February 17, 2025 • 32 mins
In this episode of Curiosity at Work, Dr. Julie Pham interviews Tom Fay, Executive Director and Chief Librarian of The Seattle Public Library. With over 42 years in the field, Tom shares how libraries have evolved into essential community hubs, offering much more than books—including social services, small business support, and digital access. He discusses leading through challenges like book bans and cybersecurity threats while fostering a workplace culture of continuous learning and innovation. Tune in to discover how curiosity shapes the future of public libraries and community engagement.
Connect with Dr. Julie Pham:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliepham2/
- Website: https://curiositybased.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/juliephamphd/
Connect with Tom Fay:
- Email: chieflibrarian@spl.org
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/tomfay
- Website: https://www.spl.org/about-us/the-organization/leadership
#TomFay #SeattlePublicLibrary #CuriosityAtWork #LibraryLeadership #PublicLibraries #CommunityEngagement #Innovation #BannedBooks #PublicService #DigitalAccess
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
I'm Dr. Julie Pham, founder of CuriosityBased.
We help people practice curiosity in the world, starting in the workplace, because that is where we spend most of our waking hours.
Curiosity as a practice boils down to self-awareness, relationship building, and clear communication.
So join us as we interview leaders to see how they use curiosity at work.
Welcome to the Curiosity at Work podcast.
(00:25):
I'm super excited to get to chat with Tom Fay, who is the executive director and chief librarian at Seattle Public Library.
Welcome Tom.
Thanks for having me on, Julie.
So Tom, I love the library.
This is one of the reasons why I wanted to invite you on.
My library card is actually my passport to the world, and it's really exciting to have such a veteran librarian.
(00:51):
And from what I understand, you have been working in libraries for 42 years, starting as a page, and you were named Nevada's Librarian of the Year.
You joined the Seattle Public Library in 2015, and you were named to chief librarian unanimously in 2022.
Correct.
So can you tell us a bit about the employees, your team, at the Seattle Public Library?
(01:17):
How many people work in this system?
How many branches?
All of that.
Sure.
There's over 700 people, 27 locations that include the Central Library downtown, the iconic building that is well-known all over the world.
And in our staff, obviously we have those who are librarians, who have gone to school for that, have a master's in librarian information science.
(01:45):
And then we have hundreds of other staff doing every kind of function imaginable.
You have all those frontline staff that are going to be in the branches, checking in books, shelving books, providing reference services, and other types of reading advising along the way during the course of the day.
And then, of course, we have folks working in our collections side of the equation, and those folks are the ones that are buying all those books, selecting all those books, making sure they're shelf-ready for the publication date.
(02:17):
And then, as you can imagine, with that many locations spread across the city, we have an entire logistics team that is in our material distribution.
That's truck drivers, that's going to be the folks that are on the big automated material handling system, a system that is basically ingesting all those physical books that come back in and making sure they get routed to the right place and your hold is there when you get ready to read that next book.
(02:45):
And then we have quite a few folks working in our youth and family services side of the house, which is going to be all of those great youth programs from those little ones all the way up through the teen and early adult years.
And then we have our community engagement and economic development folk.
They're out there trying to find others in the community that have yet to know about library services and really trying to engage them, have library staff come to them, have them come to us, and really make sure that we're getting all the way through the community.
(03:17):
And our economic development really works on those most in need and starting, could be small businesses, it could be other efforts that they're looking at as entrepreneurs, and really giving them assistance that would cost hundreds or thousands of dollars for startups that they can get at their library for free.
(03:39):
And then, of course, we have what many libraries have done over the years.
We were one of the first to have social service workers as well.
So we've seen some societal trends that haven't always done the best in homelessness, drug addiction, and also mental health, wellness.
We have folks that are there to help our patrons be successful at the library and to help them find other services they might need to better their condition.
(04:08):
And then for an organization that is that large, we have all the things that you would think of in any business, our human resources, variety of administrative services, and that's usually going to be finance, security, maintenance, capital maintenance.
We always have capital improvement going in that many buildings, IT, marketing, communications.
(04:28):
We have intergovernmental relations as well, community partnerships, and then strategy and performance.
We want to know we're being strategic, we want to be doing all the business analytics you need to make sure we're making continuous improvement.
So when people think about libraries, they just think about the librarians.
You just described all of these different functions and there are 700 people.
(04:50):
What percentage are actually librarians who have a master's in library sciences?
Out of the 710 staff or so, probably about 110, maybe to 120, depending on where we're flexing in the year.
Wow.
So it's actually the minority.
And what about social workers?
(05:11):
You said that that's actually one of the services that the library provides too.
Yeah.
Right now we only have two.
We are looking to expand that a little bit because it really provides our teams more on the ground support along with our patrons.
So that's a small but mighty team working every single day.
(05:31):
That is one of the things that impresses me about the Seattle Library System that you have those services because it's not just about people coming to read and to get books.
It's actually seeing the library as a general resource for our community.
And I, by the way, have used the business librarian service, Jay Lyman.
Wonderful.
I've definitely benefited from that and we've partnered with them in the past to get that education out.
(05:56):
And a follow-up question on the logistics.
So all the people who do the driving and delivering of the holds back and forth, that's actually something you do in-house then because I know a lot of organizations would actually outsource that.
But you're saying that's something that they're employees of the Seattle Public Library.
Yeah, absolutely.
It is actually very beneficial to us because it's not just books, it's everything else we need to move.
(06:22):
Again, just think about the number of things that have to move.
That could be furniture, it could be other mail, all of those things in an organization this size spread out throughout the city.
You've got to be able to truck a lot of things around.
So books are big and the biggest part of that, but they do help with a lot of ownership.
So in a lot of workplaces, the workforce has really become remote, but libraries are physical places.
(06:50):
So of your workforce, how many actually get to work remote now post-pandemic versus, no, you have to be at the library because we provide a fiscal space for people.
Yeah, I would say the vast majority have to be on-site.
And that's why I'm in probably 90% of my time.
Really, the only time I take advantage of work from home is if I can just get more done because I'm not traveling.
(07:16):
And so sometimes that's necessary.
But we run, for all intents and purposes, I tell folks, a seven-day-a-week retail operation.
That means we're there to serve the public, people serving people, as I say.
So yes, there's not as many remote jobs at the library.
And the library is also, it's a government agency essentially.
(07:38):
And I think a lot of people understand that, but don't really appreciate that.
How does that factor into the, do employees think of themselves as public servants?
I do believe that most of our team believe themselves as public servants.
As a government agency, we obviously are, we're often told sometimes by the public, you should run like a business.
(08:04):
Well, we're not a business.
Now, doesn't mean we don't look at business analytics and that we don't look at doing things smart and as economically and efficiently as possible, but we're still not a business.
We have different laws that govern us.
We have boards of trustees.
(08:25):
Those are appointed by political representatives, in this case, in this city, the mayor.
So it's a little different than saying you have even a large corporation.
It most certainly runs differently.
And it has to.
You are able to have a library foundation too.
So you're actually able to get some philanthropic dollars aside from just the tax dollars too, right?
(08:47):
Yeah, we're very fortunate in that.
The Seattle Public Library Foundation is the largest public library foundation in the country.
And we benefit greatly from their support.
They give over $5 million a year now to us.
It's usually about a 4% to 5% of our overall budget.
But it really allows us to do some of those creative and innovative programs that we've been known for over time.
(09:13):
We couldn't do it without them.
We don't actually have.
When we look at it from a general sense, they really provide the bulk of our programming funds.
It's a unique thing for me in this city, at least, that that's the case because often your general fund would be paying a good portion of that as well.
But they've supported this library and programming for many, many years.
(09:36):
So that does make it a little different from other government departments because you're able to get that extra funding.
So now I wanna talk about curiosity in the workplace.
And we think of curiosity as a practice.
Sometimes we do it, sometimes we don't do it.
Tom, when is it difficult for you to practice curiosity at work?
(10:00):
Oh, I would say that could be almost any day.
I mean, as you can imagine with this number of facilities, staff, and the tens upon tens of thousands of people in every single day, there's a number of things going on.
There's a number of efforts always afoot that the organization's working on.
And then there are things that get you out of nowhere, like a ransomware that hit us last summer.
(10:26):
Those types of things take you way, way, way off your beaten path and lead you down to some other paths.
And of course, curiosity must be part of what you use at that time because in cases like ransomware, that's not something you deal with every day.
So there's just the volume of all of the different kinds of work.
(10:48):
And then in that case, I remember, how long did it take that case of ransomware?
How long did it take the library to recover from that?
Well, I'm really proud of the work our teams did.
We were able to be functionally back to the public in I would say 98% of all the public functions we had before in about 90 days.
(11:08):
And considering that every single system was affected and every single platform was affected in some way, they did incredible work.
And that's everyone in IT, that's every other department and division within the library because it literally took every single person doing something to make that work.
(11:29):
Many processes had to be manual.
And we think about, well, how's that a big deal?
Well, we had to think creatively.
We hadn't done a lot of that in decades.
So putting everything back to a manual process for something that you had had machines help with, you had had computers help with, everyone had to be on their A game thinking creatively.
(11:53):
So it was actually revisiting the way that libraries used to run and that they could still actually still have that function and purpose, those old ways.
Well, and I think that was the beauty of it.
We were able, day one, even after it happened, we were still able to check out books.
There was no one in the city that couldn't get a book or some type of resource if they came to the physical library.
(12:17):
And that's no small feat in itself, considering we use computers every day to try to get that material out to people.
Yeah, we had to go old school for sure.
We are also in this time of banned books.
And I know that the Seattle Public Library has been a leader in fighting that.
(12:40):
Ashley, could you describe it a bit?
And how do you maintain curiosity amid this fight against banned books?
What we're seeing across the country is probably the largest number of censorship and book bans that we've seen in any time, even in my 42 years.
(13:00):
The American Library Association has been tracking this for some time.
And the last three years have been increasing dramatically every year over year.
And in response to that, we wanted to make sure that we did something other than just talk about it.
And so we, along with Brooklyn Public, were the first to dive into Books Unbanned, which is our attempt to combat censorship and book banning across the country.
(13:28):
We do that by providing youth 13 to 26 access to all our e-books and e-audiobooks, which is a substantial collection.
And every state in the country has access to that as well as the U.S. territories.
And we actually have patrons from every single state and every territory in the United States accessing it.
(13:51):
We have 12,000 subscribed right now.
And that group of folks checked out over 250,000 items just last year.
So Tom, would you say then that even the fact that books are being banned, that is a time when it's really difficult to practice curiosity when it's hard because that view of censoring books is so fundamentally different from what you see as the values and principles of what a public library is supposed to be for?
(14:21):
I would say, yes, from that standpoint, but no from the standpoint in that I'm really curious what drives really, from my standpoint, is it lack of information?
Is it a sole source of information that is just driving in one way, right?
If you're only hearing one story, then, you know, this book is bad and here's what's in it.
(14:44):
And yet that person never read it.
You never read it.
And so no one knows.
And I think to me, that's what I'm always curious about in all these years of censorship and book banning that I've seen is what's driving it.
What really is it?
Is it fear?
Is it the unknown?
That's the thing that keeps me up at night.
(15:04):
Why?
Have you heard any reasons from those who support banning books, who want to censor books, any reasons that have surprised you?
No, I mean, it's generally around, you know, it usually starts with children, usually is very school directed often.
Not that it doesn't come to public libraries as well.
(15:26):
And most of the times it's crafted in the sense that parents don't have a choice.
And so that can be problematic in a school environment.
When we talk about public libraries, we're always very upfront with patrons when they register for a card and we let them know it is parental choice.
(15:46):
You are helping your child decide what information they're going to have access to.
But when we look at it generally, it's going to be the, it's the children that we're focused on in all of these efforts.
And schools, much like public libraries, are not going to put books out in places that are not age specific.
(16:09):
If you come to a public library, you know you have age specific material in children's sections, adult material in adult sections.
And the same is true in elementary school versus middle school versus high school.
Do you think that there's any middle ground or any learning from one another, those who are just pro-banning books versus those who are anti-banning books?
(16:35):
I think, you know, when I think about it, I always think about growing up in a small town and that sense of curiosity.
I saw people that had it and I saw people who didn't.
And I think it's either something that's in us, innate, or we learn it somewhere along the way.
(16:58):
And I think sometimes it's your conditions you live in.
We have a number of things that can affect folks, their spirituality, their upbringing, all of these things affect somebody's point of view on what is appropriate and what's not.
Where we try to weigh in as a public library in that is that what is appropriate for you may not be for somebody else and vice versa, but we want to make sure everybody has choice.
(17:26):
And, you know, we really encourage curiosity.
If for some reason you think something is not true, not valid or is inappropriate, do a little research.
How can we help you actually expand, learn and grow?
Doesn't mean it'll change your opinion.
It may never change your opinion.
It may be something fundamental to your core, but how can we actually give you enough information to know that that's truly the case?
(17:52):
I mean, that's really what we work on every single day.
Thanks, Tom.
So let's actually move it, the conversation to practicing curiosity in your particular workplace with the 700 member team at the Seattle Public Library.
What are some practices that you have to help foster curiosity in this workplace that is so diverse where you have drivers to community engagement to librarians in that?
(18:23):
Yeah, I think, you know, I try to, as I've been talking about, as we laid out our strategic plan for the next 10 years, I really want the library to truly become a learning organization and I mean that from the internal organization part of the equation, meaning that it is OK to fail forward and in that we are going to learn.
(18:50):
It's OK to say we start small and we iterate.
It's also OK to say we are curious about something that we might be able to bring to the table.
Is the community as interested in it?
It's OK to not have every single answer out of the gate and a lot of times in libraries, public libraries anywhere, there is a sense that obviously we're the knowledge keepers.
(19:18):
We're the ones that should always know and so everything must be perfect and information is not perfect.
We know that and we need to, we need to as an organization be flexible and willing to say we don't know, to be curious and to grow and learn as we go.
(19:40):
And that's really what I've been trying to preach, I guess, in the last two years, especially leading up to the strategic plan, but most certainly as we now are moving into the implementation stages, it's really important to know that, yes, we're going to implement some things that are new, may not work, may not work as designed.
It's OK.
We know that doesn't work.
(20:01):
Let's continue to move forward.
Let's find out from our public and our communities, what's working and what's not working in those programs we're trying to implement.
Tom, you talked about making the library into a learning organization where people feel OK to make mistakes and to learn from them.
Can you share an example when you modeled that for your team?
(20:23):
Sure, I think probably the ransomware of last summer was a good example of that.
Again, no one really has experience with that and especially at a full system wide level like we had at the library.
And I think when we were going through the very early stages of everything, you want to, especially as a person that has worked in a number of these areas and libraries, you want to dive in, you know, head first and just start helping, right?
(20:55):
And as the executive, really what you need to do is make sure you stand back, take away other obstacles and keep people moving in the right direction because they're going to come up with the best ideas.
And I think that's when I recognize that I even told the team, I'm like, yeah, I need to I need to step back.
I'm going to be in these sessions for information.
(21:15):
I trust you all to get this done and anything I can do to remove the barriers because I could tell that everybody was, you know, we know what we're doing.
We just we have to have time, you know, and I was trying to push, you know, because I'm like, OK, I'm pushing.
It wasn't mine to push.
(21:35):
I didn't have the details, right?
We know that, but we were in a crisis situation and having a good team that's going to be able to tell you and challenge you to, again, be a little self-aware, think about it a little bit more before you go diving in.
That was that was a good, good example of it as a reminder and especially in a crisis situation, count on your team.
(21:56):
You've got good people, got a lot of great people out in the field, making sure our patrons are getting served every single day.
Did someone tell you, hey, Tom, you got to you got to give some space or how did you realize that?
No, I always try to read the room, right?
I mean, in the sense of, you know, are people participating?
Are they are they quiet?
(22:19):
And you could just tell people were quiet.
They weren't they weren't mad, but they were like they were confused because my normal operation is really I do trust them.
I try to make sure that, you know, they have everything they need to do, the work they need to do.
And I could just tell, yep, people are a little more quiet.
And we have a strong leader already.
We had our incident command.
(22:40):
We had our IT director was then going and making sure all of this was getting done.
So part of it's just realizing, no, I've already got the leadership.
They don't need more.
They they just need me to make sure all the other stuff is out of the way.
Run interference with the mayor's office.
Make sure the council members are understanding what's going on.
The mayor's office understands what's going on.
(23:02):
All of those things is where I needed to be.
But, you know, I thought I could help just in the wrong place.
They never they never said anything.
But sometimes silence says a lot if you take the time to listen, right?
Tom, I love that silence says a lot when you take the time to listen.
It's so true that, especially in an emergency like that ransomware, we need to fix it.
(23:25):
We need to fix it.
We need to fix it.
And sometimes everyone just needs some space to figure out how to fix it.
Yes, and I think that is that was the one thing in all of this was to all of us had to slow down before we could go fast.
And our IT director, I thought was very strong in that by saying, no, we got to create an entire order of operations and make sure that we bring things on at the right time, not just because somebody wants them on it.
(23:54):
And that was it was critical to our success.
It's really what let us get get the bulk of it behind us in 90 days.
Yes.
And the fact that you didn't actually submit to the ransom, because I know there were other places who were just, oh, we just got to pay this ransom to make it go away.
And yet I was really impressed by how the library said we are not paying this ransom.
(24:16):
No.
Now, that doesn't mean it didn't cost a lot of money, but most certainly we did not pay them.
Well, and it sounds like there was a lot of learning that happened while you were doing this, too.
I think that is probably one that I hate to say that, well, I'm a big believer that out of the bad things come great things.
(24:39):
And I think it galvanized what I had as a new senior leadership team.
It galvanized my my management team in a way that some other things hadn't.
And really, it proved to our staff, even though it exhausted them, our teams out in the field, that there was little that we could not do when we all were going in the same direction.
(25:05):
And everyone was because everybody had that dedication to that public service of getting that material and that information back to people as quickly as possible.
And yeah, from that perspective, it was a good thing.
Thank you, Tom.
(25:25):
So, Tom, one of the misconceptions about libraries, as we mentioned earlier, is that they're just librarians.
And actually, you shared that librarians make up the minority of the workforce.
And you also have to have a special degree to become a librarian.
So does that ever create a sense of hierarchy or power dynamics within the library team?
(25:46):
Sure.
I mean, I think that's always the case when you're looking at different qualifications and degrees, those things that are often barriers to folks to get into professions or into a particular field.
I think in our case, if you look at traditionally any public library, librarians have been they generally are the pinnacle of the library.
(26:09):
That doesn't mean that you don't have a hierarchy of librarians.
You could have managing librarians.
You could have directors.
You could have department heads, all of those things.
And often it's going to be a librarian because you're looking for those specialized skills and the number of years in service doing those specialized or utilizing those specialized skills.
(26:32):
For example, a special collections librarian is not the same as a public librarian.
Totally different skill set and obviously a number of years of working in that part of the profession.
So is the library growing right now?
Are you maintaining the workforce or is it actually are you looking for more employees or not?
(26:55):
Because I want to ask you about questions around recruiting.
Yeah, we right now are basically status quo because of the budget.
One of the areas we do want to grow as we look at a potential levy in another couple of years is really growing our programmatic capacity.
And we know we need more people doing that work.
(27:17):
We need more people designing that work with and in community.
And we've got a lot of work to do there.
And we also need to get the funding to do it.
It's not going to come out of general fund dollars.
It'll probably have to go to a vote of the people.
And so that is where it's not just going to the library to check out books.
It's actually these special programs that makes the library even more relevant to the current needs of our community.
(27:43):
Absolutely.
So as you do bring in people, recruit people to work at the library, how do you look for curiosity?
Are there any special interview questions or any processes that you have?
Well, I usually try to get folks to tell me about a time that they learned something that was unexpected in a project they were managing or it could even be a personnel situation that they were managing.
(28:13):
And depending on the type of interview we're doing.
But to me, once somebody can tell you what they learned, then the follow up is, OK, how did you learn it?
And then how did you expand upon that to increase your knowledge?
Because that shows not only the fact that you were curious enough to learn in the first place to take that learning moment.
(28:38):
But you also have the discipline to follow up on it and say, well, I didn't know enough or I knew nothing.
And I need to know more if I'm going to effectively lead people or programs or projects in the future.
So that goes back to trying to make the library into a learning organization where people are constantly reflecting on what they're learning.
Also, I just realized in the library system, every pretty much everyone has to work with other people, right?
(29:06):
You don't have these individual contributors who are just solo workers or is that a vast minority?
You're actually constantly working with at least a few other people in some kind of team setting.
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, I can't think of too many in which you would have an individual contributor.
Most everyone is on some team or has to work with a cross-functional team.
(29:31):
We do a lot of that work, as you can imagine.
One hand has to know what the other hand is doing when you have that many groups of people working.
So yeah, it's pretty rare for someone to be out there on their own.
That's a special quality of the library team too, because I think other workplaces you could have people who just work totally by themselves.
(29:52):
And yeah, at the library, you have to collaborate with one another.
Well, and ultimately, the deliverable is, again, services to people.
And it really, most times, is really people providing that service or that deliverable in person.
And there's really no way around that.
And if you've done that in a vacuum, it's going to be not the best result.
(30:17):
Final question.
What is inspiring curiosity for you in your own life right now?
Well, I have a lot of different types of things I like to do.
But I would say for me, no matter where I go, I love being out in nature, lots of biking, hiking, kayaking, all that kind of stuff.
(30:38):
Went snowshoeing yesterday, actually.
Took some time to do that.
But the one thing I always come back to is photography.
I have a fine arts degree as my undergrad, and photography was my emphasis.
So for me, it is how I can use that lens to explore nature.
(30:59):
It could be to take a photo of a person or an event.
It brings you something sometimes you don't expect.
You can craft it.
You can put it all in the perfect frame.
And at the end of the day, something surprises you out of that photo.
You capture an expression.
You capture something in nature that is not often seen.
(31:24):
That's the things I enjoy.
Even yesterday, just taking a few shots while I was snowshoeing out there as the ice was dripping off the trees and just get some fascinating shots.
Thank you, Tom, for sharing that.
I'm actually imagining being out there with you and seeing the light dappling on the snow.
(31:44):
Tom, thank you so much for sharing your insights today.
Such an honor to get to chat with the Chief Librarian of the Seattle Public Library.
Well, thank you, Julie.
You definitely made me think about all the reasons I might be curious.
So thank you.
Thank you, listeners.
I'm Dr. Julie Pham, founder of CuriosityBased.
We help people practice curiosity in the world, starting in the workplace, because that is where we spend most of our waking hours.
Curiosity as a practice boils down to self-awareness, relationship building, and clear communication.
So join us as we interview leaders to see how they use curiosity at work.
Welcome to the Curiosity at Work podcast.
(00:25):
I'm super excited to get to chat with Tom Fay, who is the executive director and chief librarian at Seattle Public Library.
Welcome Tom.
Thanks for having me on, Julie.
So Tom, I love the library.
This is one of the reasons why I wanted to invite you on.
My library card is actually my passport to the world, and it's really exciting to have such a veteran librarian.
(00:51):
And from what I understand, you have been working in libraries for 42 years, starting as a page, and you were named Nevada's Librarian of the Year.
You joined the Seattle Public Library in 2015, and you were named to chief librarian unanimously in 2022.
Correct.
So can you tell us a bit about the employees, your team, at the Seattle Public Library?
(01:17):
How many people work in this system?
How many branches?
All of that.
Sure.
There's over 700 people, 27 locations that include the Central Library downtown, the iconic building that is well-known all over the world.
And in our staff, obviously we have those who are librarians, who have gone to school for that, have a master's in librarian information science.
(01:45):
And then we have hundreds of other staff doing every kind of function imaginable.
You have all those frontline staff that are going to be in the branches, checking in books, shelving books, providing reference services, and other types of reading advising along the way during the course of the day.
And then, of course, we have folks working in our collections side of the equation, and those folks are the ones that are buying all those books, selecting all those books, making sure they're shelf-ready for the publication date.
(02:17):
And then, as you can imagine, with that many locations spread across the city, we have an entire logistics team that is in our material distribution.
That's truck drivers, that's going to be the folks that are on the big automated material handling system, a system that is basically ingesting all those physical books that come back in and making sure they get routed to the right place and your hold is there when you get ready to read that next book.
(02:45):
And then we have quite a few folks working in our youth and family services side of the house, which is going to be all of those great youth programs from those little ones all the way up through the teen and early adult years.
And then we have our community engagement and economic development folk.
They're out there trying to find others in the community that have yet to know about library services and really trying to engage them, have library staff come to them, have them come to us, and really make sure that we're getting all the way through the community.
(03:17):
And our economic development really works on those most in need and starting, could be small businesses, it could be other efforts that they're looking at as entrepreneurs, and really giving them assistance that would cost hundreds or thousands of dollars for startups that they can get at their library for free.
(03:39):
And then, of course, we have what many libraries have done over the years.
We were one of the first to have social service workers as well.
So we've seen some societal trends that haven't always done the best in homelessness, drug addiction, and also mental health, wellness.
We have folks that are there to help our patrons be successful at the library and to help them find other services they might need to better their condition.
(04:08):
And then for an organization that is that large, we have all the things that you would think of in any business, our human resources, variety of administrative services, and that's usually going to be finance, security, maintenance, capital maintenance.
We always have capital improvement going in that many buildings, IT, marketing, communications.
(04:28):
We have intergovernmental relations as well, community partnerships, and then strategy and performance.
We want to know we're being strategic, we want to be doing all the business analytics you need to make sure we're making continuous improvement.
So when people think about libraries, they just think about the librarians.
You just described all of these different functions and there are 700 people.
(04:50):
What percentage are actually librarians who have a master's in library sciences?
Out of the 710 staff or so, probably about 110, maybe to 120, depending on where we're flexing in the year.
Wow.
So it's actually the minority.
And what about social workers?
(05:11):
You said that that's actually one of the services that the library provides too.
Yeah.
Right now we only have two.
We are looking to expand that a little bit because it really provides our teams more on the ground support along with our patrons.
So that's a small but mighty team working every single day.
(05:31):
That is one of the things that impresses me about the Seattle Library System that you have those services because it's not just about people coming to read and to get books.
It's actually seeing the library as a general resource for our community.
And I, by the way, have used the business librarian service, Jay Lyman.
Wonderful.
I've definitely benefited from that and we've partnered with them in the past to get that education out.
(05:56):
And a follow-up question on the logistics.
So all the people who do the driving and delivering of the holds back and forth, that's actually something you do in-house then because I know a lot of organizations would actually outsource that.
But you're saying that's something that they're employees of the Seattle Public Library.
Yeah, absolutely.
It is actually very beneficial to us because it's not just books, it's everything else we need to move.
(06:22):
Again, just think about the number of things that have to move.
That could be furniture, it could be other mail, all of those things in an organization this size spread out throughout the city.
You've got to be able to truck a lot of things around.
So books are big and the biggest part of that, but they do help with a lot of ownership.
So in a lot of workplaces, the workforce has really become remote, but libraries are physical places.
(06:50):
So of your workforce, how many actually get to work remote now post-pandemic versus, no, you have to be at the library because we provide a fiscal space for people.
Yeah, I would say the vast majority have to be on-site.
And that's why I'm in probably 90% of my time.
Really, the only time I take advantage of work from home is if I can just get more done because I'm not traveling.
(07:16):
And so sometimes that's necessary.
But we run, for all intents and purposes, I tell folks, a seven-day-a-week retail operation.
That means we're there to serve the public, people serving people, as I say.
So yes, there's not as many remote jobs at the library.
And the library is also, it's a government agency essentially.
(07:38):
And I think a lot of people understand that, but don't really appreciate that.
How does that factor into the, do employees think of themselves as public servants?
I do believe that most of our team believe themselves as public servants.
As a government agency, we obviously are, we're often told sometimes by the public, you should run like a business.
(08:04):
Well, we're not a business.
Now, doesn't mean we don't look at business analytics and that we don't look at doing things smart and as economically and efficiently as possible, but we're still not a business.
We have different laws that govern us.
We have boards of trustees.
(08:25):
Those are appointed by political representatives, in this case, in this city, the mayor.
So it's a little different than saying you have even a large corporation.
It most certainly runs differently.
And it has to.
You are able to have a library foundation too.
So you're actually able to get some philanthropic dollars aside from just the tax dollars too, right?
(08:47):
Yeah, we're very fortunate in that.
The Seattle Public Library Foundation is the largest public library foundation in the country.
And we benefit greatly from their support.
They give over $5 million a year now to us.
It's usually about a 4% to 5% of our overall budget.
But it really allows us to do some of those creative and innovative programs that we've been known for over time.
(09:13):
We couldn't do it without them.
We don't actually have.
When we look at it from a general sense, they really provide the bulk of our programming funds.
It's a unique thing for me in this city, at least, that that's the case because often your general fund would be paying a good portion of that as well.
But they've supported this library and programming for many, many years.
(09:36):
So that does make it a little different from other government departments because you're able to get that extra funding.
So now I wanna talk about curiosity in the workplace.
And we think of curiosity as a practice.
Sometimes we do it, sometimes we don't do it.
Tom, when is it difficult for you to practice curiosity at work?
(10:00):
Oh, I would say that could be almost any day.
I mean, as you can imagine with this number of facilities, staff, and the tens upon tens of thousands of people in every single day, there's a number of things going on.
There's a number of efforts always afoot that the organization's working on.
And then there are things that get you out of nowhere, like a ransomware that hit us last summer.
(10:26):
Those types of things take you way, way, way off your beaten path and lead you down to some other paths.
And of course, curiosity must be part of what you use at that time because in cases like ransomware, that's not something you deal with every day.
So there's just the volume of all of the different kinds of work.
(10:48):
And then in that case, I remember, how long did it take that case of ransomware?
How long did it take the library to recover from that?
Well, I'm really proud of the work our teams did.
We were able to be functionally back to the public in I would say 98% of all the public functions we had before in about 90 days.
(11:08):
And considering that every single system was affected and every single platform was affected in some way, they did incredible work.
And that's everyone in IT, that's every other department and division within the library because it literally took every single person doing something to make that work.
(11:29):
Many processes had to be manual.
And we think about, well, how's that a big deal?
Well, we had to think creatively.
We hadn't done a lot of that in decades.
So putting everything back to a manual process for something that you had had machines help with, you had had computers help with, everyone had to be on their A game thinking creatively.
(11:53):
So it was actually revisiting the way that libraries used to run and that they could still actually still have that function and purpose, those old ways.
Well, and I think that was the beauty of it.
We were able, day one, even after it happened, we were still able to check out books.
There was no one in the city that couldn't get a book or some type of resource if they came to the physical library.
(12:17):
And that's no small feat in itself, considering we use computers every day to try to get that material out to people.
Yeah, we had to go old school for sure.
We are also in this time of banned books.
And I know that the Seattle Public Library has been a leader in fighting that.
(12:40):
Ashley, could you describe it a bit?
And how do you maintain curiosity amid this fight against banned books?
What we're seeing across the country is probably the largest number of censorship and book bans that we've seen in any time, even in my 42 years.
(13:00):
The American Library Association has been tracking this for some time.
And the last three years have been increasing dramatically every year over year.
And in response to that, we wanted to make sure that we did something other than just talk about it.
And so we, along with Brooklyn Public, were the first to dive into Books Unbanned, which is our attempt to combat censorship and book banning across the country.
(13:28):
We do that by providing youth 13 to 26 access to all our e-books and e-audiobooks, which is a substantial collection.
And every state in the country has access to that as well as the U.S. territories.
And we actually have patrons from every single state and every territory in the United States accessing it.
(13:51):
We have 12,000 subscribed right now.
And that group of folks checked out over 250,000 items just last year.
So Tom, would you say then that even the fact that books are being banned, that is a time when it's really difficult to practice curiosity when it's hard because that view of censoring books is so fundamentally different from what you see as the values and principles of what a public library is supposed to be for?
(14:21):
I would say, yes, from that standpoint, but no from the standpoint in that I'm really curious what drives really, from my standpoint, is it lack of information?
Is it a sole source of information that is just driving in one way, right?
If you're only hearing one story, then, you know, this book is bad and here's what's in it.
(14:44):
And yet that person never read it.
You never read it.
And so no one knows.
And I think to me, that's what I'm always curious about in all these years of censorship and book banning that I've seen is what's driving it.
What really is it?
Is it fear?
Is it the unknown?
That's the thing that keeps me up at night.
(15:04):
Why?
Have you heard any reasons from those who support banning books, who want to censor books, any reasons that have surprised you?
No, I mean, it's generally around, you know, it usually starts with children, usually is very school directed often.
Not that it doesn't come to public libraries as well.
(15:26):
And most of the times it's crafted in the sense that parents don't have a choice.
And so that can be problematic in a school environment.
When we talk about public libraries, we're always very upfront with patrons when they register for a card and we let them know it is parental choice.
(15:46):
You are helping your child decide what information they're going to have access to.
But when we look at it generally, it's going to be the, it's the children that we're focused on in all of these efforts.
And schools, much like public libraries, are not going to put books out in places that are not age specific.
(16:09):
If you come to a public library, you know you have age specific material in children's sections, adult material in adult sections.
And the same is true in elementary school versus middle school versus high school.
Do you think that there's any middle ground or any learning from one another, those who are just pro-banning books versus those who are anti-banning books?
(16:35):
I think, you know, when I think about it, I always think about growing up in a small town and that sense of curiosity.
I saw people that had it and I saw people who didn't.
And I think it's either something that's in us, innate, or we learn it somewhere along the way.
(16:58):
And I think sometimes it's your conditions you live in.
We have a number of things that can affect folks, their spirituality, their upbringing, all of these things affect somebody's point of view on what is appropriate and what's not.
Where we try to weigh in as a public library in that is that what is appropriate for you may not be for somebody else and vice versa, but we want to make sure everybody has choice.
(17:26):
And, you know, we really encourage curiosity.
If for some reason you think something is not true, not valid or is inappropriate, do a little research.
How can we help you actually expand, learn and grow?
Doesn't mean it'll change your opinion.
It may never change your opinion.
It may be something fundamental to your core, but how can we actually give you enough information to know that that's truly the case?
(17:52):
I mean, that's really what we work on every single day.
Thanks, Tom.
So let's actually move it, the conversation to practicing curiosity in your particular workplace with the 700 member team at the Seattle Public Library.
What are some practices that you have to help foster curiosity in this workplace that is so diverse where you have drivers to community engagement to librarians in that?
(18:23):
Yeah, I think, you know, I try to, as I've been talking about, as we laid out our strategic plan for the next 10 years, I really want the library to truly become a learning organization and I mean that from the internal organization part of the equation, meaning that it is OK to fail forward and in that we are going to learn.
(18:50):
It's OK to say we start small and we iterate.
It's also OK to say we are curious about something that we might be able to bring to the table.
Is the community as interested in it?
It's OK to not have every single answer out of the gate and a lot of times in libraries, public libraries anywhere, there is a sense that obviously we're the knowledge keepers.
(19:18):
We're the ones that should always know and so everything must be perfect and information is not perfect.
We know that and we need to, we need to as an organization be flexible and willing to say we don't know, to be curious and to grow and learn as we go.
(19:40):
And that's really what I've been trying to preach, I guess, in the last two years, especially leading up to the strategic plan, but most certainly as we now are moving into the implementation stages, it's really important to know that, yes, we're going to implement some things that are new, may not work, may not work as designed.
It's OK.
We know that doesn't work.
(20:01):
Let's continue to move forward.
Let's find out from our public and our communities, what's working and what's not working in those programs we're trying to implement.
Tom, you talked about making the library into a learning organization where people feel OK to make mistakes and to learn from them.
Can you share an example when you modeled that for your team?
(20:23):
Sure, I think probably the ransomware of last summer was a good example of that.
Again, no one really has experience with that and especially at a full system wide level like we had at the library.
And I think when we were going through the very early stages of everything, you want to, especially as a person that has worked in a number of these areas and libraries, you want to dive in, you know, head first and just start helping, right?
(20:55):
And as the executive, really what you need to do is make sure you stand back, take away other obstacles and keep people moving in the right direction because they're going to come up with the best ideas.
And I think that's when I recognize that I even told the team, I'm like, yeah, I need to I need to step back.
I'm going to be in these sessions for information.
(21:15):
I trust you all to get this done and anything I can do to remove the barriers because I could tell that everybody was, you know, we know what we're doing.
We just we have to have time, you know, and I was trying to push, you know, because I'm like, OK, I'm pushing.
It wasn't mine to push.
(21:35):
I didn't have the details, right?
We know that, but we were in a crisis situation and having a good team that's going to be able to tell you and challenge you to, again, be a little self-aware, think about it a little bit more before you go diving in.
That was that was a good, good example of it as a reminder and especially in a crisis situation, count on your team.
(21:56):
You've got good people, got a lot of great people out in the field, making sure our patrons are getting served every single day.
Did someone tell you, hey, Tom, you got to you got to give some space or how did you realize that?
No, I always try to read the room, right?
I mean, in the sense of, you know, are people participating?
Are they are they quiet?
(22:19):
And you could just tell people were quiet.
They weren't they weren't mad, but they were like they were confused because my normal operation is really I do trust them.
I try to make sure that, you know, they have everything they need to do, the work they need to do.
And I could just tell, yep, people are a little more quiet.
And we have a strong leader already.
We had our incident command.
(22:40):
We had our IT director was then going and making sure all of this was getting done.
So part of it's just realizing, no, I've already got the leadership.
They don't need more.
They they just need me to make sure all the other stuff is out of the way.
Run interference with the mayor's office.
Make sure the council members are understanding what's going on.
The mayor's office understands what's going on.
(23:02):
All of those things is where I needed to be.
But, you know, I thought I could help just in the wrong place.
They never they never said anything.
But sometimes silence says a lot if you take the time to listen, right?
Tom, I love that silence says a lot when you take the time to listen.
It's so true that, especially in an emergency like that ransomware, we need to fix it.
(23:25):
We need to fix it.
We need to fix it.
And sometimes everyone just needs some space to figure out how to fix it.
Yes, and I think that is that was the one thing in all of this was to all of us had to slow down before we could go fast.
And our IT director, I thought was very strong in that by saying, no, we got to create an entire order of operations and make sure that we bring things on at the right time, not just because somebody wants them on it.
(23:54):
And that was it was critical to our success.
It's really what let us get get the bulk of it behind us in 90 days.
Yes.
And the fact that you didn't actually submit to the ransom, because I know there were other places who were just, oh, we just got to pay this ransom to make it go away.
And yet I was really impressed by how the library said we are not paying this ransom.
(24:16):
No.
Now, that doesn't mean it didn't cost a lot of money, but most certainly we did not pay them.
Well, and it sounds like there was a lot of learning that happened while you were doing this, too.
I think that is probably one that I hate to say that, well, I'm a big believer that out of the bad things come great things.
(24:39):
And I think it galvanized what I had as a new senior leadership team.
It galvanized my my management team in a way that some other things hadn't.
And really, it proved to our staff, even though it exhausted them, our teams out in the field, that there was little that we could not do when we all were going in the same direction.
(25:05):
And everyone was because everybody had that dedication to that public service of getting that material and that information back to people as quickly as possible.
And yeah, from that perspective, it was a good thing.
Thank you, Tom.
(25:25):
So, Tom, one of the misconceptions about libraries, as we mentioned earlier, is that they're just librarians.
And actually, you shared that librarians make up the minority of the workforce.
And you also have to have a special degree to become a librarian.
So does that ever create a sense of hierarchy or power dynamics within the library team?
(25:46):
Sure.
I mean, I think that's always the case when you're looking at different qualifications and degrees, those things that are often barriers to folks to get into professions or into a particular field.
I think in our case, if you look at traditionally any public library, librarians have been they generally are the pinnacle of the library.
(26:09):
That doesn't mean that you don't have a hierarchy of librarians.
You could have managing librarians.
You could have directors.
You could have department heads, all of those things.
And often it's going to be a librarian because you're looking for those specialized skills and the number of years in service doing those specialized or utilizing those specialized skills.
(26:32):
For example, a special collections librarian is not the same as a public librarian.
Totally different skill set and obviously a number of years of working in that part of the profession.
So is the library growing right now?
Are you maintaining the workforce or is it actually are you looking for more employees or not?
(26:55):
Because I want to ask you about questions around recruiting.
Yeah, we right now are basically status quo because of the budget.
One of the areas we do want to grow as we look at a potential levy in another couple of years is really growing our programmatic capacity.
And we know we need more people doing that work.
(27:17):
We need more people designing that work with and in community.
And we've got a lot of work to do there.
And we also need to get the funding to do it.
It's not going to come out of general fund dollars.
It'll probably have to go to a vote of the people.
And so that is where it's not just going to the library to check out books.
It's actually these special programs that makes the library even more relevant to the current needs of our community.
(27:43):
Absolutely.
So as you do bring in people, recruit people to work at the library, how do you look for curiosity?
Are there any special interview questions or any processes that you have?
Well, I usually try to get folks to tell me about a time that they learned something that was unexpected in a project they were managing or it could even be a personnel situation that they were managing.
(28:13):
And depending on the type of interview we're doing.
But to me, once somebody can tell you what they learned, then the follow up is, OK, how did you learn it?
And then how did you expand upon that to increase your knowledge?
Because that shows not only the fact that you were curious enough to learn in the first place to take that learning moment.
(28:38):
But you also have the discipline to follow up on it and say, well, I didn't know enough or I knew nothing.
And I need to know more if I'm going to effectively lead people or programs or projects in the future.
So that goes back to trying to make the library into a learning organization where people are constantly reflecting on what they're learning.
Also, I just realized in the library system, every pretty much everyone has to work with other people, right?
(29:06):
You don't have these individual contributors who are just solo workers or is that a vast minority?
You're actually constantly working with at least a few other people in some kind of team setting.
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, I can't think of too many in which you would have an individual contributor.
Most everyone is on some team or has to work with a cross-functional team.
(29:31):
We do a lot of that work, as you can imagine.
One hand has to know what the other hand is doing when you have that many groups of people working.
So yeah, it's pretty rare for someone to be out there on their own.
That's a special quality of the library team too, because I think other workplaces you could have people who just work totally by themselves.
(29:52):
And yeah, at the library, you have to collaborate with one another.
Well, and ultimately, the deliverable is, again, services to people.
And it really, most times, is really people providing that service or that deliverable in person.
And there's really no way around that.
And if you've done that in a vacuum, it's going to be not the best result.
(30:17):
Final question.
What is inspiring curiosity for you in your own life right now?
Well, I have a lot of different types of things I like to do.
But I would say for me, no matter where I go, I love being out in nature, lots of biking, hiking, kayaking, all that kind of stuff.
(30:38):
Went snowshoeing yesterday, actually.
Took some time to do that.
But the one thing I always come back to is photography.
I have a fine arts degree as my undergrad, and photography was my emphasis.
So for me, it is how I can use that lens to explore nature.
(30:59):
It could be to take a photo of a person or an event.
It brings you something sometimes you don't expect.
You can craft it.
You can put it all in the perfect frame.
And at the end of the day, something surprises you out of that photo.
You capture an expression.
You capture something in nature that is not often seen.
(31:24):
That's the things I enjoy.
Even yesterday, just taking a few shots while I was snowshoeing out there as the ice was dripping off the trees and just get some fascinating shots.
Thank you, Tom, for sharing that.
I'm actually imagining being out there with you and seeing the light dappling on the snow.
(31:44):
Tom, thank you so much for sharing your insights today.
Such an honor to get to chat with the Chief Librarian of the Seattle Public Library.
Well, thank you, Julie.
You definitely made me think about all the reasons I might be curious.
So thank you.
Thank you, listeners.
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