

So we have to make sure that our communities are connected through the libraries in order so that people can understand smart manufacturing, and all of those different issues.

So it's critical.

And then just seniors who just want to stay in touch or watch church on Sunday, because they couldn't go because of COVID.

We have to make sure that we use libraries as potential hotspots, because a lot of them are, by being by virtue in the neighborhood, people can actually congregate or the people that live around it can utilize them.

So there's multiple ways that we can wrap our arms around the most vulnerable populations in our community.

And I think that's what's so good and exciting about Cleveland right now, is that the mayor and the administration, council, these other partners, the City Club, the press, saying they'll all be on the same page as far as what we need to do in order to make the city move forward.

And that's why the libraries are so important.

- I can't underscore what the Council President said more than that.

Because, you know, I've been here now 13 years, and I don't see more optimism during this period of time around the fact that there are ways to solve these problems.

They seemed intractable before, but now they seem like, if you can create the right plan, folks are excited to join in on that plan and be part of the solution.

And we have a lot of, unfortunately, a lot of gaps that we have to work through.

- And Black women should be that priority, because right now Black women in this city are suffering.

And until we all wrap our arms around Black women in this city.

(congregation clapping) - I have a text question.

There are many measurable points in the city that could be used as a metric for improvement.

For example, literacy rates, life expectancy outcomes, health disparities, etc.

In four years, what metrics will the Cleveland Public Library and Cleveland City Council use to measure success?

In other words, what does success look like?

- Wow!

Can I take a first very small crack at that?

That's a big question, but it's a valid and very important one.

In March of 2020, I believe or 2019, I forget, I lose track of time now.

The city of Cleveland, Cleveland City Council made a declaration that racism is a public health crisis.

You know, but I tell people, that was only the first step.

And that was only the first step because first of all, you have to acknowledge, and I'm a very big movie buff.

"The Usual Suspect" has the guy, Kaiser Permanente and he has a line I never forget that says that, "the biggest trick the devil ever played on mankind is to convince him that he didn't exist."

So we first have to acknowledge that racism is a public health crisis.

But now we have to make sure we put the money and the resources and the effort behind it.

But now we're at a point to make sure that we are measuring it.

I see Evelyn Burnett here with ThirdSpace, that is really helping us make sure that we measure this.

That it's just not a document or declaration that's sitting on a shelf somewhere.

That's something that's showing measurable movement, and holding everybody accountable, holding each other accountable.

Listen, you know, what I will tell you is that, people in this city want to touch, feel and see change.

They're tired of academic exercises and urban anthropology.

People want to actually see the change in their life.

And what we want to do as Cleveland City Council, working closely with the administration is to make sure that at the end of this four terms, if I can't sit up and say we actually moved the needle and we actually made some very measurable change in all of these critical issues that we're talking about, then, you know, I put the pressure on myself to say we didn't achieve it.

So I think we got to hold everybody accountable and do all those things.

- Yeah, and I agree completely.

I think where we are though, is in a place that folks who are now, who are in the mayor's office are working with the idea that there are certain things that we're not going to be able to accomplish.

We have to focus on the things that we can accomplish, because we can get all of the priorities in place to make those things happen.

And whether it's, you know, it could be Black women, it could be our youngest children, it could be a set of folks.

But I think the great thing is they're prioritizing where we are, and they're saying Felton, then now as the library, we want you guys to focus on this, right?

Like we have lots of open doors that we're having open, we're prioritizing to our strategic plan, what are the doors that are going to be bigger.

And so once we have the opportunity to sit down with the mayor, and with the Council President about what their focus they want to be, we're going to sit down with our folks and say, these are the doors that we're going to make bigger.

We're gonna provide more resources to them, and make sure that when people walk through those doors, they have all of the other things that are necessary for them to be successful.

- But Director Thomas, to just put a little finer point on it, I mean, what are the things that you measure now?

And what do you think you should be measuring in order for the library to do its part in helping to solve these big problems?

- So I think the things that libraries have typically always been measuring are the outputs.

Like, we do measure different outputs.

- [Dan] We checked out as many books.

- We checked out these many books, but now we measure different outputs.

For instance, how many meals that we serve to children?

Two years ago, and you know the numbers are low, but two years ago, we were serving 200,000 meals to children every year.

So those are things that we know have an impact, because kids are not hungry once they eat.

But we don't know how it ultimately affects them in the larger piece of their education and everything that come comes along with it.

So for us, it is a great opportunity for us to partner with others, and have us work through their outcomes.

- Okay, next question.

- Yes, we have a text question.

How can small businesses from minority backgrounds support the libraries and give back as the library has supported entrepreneurs' dreams?

- Well, that's a great question.

- [President Griffin] Yeah.

- I think as far as giving back, there is, Dr. Shenise Johnson-Thomas, who was head of our foundation, she would love to talk to anybody who would love to give back.

She loved to find a way to give back through their wallet, but she'd find a way for them to give back in any way.

But I think what we have been working through with this $110 million project is how do we make sure that every business in the community, small businesses, especially small businesses of color, are a part of this, and having some bit of this money that were spent?

It is really important for us to use our opportunity to get back into the community and having them build something and build that and make sure that they're a part of that process.

So we've really been working with it.

I want to make sure that some of the folks who have been a part of this, through our building program, have been doing other ways of making sure that the small businesses generally get overlooked, they're recruiting them, they're helping to train them so that they know how to be a part of the process when they're asked to do something that's maybe bigger than they would generally be able to do.

And I think that's where we've been getting a lot of good feedback from the community about the small businesses being a part of our process.

- And I think that one of the things that he mentioned earlier was very important, that we don't just want the presents from the small businesses, but we want their presence.

One of the things that I think that a lot of people have done is we've done a horrible job of changing the trajectory of how we think in our communities, and we've taught people how to go get a job.

Grow up, get an education, go get a job.

Where we have not done a good enough job is teaching people on how to create wealth, how to have a path towards owning a business.

A national.

(congregation clapping) That's the conversation that's been missing because everybody's been so focused on how we teach people how to survive.

We haven't taught people how to thrive.

And one of the things that I think when we talk about programs that are in the library that small businesses can do is really help people understand basic principles of capitalism, how to do savings, how to make sure, how do you create wealth?

Why is it better to buy a home and pay a mortgage as opposed to renting for 20 years.

All those basic things that help people understand their trajectory to how they started a business, we need to create more business owners.

And I think that's a great role for the library.

(congregation clapping) - Again, thank you for being with us today.

Be sure to join us tomorrow Friday, February 18th as we celebrate the start of NBA All Star Weekend.

We welcome two-time NBA All Star and former Cleveland Cavalier, Baron Davis.

He will be in conversation with Mayor Justin Bibb, talking about leadership, entrepreneurship and Black excellence.

This forum is sold out but you can join us live on 90.3 Ideastream Public Media or via our live stream at cityclub.org.

And next Friday, February 25th, we'll hear from India Birdsong, General Manager and CEO of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority.

She will discuss what is next for our city's public transit system.

Tickets are also still available for this and other forums at cityclub.org.

And that brings us to the end of today's forum.

Thank you Council President Griffin and Director Thomas.

I'm Kristen Baird Adams, and this forum is now adjourned.

(congregation clapping) (bell chimes) - [Announcer] For information on upcoming speakers or for podcasts of the City Club, go to city club.org.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Production and distribution of City Club forums on Ideastream Public Media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Incorporated.