18 - Why A Good Library Should Have Something to Offend Everyone with John Chrastka - Revelizations

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:09):
This episode of Revelizations is brought to you by Professor Slappy Sticks' Laugh Tracks.
Are you a true artist, and like all true artists, not appreciated in your time?
Do you consider yourself edgy and not afraid to ruffle a few feathers in the pursuit of

(00:30):
truth and humor?
Are you tired of always having to explain why your jokes are funny to an audience that
is just too stupid to appreciate them?
Sure, you could work on your comedic craft and realize that it isn't everyone else who
is the problem, or you could be the lion that you say you are, and lions don't concern
themselves with the opinions of sheep.

(00:52):
Lions shell out three easy payments of $19.95 to purchase Professor Slappy Sticks'
Laugh Tracks.
Now, you can fill the once void of laughter at the end of all your punchlines with gut-busting
laughter that affirm you indeed are the man.
Make sure every joke that once would fall flat was mistimed or just plain not funny

(01:16):
never goes without the boisterous laughter that you think it deserves again.
Professor Slappy Sticks' Laugh Tracks.
Replace the deafening silence with deafening laughter.

(01:45):
Hi everyone, welcome to Revelizations.
I'm your host, Brian James.
Today's episode is a perfect example of what I wanted to pursue and create the podcast
that I have.
There is so much knowledge in the world, so much information to fascinate and to capture
one's attention.
With so many things drawing your focus, it's easy for other things, important things, to

(02:06):
go unnoticed.
Today I would like to bring your attention back to something that has gone underappreciated,
at least by me.
Today's topic is about something that I have lived alongside of and taken advantage of
its services many times.
Admittedly, with less and less frequency as I've gotten older.
No, not the gym, although that too.

(02:28):
Today's topic is about libraries, specifically public libraries.
When I was searching for guests and topics, I'll admit that I had to do a double take
when I found libraries.
I thought, and not in a callous way, why should I care about libraries?
Haven't libraries become antiquated since the advent of the internet and even more so

(02:52):
by smartphones?
What purpose does a library still serve in a post-internet world?
To which you may be thinking, Brian, that is a stupid stance on libraries.
What does the internet have to do with being able to access literature and a communal space?
And I would agree with you, even though you don't have to say it so harshly.

(03:13):
But even that is a reductionist view of the purpose and what services the library offers
in today's age.
Thankfully, John Chrastka is here to enlighten us on the importance of libraries in the modern
world and why they are still an important cornerstone in society.
John Chrastka is a co-founder and executive director of EveryLibrary.

(03:34):
His organization helps public libraries, school libraries, and college libraries, when funding
at the ballot box, ensure stable funding and access to libraries for generations to come.
EveryLibrary also supports grassroots groups across the country, defendants support their
local library against book banning, illicit political interference, and threats of closure.

(03:56):
Since 2012, EveryLibrary has provided pro-bono support to 144 library communities with ballot
measures and tax referendums, helping win more than $2.8 billion in stable tax funding.
He is also a co-founder and executive director of a public policy and tax policy think tank
for libraries called EveryLibrary Institute.

(04:20):
John is a former board president of the Berwyn Public Library along with the Reaching Across
Illinois Library system.
Prior to EveryLibrary, he was a partner in Associadirect, which is an association consultancy
He was director for membership development at American Library Association and a co-founder
of the education tech startup, ClassMap.

(04:42):
He was recognized by the Chicago Tribune in 2022 as a Chicagoan of the Year for his work
opposing book bans, a Publishers Weekly notable person for 2024, and although I'm listing
this last title out of chronological order, I think it's its most fun title.
In 2014, he was listed as a mover and shaker by the Library Journal.

(05:05):
Join me today as I sit down with John Chrastka as we discuss the role of libraries in modernity,
how libraries secure funding, why a good library should have something to offend everybody,
book bans and censorship, libraries as a refuge, the interconnection of the First Amendment
and libraries, and more.
Thanks for listening everyone.

(05:28):
John, it's great to meet you.
I'm so happy to be sitting here and I've been looking forward to this conversation for a
while.
So thank you for taking the time to talk with me.
Brian, you and me both, it's nice to be able to hang out a little bit and to talk about
libraries, one of my favorite subjects.
Great.
That segues right into a really hard hitting question right off the bat, but what got you

(05:48):
interested in libraries in this line of work?
So way back in the day, I started off in publishing by accident.
I was a theater major in college and I needed a job so I went to go work at a bookstore.
And having a chance to work at the bookstore for a little while put me in touch with the
publishing industry, which put me in touch with the education space, which put me in
touch with the library space.

(06:09):
I'm not a librarian myself by trade, I don't work in libraries, I'm not qualified to be
a librarian, I would be a terrible librarian.
Seriously, it takes a skill set, it takes kind of empathy, it takes kind of compassion
for people, which I'm not really that kind of guy.
I'm a systems person, which is why working on library politics and library funding and
the structure of government issues around libraries is so interesting to me.

(06:32):
Because I think that we need that kind of infrastructure.
We need the built environment, you got to have some place to go.
You need the staff who knows what they're doing, you need a collection that's going
to support the community or if you're in K-12, the curriculum, or higher ed research and
scholarship and all that kind of good stuff.
The infrastructure's work, the systems work is really what attracted me to this.

(06:55):
And these are nice people that I get to help make sure that they're paid to do a good job.
So for me, it really came out of, yeah, I mean, you read, you know, I'm not a huge reader,
I like to read, it's fine, but that's not why I'm into this.
My wife's a huge reader, she's got the pile of books upstairs on the bedside, it's going
to fall over and kill us one more time.

(07:16):
For me, it's making sure that there's something in place to help out other folks, to help
out, you know, I mean, communities, schools, campuses, that infrastructure thing is really
what brought me to it all.
Wow, that's not the answer I was expecting.
That's really interesting.
I thought you're going to be an avid reader, like your wife.

(07:37):
I read a lot, but that's not what did it.
I mean, I got a pile of books over here that's going to fall over and kill us, you know,
sometimes too.
So you and your wife, both are.
But I'd be lying to you if it was like my own self-interest about my own reading habits.
It's more like, what do you need?
You know, what does a kid down the street need?

(07:58):
What's the community in general need in terms of betterment?
That's what really grabs me.
What fascinates me is that there, we don't live in a perfect world, obviously, and there
are so many causes to throw all your weight behind.
And so like what leads people to certain causes?
You know, a lot of people, if they're in like a cancer, like they had a family member who

(08:21):
had to deal with that cancer.
So now like they're huge proponents for organizations that help people that are dealing with that.
And so the interest with libraries is like, that's so interesting, because when I think
about the library, I definitely take it for granted.
It's a system of building a luxury that we kind of just it's there.

(08:42):
And so you always think it's going to be there.
And clearly, that's not the case.
Well, you know, there's two different ways to go with this.
One is there's a lot of different reasons to be involved in something like I'm a member
of Greenpeace.
Okay.
I'm an NPR member, I donate to different causes and candidates that I care about.
The Greenpeace one's a great example.

(09:03):
Like I send them $15 a month because I like what they do.
I'm never going to get into a boat, Ryan.
I'm never going to get into a boat.
I'm not going to go on the North Atlantic.
You know, like that's not my thing.
You know, like, let me let me help them as an organization do the thing that I believe
in that I'm not capable of doing.

(09:24):
It's one of the things that every library is structured to do for libraries.
You know, we're set up in a way that's like, I'll be a proxy for your compassion.
I'll be a proxy for your concern.
The other thing, though, in terms of the, like, everybody loves libraries, nobody wants
to pay for them.
You know, and it's true.
The weirdest part about this whole gig is trying to have a conversation about what does

(09:46):
it actually cost to do something that's as important as having a thousand books available
for every family for every kid before kindergarten, and every individual family couldn't afford
that.
But how do we do it collectively?
How do we do it cooperatively?
How do we do it in a civil society space?
And then being like, okay, what does it really cost to do that?
Because you drive by, maybe you haven't been to the library since you were a kid.

(10:10):
Maybe you're not a big reader yourself.
Maybe you got a great library at home and you don't really use the place.
But seeing it on the street corner does let people, you know, take it for granted.
Yeah, you think it's going to be there.
Yeah, my dad actually goes to a library like two or three times a week.
He's insatiable when it comes to reading.
So what is like the purpose of a library in modern times now?

(10:35):
The way that libraries work depends on whether or not it is the only thing going on in town
or if it's a thing that complements other organizations and nonprofits and other parts
of government.
If it's the only thing going on in town, and it can be, I mean, some of these libraries
are in places that are fairly small.
I live in suburban Chicago.

(10:55):
It's 50,000 people live here in my hometown.
It's not the only thing going on, but you go out 100 miles west or 150 miles south,
you have places where the library provides first line engagement on literacy, on learning
how to read so you can read to learn, on helping folks find their first, next, or best job.

(11:20):
It's the thing that's going on on Thursday nights that's kind of fun because there's
like a book club or there's like a reading or a performance space that, you know, if
the library is the core, you know, for that community, it provides a tremendous amount
of stuff that looks the same as it did 50 years ago.
It'll look the same again in 50 years because where's that community anchor institution?

(11:41):
What does it deliver?
It delivers a lot of everything.
It hits all ages and stages.
And aside from having, I mean, heck, you could even have like a book club for your little
league team, you know, but you could have a garden there that's part of the green space
in town.
It's got everything.
If it's a complimentary institution in a place where there's other stuff going on, then it

(12:03):
might provide a subset of all those different elements.
In some places, it's access to just reading for fun.
In some places, it's the only thing going on really that's a level playing field for
pre-K and summertime reading for kids.
In some places, it's a social service organization.

(12:26):
It has reading attached to it, but it's also that other empathetic civil society stuff
that we need to do as Americans.
So it depends on where you are, but the form and the function of it is library in either
of those kinds of contexts.
So is there a lot of leeway for libraries to operate as a unit itself, or is there some

(12:50):
sort of like structural organization that says you need to offer these services once
you hit this amount, like once you're serving this amount of population, these are services
you need to provide to the public as well?
That's a great question, and the answer is that there's a lot of leeway, there's a lot
of latitude, and it's driven by the volunteer or the elected leadership of those libraries.

(13:15):
Public libraries in the United States either have volunteer leaders, you know, somebody
says I want to be on the board, they put their hand up, or they say I want to run for office
or stand for office, and they get elected to be on the board of that library.
It's part of our government.
Then you have competent and capable staff.
They've got good ideas about what to do for the community.

(13:37):
They're well trained.
Some folks have got master's degrees, some folks have got other degrees as well.
And then you've got the listening to the community.
What do folks really need?
What do they really want?
In some places, I mean, there's this beautiful way that libraries collect material that
I think is exemplary, and it's patron-centered.
Yeah, of course, there's new books coming out, you get the catalogs, you read the reviews

(14:02):
as they're coming out, but then you listen to what people want, and you collect based
on what people ask for.
Same thing with programs, same thing with services.
But yeah, the combination of the elected or the appointed leadership of the library from
the citizens, the competent and capable staff who are there doing their job professionally,

(14:23):
and a community that wants to participate in its own future, you cross the street in
some parts of the world, you go from one library to another, and they're very different places
because that's the neighborhood that that library works in.
You go 15 miles down the road in a more rural place, the towns are different.
So the library is going to be a little bit more responsibly different too.

(14:47):
A library wants to be a provider of information that people want.
Is there a responsibility to provide information on multiple sides of an argument or something
like that to where it's just more rounded, or is it more like this is the neighborhood
we're in, this is the type of information that people want, so let's just make sure

(15:08):
that we're serving our population well?
There's two ways to look at the collection.
One is an old adage, it's on a lot of t-shirts, it's on a lot of tote bags in the library
world that says a good library should have something to offend everybody.
I don't disagree with that.
The fact that you want to read something from the left of politics and I want to read something

(15:29):
from the right of politics, the library doesn't decide whose politics is better, whose politics
is more valid.
I want to read something about the history of my religion.
You have a history of your religion, great.
This isn't the Middle Ages in Europe.
The state doesn't decide.
The state doesn't decide, and the library is part of the state, it's part of government.

(15:53):
The other way to look at it, besides something in the library to offend everybody else, is
that there should be the variety in the library because the neighborhood has a variety of
people in it from a variety of different perspectives and a variety of different backgrounds.
There's a lot of various people out there.
If the library is to be a legitimate community institution, it's to have that variety of

(16:15):
collections because otherwise you can't be neighborly.
Fundamentally, what the library is intended to do in a civil society space is to be neighborly.
The laws of the land say that we shouldn't be discriminating.
The Civil Rights Act says we shouldn't be discriminating.
The First Amendment says we shouldn't have government-imposing viewpoints.

(16:36):
But when you get right down to it, how do we want to treat each other as neighbors?
That is partially reflected in the collection that we've got at the library.
I would think that a sports department or a parks department, an economic development
department all have similar kinds of approaches for how they want to, I mean, you want a really
interesting main street, you want a whole bunch of different kinds of businesses.

(17:03):
Everybody to their own.
Well, actually, we have some pets in the house, but they're not mine.
They're really my wife and my kids.
There's five pet stores in my town.
I'd also love to have something for cooking, which is my hobby.
I've got to go to the next town over to get a decent cookware, houseware.
You go for variety.

(17:24):
People want to play soccer now more than they want to play baseball.
Well, I'm sure that there's baseball people who are kind of bemoaning the fact that the
great American pastime.
But, you know, let's go for how about lacrosse?
Like all of this is just reflective.
Like this is a normal kind of discourse.
What do you all want to do for fun?
What do we need in order to succeed?
I really like that tote bag quote, like there should be something in there that's going

(17:48):
to offend someone because you want you don't want to be homogenous in your way of thinking.
You want to be like mixed up.
You want different different inputs from from different people from different worldviews
because otherwise like you don't know what you don't know.
And someone can say something that can be like, wow, I just I never even considered

(18:09):
that point of view.
And yeah, if you're just completely I guess we can take it to social media where they
just try and completely cater to your own interest to keep you as invested as possible.
And we kind of see what's happening with the world is a little bit more divisive than we
would like.

(18:29):
But yeah, a place where you can count on having different views, a place where, yeah, you
can go explore the catalog of what they have.
Just walk down an aisle of something that you might have a very strong opinion about
and someone might have an opposite opinion.
And then, you know, ideally somewhere in the middle, you find balance.

(18:50):
It's not it's not easy to live in society.
Well, I mean, it's hard.
I mean, my immediate neighbors are lovely people.
I'm lucky I live in a great block.
My town is not a bad town.
You know, it's pretty diverse racially and economically.
You know, it's a lot different than it was when I was growing up here.
And I appreciate that very much.
And yet we fight with each other, not my main immediate neighbors.

(19:11):
They're great.
But as a town, we fight with each other.
We had an election.
Who's going to run the place?
That that's that could be a dialogue or it could be a brawl.
The same thing goes on in the stacks of the library.
You know, can we have a conversation with each other?
And you are a conversationalist, Brian.
You know, you have an overdeveloped sense of conversation considering that you're

(19:33):
hosting a podcast.
You know, a lot of people are not in their comfort zone talking with each other.
So having the library as a place where you can stumble over your neighbor, you know,
you can bump into them.
You can have that kind of discussion, I think, is a civic good.
And the librarian won't shush him, though, like he had that conversation.
Not anymore. This isn't a 60s thing, you know.

(19:56):
We've gone past that.
We've adapted past that.
It's time to modernize.
I mean, the the the the image of of any profession in the media, you know,
if you're going to ask a doctor, is it really like it is on on Grey's Anatomy
or that new one with the guy from ER whose name escapes me?
You know, like you ask any lawyer, is it really like is it really like law and order?

(20:19):
They're like, not a chance, you know?
And so those images in the media are self-perpetuating because they're easy.
We haven't had librarians like that in generations.
I'm just a victim, a victim of the Hollywoodification.
Well, you just just wait until it's 10 or 15 years from now.
And the podcaster has has its media image and you can't shake it.

(20:43):
Well, I'll probably be part of the problem then.
I'll be the relic at that point.
So, yeah, you mentioned it can be too much power for a certain group of people
to decide what books belong in the library and what books don't belong in the library.
And that brings up I haven't really heard it too much in the mainstream media

(21:07):
recently about book bands, but there was a few years ago where we're both sides,
both sides of the aisle.
I guess actually, yeah, Republicans are a little bit more about banning LGBTQ stuff to
I don't know if it's just relegated to certain populations.
And then the example I have is a few years ago of the Democrats banning a Dr.

(21:28):
Seuss book. And, you know, the media just makes everything like they blow up.
Everything's ridiculous.
And you don't really get to hear the nuance of the ideas behind it, which is dangerous
because you need to hear the ideas behind the books.
Like, why are these books so poisonous to culture that people should not be have access

(21:49):
to them, read them?
And it's almost like you don't even know human nature because as soon as you say,
don't do something like, OK, well, why?
Like, why is this thing bad?
Why is this so bad to to learn about a different lifestyle or to learn about someone who had
his views and has since repented for the ways Dr.

(22:11):
Seuss I'm talking about, who had certain views that were not very friendly to certain
demographics, but who has learned from that?
Why not see, hey, he thought like this.
He was exposed to new information.
He no longer thinks like that.
And he is apologetic of that.
Why not show the natural growth of humanity?
Why take the risk to ban certain material that can help people grow?

(22:34):
And so with all that long winded exposition, what what is your opinion about book bans
and how do we protect to make sure no one really has that power to ban a certain type
of freedom of speech?
Sure. So the book ban book challenge situation is still going on in 2025 in very

(22:55):
significant ways all over the country.
There are hundreds of book bans and challenges that are happening and we're on the ground
here at every library with with a lot of them.
We run a website called Fight for the First dot org.
Fight for the First is kind of like a change for libraries.

(23:17):
If there's a problem with a book ban fight happening in your community, you can come on that site.
We will stand up a call to action and the call to action might be return the books to
the shelf. The call to action might be keep the books on the shelf.
You know, those are very different kinds of campaigns depending on what's going on.
It is agnostic about whether it's coming from the right or from the left because unconstitutional

(23:41):
censorship is unconstitutional.
The idea that the government is imposing its views or the government is taking one side
or the other is exactly what makes it unconstitutional.
There is one of the reasons that the book ban fight has been so weaponized, though,
is what you brought up before about how books are targeting particular or how book bans

(24:04):
are targeting particular populations through through a challenge, because in the First
Amendment, under the Constitution, you can and should remove material that's criminal.
And that's obscenity. It's incitement to violence.
There's a few other categories around materials that are considered obscene or illegal.

(24:27):
And those don't have a place in a public library because they're criminal when you get right
down to it.
Now, the definitions are not what I'm looking to get into in grave detail.
But obscenity is a significant issue.
And what some of these book banners are doing right now is that they're going after books
that are not obscene, but they're saying that the people who are represented in the books

(24:48):
are obscene.
OK.
So if you're if you're looking for a way to have a wedge between neighbors, a wedge between
neighbors around LGBTQ, a wedge between neighbors around the history of race and racial issues
in this country.
I mean, if you're looking to wedge people and if you're looking to make a political

(25:09):
point, it's a lot easier to go after a book than it is to go after a person.
And for me to say this book about people like Brian, this book about people like John is
obscene or criminal means that by extension, John and Brian are criminal people.
So that is a weaponization, Brian.
It's a weaponization of something that's very legitimate, which is let's have a conversation

(25:33):
about the content of this book.
You know, let's have a conversation about whether or not we should have this book available
for all ages or if it should be part of an adult section.
There's really sincere belief behind some of the book challenges that are going on in
the country.
But when you've got politicians running for office based on censorship and erasure and

(25:55):
they're using an anti-person, again, it might be black and brown folks, it might be LGBTQ
folks, if they're using that platform of book bands as part of their political campaign,
we've got a whole I think it's illegitimate while they're saying that those folks are
illegal.
It's clever to frame the conversation in that way, because I would never even think

(26:16):
about that.
But that's kind of, you know, like just talk about fascism for a brief moment.
But like, that's part of what fascism is, like you dehumanize something so that it never
has that or it doesn't have that inherent value to really make you think about it.
That like that you would like the nuance of it, because like you've you've done the work

(26:37):
prior to that.
So you start with something little and then it expounds over time, or you just let the
population naturally progress in a way that you've pointed them.
That's wow, that's really just so many ways to manipulate human beings.
And it's like you just don't even realize it's happening.
The most difficult part of the book bands and the censorship crisis right now is the

(27:01):
campaigns to criminalize individuals, and also to criminalize the profession of librarianship.
Right now, we're talking today, the state of Texas is the 18th or 19th state that's
that's considering legislation, state legislation that would criminalize libraries for that

(27:26):
would allow for the prosecution of librarians over the everyday books that are on the shelf.
You could go in if you're in Texas, if they pass this thing, and I think they will, if
the governor signs it because he's that type, you go in and if you're a sheriff, a police
officer, a district attorney, you could go in and arrest that that librarian because

(27:48):
you don't like the Dr. Seuss book.
You think it's offensive.
You could go in and arrest that librarian for the Bible, because that's got some stories
in there that make your toes curl if you read it the right way, you know, and you go in
there for a book about a gay person or a black person, you know, and charge them with a crime
for having a book that's not obscene, because the standards of obscenity haven't changed

(28:11):
in Texas.
The standards of obscenity aren't going to change in Texas because that's a consensus.
But what's going to change is the ability to prosecute.
And that's a weaponization of the law in a way that is intended to, I think, scare people
to chill free speech, to diminish the impact and the effect of these institutions.

(28:35):
I mean, it's passed in a couple of states, largely around education, and it's not a good
way to govern.
Like, just to do a callback of what we just talked about, as soon as you make something
bad, I think it increases, well, the perception of it as bad, it increases the interest of

(28:55):
it.
So if you're and we can go to religions, we can go to Christianity.
The reason why Christianity spread like wildfire originally is because the Romans started killing
them.
And so instead of being in this little area that spread through the whole world, and you
can just see it time and time again, even with the LDS church with Mormonism, it's the

(29:17):
same thing happened.
They got persecuted.
And so they just went all over the country.
And then eventually, they're in Utah.
But I mean, it's a worldwide religion now.
Persecution doesn't typically shut down what they're trying to shut down.
It just it puts it in the shadows, which isn't a good place for really anything to grow.
Because I mean, for a multitude of reasons, people who are attracted to the shadows, once

(29:42):
an organization is in the shadows, it can be a type of population that you don't really
want like an extremist person is more so what I'm referring to someone who's willing to
who's very passionate about their ideas, but we're getting off topic.
With book banning and stopping information, it just has these knock on effects that are

(30:03):
dangerous, because like you said, it's a slippery slope.
What's obscene?
You read the Old Testament has the Old Testament of the Bible has a lot of stories that are
not kid friendly.
So if that's your compass of what is OK for kids, what's OK for kids to be reading and
ingesting and take in and to use as a moral compass, it's very easy to manipulate that.

(30:26):
And, you know, huge swaths of the population, including myself, are Christian and say, yeah,
that's good. Like you need context to things like that.
You can't just read it outside of itself, because, yeah, you can take some the wrong
lessons from it or not understand the culture and the time where these stories were written
to where that was culturally significant.
But now in the advancement and as culture gets more progressive, like it can be so

(30:52):
backwards that you just don't understand it.
And so to give people the power to say what's right and wrong.
Well, what changes from one administration to the next?
Because you can just make a complete 180.
And now we're living in 1984 where you have to completely update everything over and over
again, because the standard of what's obscene and what's acceptable can just change.

(31:18):
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot to unpack there.
I mean, you think about the Old Testament and you have, you know, I mean, the golden
rule comes from the Old Testament.
I love the neighbors yourself, you know, and the idea of neighborliness around how do
we want to govern is an important conversation right now, because we're not being very
neighborly. You know, from one administration to another, the Trump executive order that is

(31:44):
calling or called for the elimination of the the Federal Institute of Museum and Library
Services is a tactical executive order.
You know, they want to shut down that part of the government, stop spending that kind of
money. But the other executive orders that are attached to the conduct of the Trump
administration around American history, you know, they want to bring around sort of this

(32:09):
exceptionalist, highly patriotic.
I mean, the anti-DEI, the anti-neighborly, in my opinion, the idea that we are going to
be aggressively against diversity, equity, inclusion.

(32:31):
I mean, that's a that's a it turns on a dime.
You're absolutely right. You know, inauguration morning to inauguration afternoon, the very
fundamental changes in how we want to treat our neighbors, both in the institutions that
support Americans and in the idea of who's a valid American.

(32:51):
Yeah. And so.
Oh, and if I may also in whose history, whose books, whose history, whose whose museums,
whose archives, you know, who owns it?
I mean, I'd like to suggest we all do together instead of one particular elected officials
perspective. So how do we protect like if because it's not federally funded, right?

(33:16):
States are locally funded.
How do we protect the funding of libraries to make sure that they can still be everything
that they're supposed to be? It's a great question.
We spent a lot of time at every library working on that.
But 90 percent of funding for public libraries comes from the local level.
It's sometimes it's in one zip code.

(33:36):
You know, my hometown over here, my hometown library, it's one zip code 60402.
All right. That's the property tax base that funds the library, the city, the city, the
parks department. You know, we got our school districts here.
60402, you know, the state funding that supports libraries.

(33:58):
There's a state aid formula here in Illinois.
Some states don't have it. Some states do.
But fundamentally, the state library, which is the State Department of Libraries, like
the State Department of Ed, State Department of Health, does some infrastructure.
It might be interlibrary loan.
In some states, it might be shared catalogs.
It might be extra books and libraries can afford themselves.

(34:19):
And then federally, it's a fairly small amount that comes through and donations are small,
too. But about 90 percent of funding for libraries.
Is is local in those conversations about again, like how do we want to treat our neighbors?
What kind of community do we want to build?
How do we want to take care of people and build a better society has to happen at that

(34:42):
zip code level? You know, what's going on in D.C.
right now is a total mess as far as I'm concerned.
I mean, I run a political action committee for libraries and I'm a little not happy about
what's happening in the Beltway.
But fundamentally, you get through this current crisis, the institution that you drive by
on the corner, that library we're talking about earlier, you drive by, you think everything's

(35:04):
fine. That's yours because you're a local taxpayer and a local citizen, you know, not
to be tribal about it, but it is how it's built, you know, how extremely locally is
how it's all done. So how do we keep up a good conversation with our I mean, I got a
great block here. I got a nice town.
We once in a while we fight.

(35:24):
How does a library modernize to make sure that it is culturally relevant in the conversation?
Some of it's good librarians who know what they're doing.
Some of it's that community responsiveness.
Some of it's keeping your ear to the ground.
A lot of it is looking at who hasn't been recognized as being a neighbor before.

(35:45):
Like there's it's interesting because, you know, folks who are civically engaged, folks
who run for office or part of clubs or social organizations who are volunteers, they tend
to be in the majority because there's this, you know, like how do you get elected if you're
not able to be elected by a majority of the voters?

(36:07):
You know, and these groups tend to be somewhat self perpetuating.
Oh, let's bring in, you know, Jim and Mike, they're nice guys.
I know I'm from, you know, in neighbors, neighbors, demographically, sociologically, who
are we missing? Who are we missing is the biggest question that a library can ask.

(36:29):
You know, is there a demographic group that's moved in recently?
Is there a faith community?
I mean, we're talking about about religion a few moments ago.
If you've got a mainstream Baptist, a mainstream Methodist, a mainstream Catholic and a
mainstream evangelical church, and you forget that you've got a Korean speaking Baptist

(36:49):
church that's come up in the last 10 or 15 years, how does the library not miss that?
You got to look around.
You got to look around and say, oh, my gosh, we have folks here from Haiti or from the
Dominican Republic or from Korea or from Nigeria or from Poland or from Ukraine.
Like you got to look around.

(37:11):
I don't have any really solid like rubrics for you, Brian.
It's it's paying attention.
Who are your neighbors?
What do they want to read?
What kind of programs do they want?
And I think that it takes it takes two things.
It takes, you know, good library librarian community, but it also takes a little bit of
room. It takes a little bit of room.
It's hard to do that when you're under stress.

(37:32):
It's hard to do that when when the cuts are happening, when there's laws being passed in
your state that want to put a target on your back when the budgets are getting cut.
And I'm not trying to forgive anybody of their responsibility to stand up and look around.
That's the biggest part of collection development.
But that's real, though.
It's hard to be creative and think about other people when there's a guillotine hanging over

(37:53):
your head that your funding is going to be cut.
Like you're kind of just like, oh, oh, is today the day or does or does the rope hold
for another day? Like you kind of just focus more on survival and then instead of like
outreach or something like that.
Are there parameters to what kind of activities or groups that a library will facilitate?

(38:18):
Sure. So there's two kinds of programs that get put on at libraries.
One is something that's produced by the library.
It's coming from the staff and the board.
And, you know, we're going to do a summer reading program, you know, and we'll have a
theme about summer reading for high school kids.
It's a little different than it is for grade school kids, but we're going to do summer

(38:39):
reading. That comes from the staff and the leadership of the library.
Then the library as part of First Amendment law and part of the frameworks around public
accommodation law under civil rights is to be able to host parts of the community in a

(38:59):
way, again, it's neutral and viewpoint neutral and having those those facilities of the
library available for folks from different perspectives, from different walks of life,
from as long as it's not illegal activity or activity seriously or activity that is
particularly partisan.

(39:21):
There's a few rules around it that are clarified by libraries individually.
But I mean, there are libraries that have facilities that are rented out on Sunday
mornings or Wednesday nights by churches.
And it's because it's the only place in town that you can do that.
And there's a library, but the library doesn't endorse it by doing that.
It's a facility to be used by the public.

(39:45):
Again, that makes that makes a lot of sense to preserve that institution because there's
differing ideas to where, you know, if a Christian organization is there because that's
the building that's available to them, there's no other building available.
They don't have the funds or whatever it is.
I can see, you know, certain other demographics being really offended that they're there.

(40:07):
But to say like, hey, next Sunday or Saturday, come on in.
Yeah, like we're opening to all sorts of viewpoints.
We're not saying that this is the only right way or that, like you said, that we're
endorsing a certain world belief, but it's very important for that information to be out

(40:28):
there and to be readily available for the population.
Yeah. But again, there's a difference between what's put on by the library and what's done
at the library by outside organizations.
And there is a set of policies.
Every single library in the country has got a set of policies about it.
It's the fair, transparent level application of those policies that matter in our in our

(40:49):
society, I think. And the civil rights side of this is really important to recognize as
well as the First Amendment. We live in a society that is trying to be a little bit
nicer to each other, trying to be more inclusive.
But the anti-discrimination components of this, you know, we don't turn people with the
front door based on the color of their skin or if they're wearing a rainbow flag pin, you

(41:11):
know, so like that that level playing field isn't just viewpoints and content, it's the
humanity of it all.
Yeah, that's that's really important as well that people of different cultural backgrounds
and beliefs have a place that's safe for them to gather and to learn.
Yeah. And with the library, if a public library follows the Constitution of the United States

(41:36):
and the laws of the land, then you might not be comfortable as a citizen with everything
that goes on there. But it kind of doesn't matter because you're because what you want
to have go on there, as long as it's legal activity, is welcome as well.
This kind of falls into the theme of like you don't know what you don't know.

(41:57):
And A.I. has really changed the world landscape very quickly in these past few years.
Is there anything with like A.I. with, you know, A.I. creating literature or anything
like that that's like intersecting with your space in libraries to where it's becoming
part of the conversation?
So there's there's a couple of things about A.I. that are emerging.

(42:21):
One is how can librarians both in K-12, higher ed and public libraries help people
understand in both academic settings as well as in social settings the difference between
something that's created by and published by humans and created by and published by

(42:41):
machine. In understanding the the tools and the application of that from a information
and a mis and disinformation perspective, I think is something that librarians can really
contribute to. Interrogating the source is a key element of information literacy.
You know, to be information literate is to be able to understand where stuff's coming

(43:05):
from and how do you use it and adapt it.
But it doesn't have to be it's certainly not not a Luddite perspective at all.
To have A.I. in the mix is to have both creative and generative as well as interrogating
information in new ways as well.
So when it comes to issues around copyright, when it comes to issues around province and

(43:27):
things like that, I know that there's there's big chunks of government and there's some
very smart people in libraries who are looking at that, you know, copyright ownership, those
kinds of issues as well.
But I don't know how much that filters down immediately to the day to day at, say, a
public library or a school library.
I'm very interested in making sure that the pipeline from an author through a publisher

(43:52):
or even self publishing to a reader, author, publisher, reader, you either have a bookstore
or a library or some other way to get those into those hands.
I want to make sure that there's integrity in that in that whole stream.
Yeah, with with A.I. and like you don't really think about it because you think A.I.
is something that like was programmed like a programmer sat down and did it.

(44:16):
But like what you're alluding to is that A.I.
learns by having access to a ton of material.
And a lot of that material is copyrighted material that the publisher, the author may
have not wanted scraped for free because the publisher needs to make money.
The author needs to make money.
It's a business model.
And so A.I. just coming in there and think moving the intelligence forward for humanity

(44:43):
is undeniable, but you still want to do that ethically as well and follow the rules that
are set. And just because it's a new ground that they're treading on and laws haven't
caught up to it yet.
I think there's still some protocols and and rules that you should still be adhering to.

(45:04):
Copyright is a complicated area of law in libraries.
The public library exists because you've got the taxes that go to fund it, the progressive
tax policy that funds the common good.
And you also have the ability to lend.
And this is kind of underappreciated.
But the ability to lend means that you can own the content, you know, so I can buy a

(45:27):
book. If I'm on the library board for my library, we're buying a book and then we're
going to lend it. OK, that's a right.
Copyright law in the United States is really weird because if that's an e-book, if it's
an electronic book or electronic, an audio book, the library can't buy it.
For example, the library can only rent it from the copyright holder, the publisher.

(45:50):
So there's there's really kind of some squishy areas already about how libraries have to
interact through copyright.
And then there's the issue of like, did the did the A.I. scrape something that they didn't
have the right to scrape?
You know, I have two books that are part of the library ecosystem, like their textbooks,
really. One of them is on winning elections.
And it's called Winning Elections and Influencing Politicians for Library Funding.

(46:13):
My co-author, Patrick Sweeney, he's one of every library's co-founders.
He's the primary author on that one.
I'm the primary author on another one called Before the Ballot, which is really wonky
stuff, Brian. It's super wonky.
It's like about running elections for libraries.
OK, it's their textbooks.
OK. But when that when the Atlantic Monthly or the Atlantic put out a couple of weeks

(46:33):
ago, that list of that searchable database of books that had been scraped, that are
part of that big lawsuit now, I went over and looked, you know, I wanted to see if my
books were in there and they were, you know, that they've been.
Yeah, they've been they've been picked up somehow or another.
Nobody asked me, nobody asked my co-author, nobody asked our publisher.

(46:55):
And yet I was a little glad to see them in there alongside everything else.
In a weird way, I wanted to make sure that what we're talking about from our perspective,
I mean, if they had asked me, I might have given it to them.
You know, seriously, because as a creator, I want to see my ideas out there in the world.

(47:18):
I do. Yeah, you know, I think I've got a better perspective.
I wouldn't have published it otherwise.
I have a good perspective, at least.
I'm on the topic.
I wouldn't have written it if I didn't think it was at least worth reading.
Now, the whole ethical framework around how they got it, though, is very suspect.
Hmm. Is there any sort of clues on how they did?

(47:40):
You know, that's a whole podcast episode with somebody who's more involved in that
particular lawsuit than me.
But fundamentally, that's what the courts are.
That's why it's in court right now.
Yeah, I didn't even know about the article that just came out from The Atlantic.
So I was out of the loop.
It's fascinating because you can put in your name, the title of the book, the ISBN,

(48:01):
and find out whether or not it was part of the scraping, the great scraping.
Yeah, I always figure that people are smarter than they are, like to where if you're
going to do something that's like, you know, a gray area, let's just say because it
hasn't been adjudicated yet, that you'd be a little bit smarter about what you
scraped and, like, just make it a little bit more difficult to retrace what you

(48:23):
did. You know, like I said, that's in the courts right now.
I don't I don't have I don't have a really strong opinion about it.
We're not a party to that lawsuit, but it's an important moment here.
Like, how do you how do you have a fair use not to go down too much of a rabbit
hole here, but the ability to lend, you know, that the rate of first sale, if I

(48:45):
buy something, I can give it to you as a gift.
I can sell it to you.
I can rent it to you.
I don't want to rent it to you.
I want to keep it forever myself.
I don't want to throw in the garbage.
OK, that's all about what ownership means.
That needs to get unwound in this country because we don't have ownership really on
ebooks and licenses for software.

(49:07):
You know, there's a whole bunch of stuff that's only available as a digital file.
It's only available for rent or for lease.
And this whole A.I.
province thing has got to get unwound as well.
We don't have the luxury of time on it.
It's moving way too fast, man.
We're in a new landscape for sure.
So in, I don't know, twenty, twenty, twenty one or something around that area

(49:31):
in that covid area, libraries decided to get rid of late fees.
And that was really interesting for me for a few reasons.
One, if we're talking about funding, it's not going to be substantial,
like those late fees, but that can attribute or contribute to funding.
So you're a revenue source.

(49:52):
Yeah. So you're getting rid of that by getting rid of late fees.
And then you're getting rid of accountability of someone
being lent something to give it back in the rental period,
because if you don't, there's a consequence that just, you know,
it encourages some people.
Again, it's pennies or dollars.
It's not really substantial, but it does add up collectively in a society.

(50:15):
Are there any other knock on effects from getting rid of late fees?
Has it attracted more people to the library?
Because, yeah, I think now they just automatically renew it.
Like if you're past your rental fee, they just do that for you.
So I want to address the accountability issue first.
I don't know a single library that says you can have it in perpetuity forever.
You know, there's always a period.

(50:37):
And if you never return it, then there are, you know,
they'll stick the collection agency on you eventually, you know,
it's just that the rental or the
the loan period is quite extensive or it's renewed automatically
for a certain number of clicks.
But you do hit the end of reasonableness, you know.

(50:58):
The the knock on effects have been really interesting
because when there's a look, when there's a forgiveness of fines,
two things happen.
People bring back stuff that they've had on their on their own bookshelf for years.
OK. And then they're forgiven.
You know, they're forgiven not just of their financials,
but of their moral side of things.
People become I mean, like, oh, I never returned that thing.

(51:21):
And there's a sense of shame about that.
Some people have, you know, and there are barriers to people
coming into the library if there are their fees and fines to like,
I can't afford that.
I'm not I might forget.
I might lose it. My kid might lose it.
You know, like all those things that happen around.
Human nature about being responsible for something.

(51:44):
Yeah, you've identified some of it.
But the whole the whole cloth is like, you know, you're OK.
Here's some amnesty.
Come back to the library.
We'd rather have you use the place than worry about it.
And honestly, I think there's something important about that
from a lot of different perspectives politically.
The progressive viewpoint on this is like, let's lower.
Let's make it easier for people.

(52:04):
I don't want to double.
I don't I don't want to hurt people.
But the libertarians in my life, they're like,
why are you finding me for this?
We already pay taxes once.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Like, really, we did.
The thing that the big difference between parks, parks, departments
and libraries, all jokes aside about how things go on TV shows

(52:25):
like Parks and Rec is that parks,
departments tend to tend to have a signup fee.
You tend to have a ticket or you got to sign up
for the baseball team for your kid.
You know, there's a certain I mean, I wish they were better funded
so that it could be available for everybody, regardless of their needs.
But also the thing about the library, you know, being like, OK,

(52:46):
we're paying for it once.
Let's just pay for it once.
Let's have a small amount of smart tax money used
for the collective, for the common good.
I mean, so far, so good on that on that fine free situation.
Yeah, it does make a lot of sense that you would,
I don't know, just like change it, update, update the rules or

(53:08):
you had to have what you were saying, that barrier of reentry for people
to to be just, hey, come into the door, give us the books.
We're fine. We live in an abundant society.
We do. I mean, the idea that there's scarcity in America.
This is the richest country on Earth.
And we hear that from both sides of the political aisle,
from all different political perspectives, and it's true.

(53:30):
You know, we've got we've got 17000 public libraries in this country.
It's a almost a 15 billion dollar a year industry.
And the idea that we're going to nickel and dime some some family that's.
Let's let's not put those kind of barriers up.
You're kind of like within

(53:51):
the freedom of speech, like very adjacent to that.
And so I think you have a very insightful, unique perspective.
And I wanted to hear your thoughts on the freedom of speech.
I think it is majorly important for creating who we are as a society.
And I think why we are so prosperous is that we were able to share

(54:14):
ideas that maybe at one point were fringe, but are now mainstream
and fringe ideas that are just, you know, complete.
Let's just say garbage be just very blunt about it.
You can be in an environment where you can debate those thoughts
and then you can say, like, this doesn't hold water.
And here's why, rather than not being able to discuss things.

(54:36):
But in this freedom that I cherish and take advantage of
is where we have.
Unfortunately, landed into an era of a post truth
world to where you don't really know what truth is anymore.
You can I mean, depending on what news station

(54:58):
or what application you use on your phone, you're living in two different realities.
We're either in the hellscape right before the apocalypse
and the world just collapses into itself.
Or we've just entered Nirvana and everything is going perfect.
And we're correcting all the wrongs that have ever happened in the world right now.
It's happening right now. Oh, thank goodness.

(55:20):
And it's true. You don't know what is real anymore.
You don't know what's true. Objectivity has lost its place.
And it's lost its place.
Unfortunately, due to this, the Internet is just a tool,
but it's a tool that you can use and manipulate people's opinions.
Freedom of speech is in there as well.
You can say whatever you want.

(55:41):
And, you know, there's so many people who believe that the earth is flat right now.
Like we've gone back to before Galileo.
We've gone back to like the 1500s where people like for some reason, this is
some government conspiracy that the world is fear when in reality it's not.
So how do we protect

(56:03):
the freedom of speech and how do we course, correct
on this disinformation, misinformation age that we live in?
Because we talked about this.
We talked about how when one person has control of the information
that that's too much power and it can easily be flipped.
And let's just say the next administration of what's true and what's not true.

(56:26):
A couple of things in this response that you're prompting for me to think about.
One is that I'm not necessarily we're not necessarily free
speech absolutists here at every library, but we are really into the First Amendment.
And there are five freedoms in the First Amendment.
Freedom of speech is one of them and taken together.
And this is why we have our sites called Fight for the First.

(56:48):
It's not called Fight for the Right to Read or anything like that.
We we work on on the five freedoms.
And those are freedom of and from religion,
freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to assemble
and the right to petition.
And those those five freedoms inside the First Amendment are
they're all the same.

(57:09):
You know, one of them is not more primary than the other.
And it's the tension within those five freedoms
and the compliments within those five freedoms
that I think are really played out in libraries.
Very, very much so in the United States.
There's those freedoms around the right to petition

(57:30):
is actually at the heart of a book ban or book request, a book challenge request.
I have a problem with this book.
I want to petition my government, which is a library, about,
you know, I think this book's a problem.
I want to talk about it.
The right to assemble is fundamentally about how can we get together
and do those programs we're talking about that Wednesday night,
Friday night, Sunday morning program, you know, how do we get together

(57:53):
also to participate in our government in that assembly kind of way?
The transparency that's necessary for freedom of the press
extends to how government conducts itself.
It needs to be proactively transparent to the taxpayers.
The freedom of and from religion and both being in there
is that like what's private, what's public and what's coercive.

(58:17):
And then the freedom of speech issues here, which are about, again,
having that perspective that somebody else doesn't have to necessarily listen to.
But also the fact that the government is not going to impose
its perspective on the citizens.
So that that whole complicated matrix of those five freedoms,
the tension within that and the conflicts that happen within it

(58:39):
are played out in libraries every day.
You know, the opportunity to try and unwind that.
You can't pull one out and say it's better than the other freedoms.
And you can't minimize any of those freedoms
because the whole house of cards falls apart.
You know, the the fundamentals around
the library is part of government and the library is part of a constitutionally

(59:03):
a constitutional framework, because it is.
It's it's an expression of those of those rights in that First Amendment framework.
The same way it is around civil rights and other sorts of human focused.
The it's the imposition by the government
of a viewpoint that is the most pernicious part.
Of an attack on the free speech, though,

(59:26):
the fact that there's difficulties between two people or two groups of people
or five groups of people or a crowd.
And we've got the book that bothers me and it doesn't bother you.
And you should get out of my bookshelf the same way you should get off my lawn. You know,
government imposition of it in the in the classic
enlightenment period, constitutional frameworks,

(59:49):
the imposition of the government speech that that that means that I mean,
you mentioned before, like some people think right now we're at the gates
of perdition and some people think that we're at the gates of paradise
in this moment in political time.
It's the imposition of that, the creating a status
environment around it that is the most pernicious.

(01:00:10):
That's that's very well said.
And everyone kind of wants the government to step in when the government
is agreeing with them and they just don't realize or don't think far enough ahead
that things could change in the same power that you want to give to the government.
Now, you would be terrified

(01:00:30):
if the other side came into power
with the same sort of overreach
that you willingly gave to the people that you agreed with.
Well, politics is fundamentally about whether or not
your value system and your identity is expressed in the law

(01:00:50):
and in the budgets.
The politics says, I'm a I'm a Democrat, I'm a Republican,
I'm a Green Party, I'm a libertarian, I'm a communist,
I'm an anarchist, socialist, I'm a whatever.
You know, our identity as those groups within the group
is always internecine conflicts and always fights.
But like so the Democrats, the Republicans, the libertarians, whatever

(01:01:15):
that identity as that group and then the value system.
How do we want to either treat people or be treated?
Is that value system?
And so how do we want to write law?
How do we want to have budgets?
I mean, the budgets of my town, my state, my country
that fund the things I believe in or don't tax me too much

(01:01:38):
because I don't believe in spending like that.
I mean, that's what politics is all about.
And libraries are part of that.
I don't I don't think we can we can ignore that.
Schools are part of it.
Public schools are part of it.
Parks departments.
How do we want to do roads and bridges and trash collection?
Every part of our society that has a tax attached to it

(01:02:00):
or there's a law about it has that political nature to it.
And I think we would be naive if we didn't pay attention to it.
John, this has been so much fun.
I learned so much and I appreciate your line of inquiry.
You had some great questions and you did a wonderful thing for me,
which you let me talk for a little while.

(01:02:22):
Yeah, well, the articulation difference between us is substantial and noticeable.
So it was smarter for me to let you talk for most of it.
But I really do appreciate this.
If people want to learn more about you, learn more about every library
or donate, where can they do those things?
Easiest place is every library that org.

(01:02:42):
We're kind of ubiquitous on social.
We're on everything.
We're on blue sky before it was cool.
You know, every library that org.
And we also have our save school librarians initiative, which is focused on K-12.
We've been talking about that.
We have our public policy, tax policy, education policy think tank
called the library institute.
We do a lot of work on public surveys, voter surveys,

(01:03:05):
developing things like tax policy, you know, and good law.
And then our fight for the first dot org.
If there's problems going on
in your community about censorship, unconstitutional censorship
and campaigns of discrimination or racial, we'd love to talk.
John, this has just been so good.
I appreciate that there's minds like yours thinking about this.
And I'm glad that you're at the front of the charge.

(01:03:27):
Just thank you so much for being here and talking with me today.
Brian, thanks for you want to do this and put it in front of your
your watchers and your listeners. So thank you.
I've always considered myself hilarious,

(01:03:58):
and with Professor Slappy Sticks Laugh Tracks, I now have that validation.
Typically, I only do my material on an open mic night at my local coffee shop.
However, since I have a captive audience,
I'm not going to blow my chance at sharing some of my top material
with a new audience. OK, one, two, three.

(01:04:23):
I thought being a standup comic would be a good career for me,
but I always saw myself more of a sit down comic.
And what's the deal with lampshades?
Make up your mind.
Do you want light or shade?
If I turn on a light, I don't want shade.

(01:04:45):
I want the light.
Otherwise, I would just keep the light off.
And don't get me started on computers.
Why do they call what you type on a keyboard?
It's not made of keys.
I can't unlock anything with it.
It's not a ship. I can't board it.

(01:05:06):
What's the deal?
Good night, folks.
You've been great.
Don't forget to tip your waiters.
Professor Slappy Sticks' Laugh Tracks
replaced the deafening silence with deafening laughter.

All Episodes

18 - Why A Good Library Should Have Something to Offend Everyone with John Chrastka

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Are You A Charlotte?

Dateline NBC

Stuff You Should Know

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}18 - Why A Good Library Should Have Something to Offend Everyone with John Chrastka