The Evolution of Galveston's Rosenberg Library with Mike Miller

I sit down with Director of the Rosenberg Library, Mike Miller and discuss the history and importance of the Rosenberg Library over the past 12 decades in Galveston, Texas.

Watch this episode on YouTube: The Evolution of Galveston's Rosenberg Library with Mike Miller
https://youtu.be/HireM8O2BnE

Subscribe to Galveston Unscripted on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts for more historical insights and stories from this remarkable island: https://www.galvestonunscripted.com/podcasts

Check out the podcast and audio tour that is transforming Galveston into the world's largest free museum! https://www.galvestonunscripted.com/

Support the show! Buy me a book! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/jrshaw409

Galveston Unscripted Digital Market: https://www.galvestonunscripted.com/store

Support the show

Galveston Unscripted Digital Market

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
the sam houston dueling pistols yes, which?
I think is such a cool artifact.
It's a pair of german-madeflintlock pistols and they were
donated by a nephew or a greatnephew of sam houston, if
anybody's listening.
The answer is not to justdigitize it all because, as
archivists, yes, we want todigitize that because it'll make
it more available to you, andwe will continue to do that, but

(00:29):
we still want to preserve thatoriginal.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hello and welcome to Galveston Unscripted.
In this episode today I sitdown with the director of the
Rosenberg Library, mr MikeMiller.
Mike and I discuss the12-decade-long history of the
Rosenberg Library, as well as afew other library-related topics
.
Mike is also an author who haswritten several books, one of
which relates to one of Texas'earliest cookbooks and another

(00:53):
on the history of hockey inTexas.
You are sure to enjoy thisepisode on one of Galveston's
great institutions, theRosenberg Library.
Without further ado, let's hopright into this episode with Mr
Mike Miller, director of theRosenberg Library.
The Rosenberg is it is thepremier you know place to

(01:14):
research history here inGalveston.
So I wanted to have you on andjust kind of talk to you about
the history of the library,whatever you know about it, and
then kind of what is going ontoday, and talk a little bit
about research libraries andwhat you guys have to offer
certainly uh.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
So a little bit about the library itself, uh and I'll
.
It's kind of like a dualhistory because you talked about
the research side.
So there's the research part,then there's like the public
library part which overlaps some, but uh, and you can adjust
this for me.
Yeah, I do.
I talked to my hands too.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
That's okay.
Yeah, you can move it around.
That's the Italian in me comingout.
That's good, that's perfect.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
Uh, uh, as the Rosenberg library, uh, we were
uh got our start uh from HenryRosenberg, who was a uh Swiss
merchant in Galveston.
He came here.
In terms of being a historian,I'm really bad with dates,
that's okay.
I'm not a historian thatbothers with dates, because

(02:12):
that's why we have Wikipedia andphones we can look up dates.
It's the story that matters.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
You're 100% right.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
Yeah.
So he was a very successfulmerchant, made a whole lot of
money and died childless, and sohe had all this money to leave
and in his will he set asideportions of money for certain
causes.
Around Galveston there's theRosenberg Fountains.

(02:39):
I think it's about 17 of themleft around, A few of them still
in their original location.
Many of them have been moved,including the one that's at the
library.
That's not where it wasoriginally placed.
It was moved there.
The orphan's home was fundedwith Rosenberg money, but the
biggest chunk of its estate wasset aside to create a public
library for the city ofGalveston.

(02:59):
Public library for the city ofGalveston and that was Henry's
wish, that there was a place forpeople to come to learn, to
grow, to hear lectures, to haveaccess to literature and
information, and that was reallyimportant for him to do that.
So that's the bulk of his money.
At that time it was $1,895.
It was $600,000.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
So you know, factoring the inflation stuff.
I know there's internetcalculators that we could run
that and forget what that numberis today.
Millions of dollars today'sdollars, uh, but that was the
genesis of the library.
In his will he also said thatnothing could happen for five
years, or four or five years,because he wanted the money to
sit and grow.
Oh, and then, before theybefore, they would form what's

(03:43):
called the Rosenberg LibraryAssociation, which is their
governing body of the library.
And so they did form in 1900,and they started the process to
figure out how to build alibrary, start a library.
Of course things got delayedwhen the storm hit, because I
did think they incorporated theassociation before the storm, if

(04:04):
I remember the dates correctly.
And of course everything gotstalled and delayed with the
storm.
And then they started meetingagain, put out bids for a
building and they erected thebuilding that we're in now in
1904.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
That's the.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Rosenberg Library.
But our history actually datesearlier, in 1871, the Chamber of
Commerce of which HenryRosenberg was a member and was.
I don't have any verifieddocuments that says he was a
part of this effort, but Ibelieve he was a part of this

(04:41):
effort to create what was calledthe Galveston Mercantile
Library and by its name.
Mercantile was a library puttogether by the area merchants.
It was a subscription library,so people had to pay an annual
subscription to be a member andbe able to go in and use it at
start and that was a prettytypical way that the library
started.
You saw that all across thecountry.

(05:01):
Within a couple of years orless it became a free library.
So they dropped thesubscription and it became a
free library.
And then over time from 1871 to1904, it went back and forth
between the chamber running itand the city running it.

(05:23):
So at one time the city agreedto put up some money and they
ran it and then the city stoppedcaring about it.
So the chamber stepped in tokeep it going and it just kind
of went back and forth.
But at this time it was neverreally managed too well.
Just people don't want toinvest a lot into it.
It's really what it came downto.
And so when the RosenbergLibrary opened in 1904, there

(05:45):
was a competing it was calledthe Galveston Free Library at
that time and it was run by thecity at that time.
And so the city approached theRosenberg Library Association
and said you know, we don't needtwo libraries, so why don't you
take over operations of theGalveston Free Library?
So why don't you take overoperations of the Galveston Free

(06:05):
Library?
And the city will commit somefunds to keep it going and the
Rosenberg Library Associationcan take over that public
library duties that you usuallysee in municipalities.
And so we date ourselves backto 1871 because we claim that
library's history since weassumed their operations.
Since we assumed theiroperations, we brought their

(06:26):
collection over.
I say we I wasn't there at thetime and took of that, and so
that's kind of the genesis ofthe Rosenberg Library.
I'm going to pause there in thelibrary history minute and talk
about how we started theGalveston Texas History Center
which is the research arm thatyou were referring to.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
Which I just so everyone knows I use that for
most of my research and photosand things like that on the
videos that we do, yeah, andhopefully you credit us.
I do, I do.
I leave the watermarks on thereon purpose.
I know you do, but I have tosay that as the director of the
library, that's my job.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
Just in case my board is listening, they know I'm
doing my part.
So at the same time that theGalveston Mercantile Library
started, there was anorganization that was created in
Galveston called the TexasHistorical Foundation and it
went by different names atdifferent times and when it
started essentially it was agroup of guys and it was guys I

(07:24):
mean, I know it's verypatriarchal, but that's who was
running things at that time.
They were acknowledging that alot of the people who had lived
through the Texas Revolution andthe early republic days of when
Texas was an independentrepublic, that they were
starting to die off and move offlike that and no one was making

(07:48):
an effort to preserve theirhistory.
And so they formed thisorganization for the sole
purpose of reaching out to thesepeople, collecting documents,
collections, stories, to createan early Texas history
collection.
And they, off and on, they wereactive, inactive, active,

(08:09):
inactive and the collection justkind of floated around
Galveston throughout the first20, 30 years.
When the storm, great storm hit, the library and the Historical
Foundation were both officed inthe Scottish Rite building.
The library and the historicalfoundation were both officed in
uh the uh, uh, the scottishright building oh, okay just

(08:30):
down the street here.
Uh, they were on the top floor,uh and uh, that building was, of
course, damaged, like as mostof the island was.
It wasn't completely destroyed.
The library side was spared.
The side where the, thehistorical group, was, uh,
that's the side where the wallcollapsed and whatnot, and so

(08:52):
they lost a significant part ofthat collection.
Oh man, uh and the, the guysthat were running at the time,
you know, during the early 1900s, recognized that one.
Maybe they weren't the bestequipped to be managing and
protecting these records.
They were also starting that'swhen you started to see their

(09:12):
focus to the built environment.
So this organization is thepredecessor to what's now the
Galveston Historical Foundation.

Speaker 2 (09:18):
GHF.

Speaker 1 (09:19):
They renamed it as the Galveston Historical Society
.
They went through differentnames at the time before they
finally realized okay, we'regoing to be focused on the built
environment and historicbuildings and maybe we don't
need to be collecting paper andprotecting that.
And so, shortly after theRosenberg opened, this
organization approached thelibrary and said can we deposit

(09:40):
our collections at the libraryto keep them safe?
And within a year after thatdeposit, they came back and said
well, why don't you just ownthem?
Or just why don't you just?
They're now your collection.
And that is the genesis of whatis now the Galveston and Texas
History Collection.
And that's also why ourcollection has a statewide focus

(10:02):
for Antebellum Texas because ofthe collecting efforts of that
early organization and we hadsuch a phenomenally rich early
Texas history collection thatcame with that, and so we still,
and we still, you know, buildon to that, but we don't collect
Texana after the Civil War.
Essentially oh, I see, okay, sothe focus is pre-Civil War Texas

(10:25):
For Texas and then Galveston,from prehistory to present day,
so the city in Galveston Countywe will sometimes reach out.
Of course some of the othercounty cities have their own
museums and libraries thatcollect as well, so we try to
play nice with each other Ofcourse.
As we should.
Uh and uh, yeah, but, yeah.

(10:47):
But the texas stuff is earlytexas up through the through the
end of the civil war yeah, andyou guys have some pretty
amazing artifacts in in thelibrary.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
on top of written accounts of early galveston,
early texas, you guys have oldmaps, I mean dating back to I
mean the 15, 16, 1700s.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
We do, we do.
Yeah, we have the first mapthat's known that identified
Galveston Bay as Galveston Bay.
It's a early 18th century, 1722.
It's a map, it's a French map.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
That's how it got the name St bernard's bay, I
believe they called it saintbernard's bay before galveston.

Speaker 3 (11:30):
Yeah, yeah, a french uh.

Speaker 2 (11:32):
French explorer yeah yeah, it's pretty amazing, yeah,
but uh and then, yeah, so,talking about the archives and
and things like that you guysare still collecting up to the
present day.
Are you guys like inundatedwith people trying to deliver
stuff to the library, like here,take this, store it, I would?

Speaker 1 (11:50):
say inundated, it comes in waves.
I think yeah.
So yeah, inundated is probablynot the appropriate word, but
when?
We do get.
I mean, you know, at least youknow I, you know we get a few
donations.
I didn't forget to mentionthere's.
There's a third kind of arm ofthe library.
Uh is our museum.
Yes, which is under this.
This is the, the specialcollections department of the

(12:12):
library.
It, you know, oversees thearchives and the museum.
Uh, but uh, you know, in theinformation world, we're what is
referred to as a glam, and glamstands for gallery, library,
archive and museum oh, okay andso those are the kind of, those
are like the four pillars of,you know, the the information
library world and very fewinstitutions have all four in

(12:33):
one there's many institutionsthat are two or three of those
perhaps, uh, and so we're kindof unique that we have all four
under one, and for a city ofGalveston's size you know, I
think the last census estimatewas like 55,000 or 58,000 in
that range For a city of 58,000people to have, you know, a glam

(12:55):
, the size and scope of what wehave here, it's truly amazing.
It's what it was what broughtme to Galveston.
It was the ability to be a partof this, because I think it
truly is unique.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
Yeah, and I interrupted, you were asking oh
no, it's fine, it's fine, no, no, no, no, it's fine.
Um no, it really is for, likeyou said, like for a city the
size of Galveston to be able tohave it.
That's why, every time I go inthere, and every time I you know

(13:24):
I'm doing research, I'm like Icannot believe.
Like the Galveston and TexasHistory Center, the Rosenberg
Library it is here in Galveston,and going inside that library,
especially the old section, the1904 building, the original part
, it's really, really cool tosee how fascinating that is.
So the original building, ofcourse, is still there, and then
it's had the addition onto theback, the Moody Wing the Moody
Wing, yeah, which was built andopened in 1971.

Speaker 1 (13:46):
So even that is now more than 50 years old.
So, yeah, it's actually nowpart of our National Register
listing.
It's actually always listed butit didn't qualify as the
historic part of the librarybecause it needed to hit that 50
year mark, but it did a coupleyears ago.
Yeah, uh, now that's part ofthe, the historical building.
Yeah, it's really just kind ofit's.

(14:08):
It's two buildings that arekind of bushed together.
uh, yeah, and you've walked it,so you know that.
Uh, you know, the moody wing isfour floors and the rosen, the
original, is three, and so theyhad to get kind of creative to
how to make things match up andso I'm sure it was really,
really smart design at the time.

(14:28):
Now we're kind of like oh, thisis kind of interesting, how do
we get to this floor, how do weget here?
So yeah.
But it essentially doubled thesize of the library itself.
I think it allowed the libraryto continue to build and grow
the Galveston Texas HistoryCenter collection, because that
was originally in just one roomand then stuff up in the attic,

(14:50):
and then of course, librarycollections.
Those get refreshed regularly.
You know, one thing thatlibraries do is you know there's
a new book out, you know, by areal popular author like John
Grisham or something like that.
You know, libraries tend to getlots of copies of the new book
because there's a lot of demand,and so we want to make sure we
have enough to satisfy thatdemand, you know.
But then as soon as the nextbig one comes out, that demand

(15:13):
wanes and then we'll take, youknow, take those extra copies
out of circulation and eithersell them in the book sale or
recycle them if they've beenworn out, depending on how well
loved they were by the readers.
And so that collection isconstantly refreshing and
changing.
And we don't have any kind ofmandate to be an archive for

(15:33):
popular fiction or anything likethat.
But we do on the archive side.
We're not refreshing thatcollection, we're not taking
things out of circulation andselling or recycling it.
Our goal, our mandate, is tosave that history.
So that collection is alwaysgrowing, and so that's the
challenge.
That's the challenge that allarchives face across the country
is how do you manage that space?
And if anybody's listening, theanswer is not to just digitize

(15:57):
it all, because, as archivists,yes, we want to digitize that
because they'll make it moreavailable to you, and we will
continue to do that, but westill want to preserve that
original, because the goal is topreserve the record in its most
original state that we can.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
What are some of the pain points with digitizing
things?
Because I know for people whoare doing research it could be
kind of frustrating where youcan find maybe 90% of what
you're looking for digitized onthe Galveston Texas History
Center website, but then there'ssome stuff it's like this has
not been digitized yet.
You actually got to go into thelibrary.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
There's a few, you know.
I guess I'll call them chokepoints in the workflow.
The first one is the actualcapture process itself.
Right now, this will bechanging very, very soon.
We use old flatbed technology,which is what most people are
familiar with, for digitizing,but flatbeds are incredibly

(16:52):
inefficient.

Speaker 2 (16:53):
Is it like a big scanner?

Speaker 1 (16:54):
Yeah, it's like a scanner you put it down, you
press a button, then you have towait two, three minutes for it
to capture it.
To capture capture at theresolution that we're trying to
capture at, because our goal isthat we only want to do that
once, because the process ofdigitizing is harmful to the
original.
Basically, any time you touchor expose a piece of paper to
light or anything like that,you're causing damage and our

(17:20):
goal is to minimize that as muchas possible because there's
damage that's cumulative andit's irreversible.
A case of what I was justtalking to the State Archivist
at a conference last week thefamous Travis letter that always
comes, you know talked about.
You can barely read theoriginal now, it is so faded.
And that's just because of thecumulative light exposure over
time since William Travis wrotethat letter in 1836 at the Alamo

(17:41):
.
And so of course the StateArchives is very cautious about
allowing that out and to bevisible by any light, just
because they know that everytime you do that it's one more
little notch in that damagelevel.
So that's what we face withdigitizing little notch in that
damage level.

(18:01):
So that's what we face withdigitizing.
We are in the process ofbuilding a new digital lab in
the archives using acamera-based capture system
which goes from, you know, aprocess with lots of lights and
stuff that takes, you know,anywhere from two to five
minutes to capture, and maybe 10minutes if it's a big object
like an architectural drawing ora map, at the click of a button

(18:23):
.
And then the software thatcomes with the system does a lot
of the post-processing.
You can program it to do a lotof this post-processing so we
can increase our efficiency andcapture a hundredfold or more.
Yeah, that's the, that's theeasy fix in terms of workflow,

(18:43):
the hard part is in order you tofind it.
So when you search, you knowthe catalog or you search other
archives.
There's what's called metadata,that's all the descriptions
behind that object.
So whether it's a photograph,whether it's a manuscript,
someone has to describe a, putin a system, some kind of
database system, all those wordsthat are now discoverable.

(19:04):
When you put in a keyword, youhave a box where you type in a
search.
That search has to go somewhereand match up against words
somewhere to find that object.
Right now, most of that a humanbeing has to go and type, has
input that, and so that's thecataloging process of the
digitization, and it's labor,it's time intensive and there

(19:28):
has not been an easy solutioncreated to speed that up.
Ai technology, I think, isgoing to be promising in that to
be not a replacement forcataloging, but I think there's
things that can happen with someAI technologies that will allow
that process to be improved andmore efficiency, it's still

(19:51):
going to require a person.
We all know if anybody's everplayed on chat GPT, you know you
don't always get the best stuffout of it, and so you're always
going to need that person to doquality control.
But there's a lot of potentialpromise with that, particularly
with some of the efforts thatare happening to create tools to

(20:15):
read handwriting and cursive.
It's like a typed document.
You can OCR it.
That OCR text now becomessearchable and so your keyword
search can find that, and youmight be able to find a document
that way.
It doesn't do that with cursivewriting.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
Yeah, I can't even read that old handwriting, so I
can't imagine training an AImodel to do it.

Speaker 1 (20:34):
Yeah, but there's a couple large institutions that
are attempting to do some workwith that and some have had some
success.

Speaker 2 (20:45):
Okay, so, yeah, so those are some of the pain
points with digitizing somethings in the archives.
What are some of the mostsurprising things to you when
you first arrived at the librarythat you guys had in the
archives?
Because I was really surprised.
I was talking to sean.
He was telling me some of thestuff that you guys have.
I was like there's no way youguys have that yeah, uh.

Speaker 1 (21:07):
So the first thing I wanted to mention is actually
not an archival object, it's amuseum uh object or pair of
objects, and you talked aboutthis, I think, before we were
recording.
Uh was the sam houston duelingpistols yes, which?
I think is such a cool artifact.
Uh, so it's a pair ofgerman-made flintlock pistols,
uh, and they were donated to thelibrary by a nephew or great

(21:31):
nephew of sam houston, a guynamed sam pinard, who donated
some other things as well, uh,to the library.
To me it's just fascinating.
They were near.
As I can tell, they've neverbeen fired, Although Sam Houston
was involved in a couple duelsin his lifetime.
I think that predated this giftand there's a little plate on

(21:54):
it that says from your Cincyfriends, 1836.
It says From your Cincy Friends, 1836.
And as near as we could tell isthat these were probably a gift
from.
You know, one of the volunteergroups that came to help with
the Texas Revolution Probablynever fought.
I know you know most of thosegroups that were formed.

(22:18):
There's a lot of militiavolunteer groups that formed in
the United States to come toTexas to help with the
revolution.
Most of them arrived after SanJacinto.
And so you know there was noneed for them.
They didn't get involved in thearmed conflict and they milled
about.
Some of them probably tried tolie to get their 640 acre you
know, veteran, you know landbounty or whatever.

Speaker 2 (22:38):
I was here, I promise , I fought, you know.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
Yeah, because there's no evidence of any land
grafting in Texas's history atall so, as we can tell, that's
probably what they were.
It was probably some volunteermilitia that came from
Cincinnati, ohio, and it wasjust a gift that they gave to
him.
That's our guess.
There's no documentation thatsays that.

(23:03):
One thing I was fascinatedabout and I think most people
who do any property research atGalveston knows about this I did
not know about it until I gothere were the records of the
Galveston Insurance Board, whichyou know, for you know a
significant part of the 19th and20th centuries.
The Galveston Incher's Boardcollected tons of documentation

(23:27):
on just about every singlestructure built on the island
Data, construction, architect,builder, information about the
owner, information about thedesign, information about
renovations and changes.
This kind of collection doesn'texist in other cities.
You know this is so.

(23:48):
Galveston is so fortunate, youknow.
I think it also helps with ourall of our historic preservation
work.
All the work that GHF does isthat we have access to all this
information, to properties.
I think anything built from thepost-Civil War up to the 1970s
there's probably a file on it inthis collection.
Wow.

(24:08):
I'll tell you and I was justfloored that it existed.
So one of the first things Idid is I looked up my house that
I bought when I moved to theisland and also learned that,
you know, the appraisal districthad the construction of my
house I live in Fish Village as1964, which kind of matched with
a lot of houses there.

(24:29):
But when I looked it up in thisrecord I found that it was
actually built in 1951.
Oh my gosh, it was one of thefirst houses built in Fish
Village.

Speaker 2 (24:37):
Oh wow, yeah, not the first it was one of the first
houses built in Fish Village.
Oh wow, yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:39):
Not the first, but it was one of the earliest houses
in Fish Village.
The reason why the appraisaldistrict has a 64 is my house
was originally a wood framehouse and in 64 they bricked it
and they built an addition toattach the garage to the house.
And so that's where and Ilearned all that because all

(25:01):
this information is in thoseinsurance board records man.

Speaker 2 (25:04):
I'm going to have to go look up my house now, yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:06):
And I was even able to go into my attic and I could
see the old construction, justbecause the addition it was
definitely a DIY project.
Like most Galveston housingprojects, and so yeah hopefully
the guy who did the work was notlistening, but let's just say
that yeah, it wasn't up to anykind of contemporary

(25:29):
professional standards.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
So how do we access that?
Like, if I want to come in andresearch my house, do we have to
come into the library, or isthat digitized?

Speaker 1 (25:36):
It's not digitized, it's just far too voluminous.
But, yeah, you, just you comein or you could call and or
email the reference staff at theGalveston Texas History Center
and just tell them your addressand say you know, I would like
you know to see if you have afile.
You know, on my address.
Man, okay, yeah, and the thefiles aren't organized by

(25:59):
address but they have across-reference to how the files
are organized.
They can get to the folder thatwill have the documentation on
your particular address, ifthere is documentation.
Gotcha, yeah, to me it waspleasantly shocking that we had
a collection of that value.
So any realtor listening tothis, if you're trying to sell

(26:23):
an old property, come to theGalveston Texas History Center.
We can hook you up with allkinds of information that you
can use to help sell thatproperty.
That's perfect, that's perfect.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
So yeah, the next thing I wanted to ask you about
was kind of about the collectionof books and libraries today.
So are libraries across thecountry, I mean, are they strong
and as used today as they were,you know, 50, 100 years ago?

Speaker 1 (26:49):
I would say yes.
I would say in many ways moreso.
But libraries of today are verydifferent and they serve a very
different purpose in many waysthan libraries of 50 to 100
years ago.
Uh, one, books are stillimportant and people still read.
Uh and.

(27:10):
And our circulation numbers,and that's the number of items
being checked out and checkedback in uh and uh, you know, our
numbers are showing that that'sstill the case and those
numbers are growing.
Interestingly, the AmericanLibrary Association issued a
report recently, or it may havebeen the Public Library
Association, which is a part ofALA that was studying the

(27:35):
behaviors of what we term newadults, the 18 to 30-year-old
range, and that that demographicis coming back to the library
in droves.
And not only are they comingback and using libraries,
they're checking out physicalitems, not necessarily
e-materials that's surprising tome.
They are using e-materials aswell, obviously, and so that was

(27:59):
a very telling report.
But it also talked aboutbarriers that exist just in how
libraries have always functioned.
That makes it harder for thatdemographic to potentially use
the libraries.
It was also very useful forlibraries to be thinking about
how can you kind of pivot somesources and pivot services to

(28:22):
make library services moreattractive to that demographic
and that's something that ouradult services team is working
on.
I've challenged them that thatwas their big challenge this
year is like let's really focuson, you know what we're doing
with that demographic and whatcan we do to to improve?
Uh, uh, yeah.
So, for instance, we justrecently had a uh a program.

(28:42):
Uh, it was.
We had.
We were still set on a title.
It was the equivalent of speeddating, but it was for finding
new friends.
That is so awesome and it'sreally good, and it's one thing
that we're discovering.
And it's one thing that we'rediscovering especially in the
pandemic.
It created a lot of pockets ofisolation and as human beings,

(29:03):
we're social people.
Yeah, we cannot thrive whenwe're isolated.
But we're also finding thatthere's a demographic that,
because of the pandemic andbecause of where they were when
everything shut down and we wereall sent home, we thought it
was going to be for a couple ofweeks and it ended up being a
lot longer than that is growing.
And not only were those tiesbroken, but the ability to learn

(29:23):
how to make those connectionsand not necessarily like really
deep friendships, that mostpeople have a few of those, but
it's what they call the weakconnections, like acquaintances,
people you know around town,people that you might hang out
with, but those are important,and so we had this program.

(29:44):
I'm not sure if Evelina, who'sour adult services program, if
she came up with the idea or ifshe borrowed it from another
library, because we're allstealing from each other anyway,
but it was basically calledSpeed Friending.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
I guess, yeah, I love that.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
It's an opportunity to bring people together and you
just move around and you havelike two minutes or whatever,
and it's just a chance to meetnew people and start find a way
to kind of broaden that circle.
I love that, yeah, and so, andit wasn't just for the new adult
category, it was in, you know,all adult ages, but it was
specifically kind of with theeye of encouraging them to come

(30:18):
in.
So it's things like that.
Yeah, you know, and you know,libraries are really becoming
like a community hub, and that'sreally what libraries are about
today is.
You know, we're one of the lastplaces left that is truly open
to all.
You know, I don't have to tellyou that we're living in a very

(30:40):
polarized world.
We're in an election cyclethat's very contentious and
polarizing.
Polarized world.
We're in an election cyclethat's very contentious and
polarizing, and there's not alot of public spaces left where
you can't avoid that.
The public library is being oneof those, because our focus and
our mission is to be a placefor all.
You know, whether you're, youknow I don't want to start doing

(31:05):
labels because I think that'sunfair, but everybody is welcome
, everybody can use the library.
And our goal is to havecollections and services and
programs that serve all of theGalveston community, regardless
of where you are in life,regardless of where your

(31:26):
political needs are, regardlessof your religion or whatever.
We want to be able to try tohave something you know for you.
Of course, we can't haveeverything you know.
As the great Stephen Wrightcomedian said, you can't have
everything.
Where would you put it?
But, yeah, that is the goal andthat's where libraries are
today.
Yeah, so I mean, for example,we've got I know there's a

(31:47):
Galveston County Democrats group.
They use the library for theirmeetings.
And then we also have thisSaturday the Galveston
Republican Party is doing theirelection canvassing at the
library, and so we've got bothends of the political spectrum.
They're both using the library,they're both welcoming to use
the library as long as theyfollow all of our meeting
policies, which they do.

(32:09):
I mean we haven't, you know,but that's the role of the
library is.

Speaker 2 (32:13):
We are truly a democratizing entity, you know
so, yeah, so you got, you know,your freedom of expression and
speech in the books that youhave and offer, and you got your
freedom of existence to be,able to come in and enjoy the
library and use it for whateverpurpose, as long as you're
following the rules of thelibrary, right?

Speaker 1 (32:32):
Sure, yeah, I mean like any place you know you have
to.
We have a code of conduct whenwe want people to you, know to
you know, treat each other andtreat the building and treat the
collections you know kindly.
But yeah, other than that, yeah, that's the only requirement we
don't track what people do inthe library.
Libraries have always been aharbinger of privacy and

(32:54):
individual privacy.
So, for instance, if you checkout books as soon as you bring
it back, we have no record thatyou checked those books out.

Speaker 2 (33:02):
Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
Now I think in our current system you could elect.
If you wanted to save a historyfor your own knowledge because
you want to remember, did I readthis book already?
You could look it up on youraccount.
But we don't track that becauseit's not our job.
Our job is to have thematerials and make them
available.
The only time we know thatyou've checked out a book is if
you still have it checked outbecause it's on your record and

(33:25):
it'll be until you bring it back.
But beyond that, our job is thatwe also protect our customers'
data.
It's not available.
Library information is one ofthe few classes that's actually
even defined in the state codeand federal code as protected

(33:46):
private information.

Speaker 2 (33:47):
Oh, really Okay.

Speaker 1 (33:48):
So, like you know, most libraries are, you know
government, usually municipal orcounty, you know, and of course
government records are subjectto open records requests.
Customer data is not customerdata is not.

Speaker 3 (34:08):
The only time we would release it is if we had a
court order issued by a judgethat said you have to release
this for.
And at that point.

Speaker 1 (34:14):
Yeah, we would follow the law, because that's what
law says and it actuallyhappened recently, just because
there was a crime in Texas City,I think, and there was some
Rosenberg Library property thatwas found, a crime in Texas city
, I think.
Uh and uh, there was someRosenberg library property that
was found at the crime, reallyUh, and they had our barcode on
it, which is why the detectivereached out to us and asked if

(34:34):
they could you know?
have the information tied to itand I said you know, we, you
know, without a court order wecannot yeah you know, divulge
any of that information and then, a week later, yeah, yeah, he
sent a quarter.
I'm like, okay, now I candivulge the difference and again
yeah, well, yeah, we're not.
We're not trying to beobstructive, it's just.
You know this.
This is a protected class ofinformation, you know?

Speaker 2 (34:55):
we're just following the law yeah, well, that makes
sense and it it kind ofnaturally leads me into, you
know, what's been going onrecently with, uh, book bans and
and things like that, wherethere are attempted restrictions
on what's available atlibraries not just you know,
public libraries, privatelibrary, whatever, what's
available to read and to access,um, so I mean what is maybe not

(35:21):
your stance, but what is kindof the general.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
Oh, I'd be happy to share my stance, yeah, but you
know.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
I'll start off with.
My thing is information andbeing able to access information
, regardless of where it is.
It's imperative to be able tomake decisions, to move forward,
and that's with anything, withhistory, with thoughts, with
ideas, with expression.
In my opinion, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:47):
Thoughts with ideas, with expression and in my
opinion.

Speaker 3 (35:48):
Yeah, yeah, I think I can say anything better there,
uh jr, yeah, uh, yeah, I meanessentially what's happening you
know, it's yeah, there thereare.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
There are people who, for for many reasons, don't
like, don't agree with, haveproblems with certain topics,
subjects, and you know the.
The argument of the push isthat because you know libraries

(36:22):
are publicly funded andavailable to the public, that
they have a right, or shouldhave a right, to dictate what's
in that collection, which isvery contrary to what libraries
you mentioned, with the wholefreedom to read.
There's a whole statement.
It's been a guiding principleof libraries for the last

(36:44):
century or more.
Is this idea of freedom to read?
Is that people have the freedomto read what they want.
The people who are trying toget books moved or removed for
various reasons.
Obviously that behavior iscontrary to that basic tenement
of libraries, of this freedom toread.

(37:04):
Behavior is contrary to thatbasic kind of libraries, of this
freedom to read.
You know some of the argumentsabout is like oh well, we're
protecting children becausechildren can find these things,
you know, on the shelf.
You know our stance is thatlibraries aren't parents, we're
different than schools.
So schools, there is a legaljustification that you know
during the school hours thatschool officials are acting was

(37:26):
as in parentis locus or there's,I don't the s we call the latin
public libraries.
Do not do that.
It does not our job.
It is not our job to tell aparent what they could or could
not allow a child to read.
You know, if a parent does notwant a child to read a book
about X, Y, Z, topic, amen, thatis 100% the parent's right.

(37:48):
But it is not that parent'sright to prevent another parent
from having access to thatinformation if they choose if
that's what they want.
Yeah, and that's what it comesdown to.
What it comes down to is ourjob as libraries is to try to

(38:10):
build a diverse, inclusivecollection that reflects the,
the, the community we serve, aswell as their information needs.
When you do that, you are boundto have something that is going
to offend somebody.
You know.
My personal thought is is likeif you are offended by something
good, because now you'rethinking that's how we learn and
grow, a hundred percent, yeah,and, and I'll tell you, there

(38:33):
are things at the Rosenberglibrary that offend me, I'm not
going to take and remove thembecause they're part of the
collection.
Now, the only time I wouldremove them and I would do it
because I don't do that workit's Now the only time I would
remove them and I would do itbecause I don't do that work,
it's my staff that does.
It is if it's now eitheroutside of a collector's soap or
it's not being used,no-transcript, and that's part

(39:08):
of trying to find things thatthe community wants.
Yeah, but it's not my job tomake sure that the collection
reflects my views and it's notthe job of somebody else to make
the collection reflect onlytheir views.
Our job is to try to get acollection that reflects
Galveston and what the communityof Galveston would like to use

(39:29):
of its library.
Yeah, and by doing that, bynature, we are going to offend
somebody.
Yeah, our goal is not to offend, our goal is to build a diverse
collection, but that's arepercussion of building a
diverse collection.
As a parent, if you are worried, then you know.
Stay with them the whole timethey're in the library, mm-hmm

(39:50):
you know, talk to your kid andsay, hey, if you're gonna check
in a book, bring it to me first.
Yeah, let me look at it beforeyou check it out.
Let me look at it before youlook at it.
That's, that's a parent's rightnow, that I I 100% support
parents' rights in that.
But that's where it ends.
The parent has to step in andbe the parent of that child.

(40:13):
If that's what they would liketo do, yeah, and I don't
begrudge them that right to doso.
If there's another parent thatwants to be able to, for their
child to find that book, yeah,yeah.
Makes sense.
Yeah, I don't want to take thataway either, of course, of
course, yeah, well, I'm in thesame way.

(40:36):
Take a little break here.
We could do a whole podcastabout censorship and book
banning yeah, about censorshipand things like that.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
Well, so back to a little bit of history here.
So, whenever the let's go backto 1871, the Mercantile Library.
So, the original library herein or one of the original
libraries here in Galveston 1871, it was kind of put together by
the businesses down here and Iwould assume I don't know, I
haven't done research here, butI would assume that was just to

(41:05):
provide information on business,on history, on things like that
.
Do you know if they wereputting all kinds of books in
that collection or was it theywere and it?

Speaker 1 (41:14):
was usually the subscribers could request titles
or would vet the titles, yeah,and it was kind of like what a
subscription library sounds like.
It was an opportunity for thesebusinessmen.
It wasn't just the businesses,it was the business owners.

Speaker 3 (41:28):
It was the merchants.

Speaker 1 (41:31):
Instead of them all buying their own copies of books
, they could go in together, soit was almost like a co-op in
that way in some ways for peoplewho know what co-ops are.
So that's what it was doing andit would be newspapers,
magazines, so they would do likea subscription, so that then
the Mercantile Library wouldhave a subscription to.

(41:53):
The Cincinnati Times orsomething right, and then they
could have it and then theycould go sit and read it in the
reading room at the MercantileLibrary.
And then a book collection butthere also probably was
reference collection as well toyou know, help them with you
know things that they might helpthem with their businesses.
Instead of, again, instead ofeach business buying their own
you know copy, they could go intogether and, yeah, it's our

(42:16):
library, which is why this was afairly common phenomenon across
the country.
As you saw mercantile librariespopping up in the mid to late
19th century.

Speaker 2 (42:25):
Yeah, it makes so much sense because before you
had movies, before you hadNetflix, before you had really
like big entertainment venues,you would go to the library and
read, or go check out a book orget your hands on a book and sit
down for hours and hours andhours and read something that I
wish I could do these days, yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:43):
There was always, like you know, you know, know,
town festivals like that forentertainment, you know, or go
to the town hanging, yeah yeah,right, right yeah it's kind of
sad to think about that.
It used to be a spectator sport,yeah, watch people get hanged
exactly.
So we have been working with aconsultant team headed by group

(43:06):
for architecture out of SanFrancisco, and they are one of
the preeminent library planningfirms in the country, which is
why we hired them doing kind ofa deep dive, excuse me, into the
library, to our services, intothe community, to come up with a

(43:28):
strategic vision for the nextfive to 20 years for the
Rosenberg Library.
And this would be it's it'skind of a two part process.
We have a strategic plan thatwe just at the at our February
meeting.
We just at the at our Februarymeeting, yeah, yeah, just just a
month ago, the board voted toadopt a new mission, vision and

(43:55):
value statements and sixstrategic goals for the library,
and I'm not going to recitethem here, but we will.
We will be pushing that out verysoon and sometime late spring,
early summer, we will be, youknow, pushing out our you know a
new strategic plan for libraryand this would be kind of our
programmatic vision of what thelibrary should be doing and how

(44:21):
we're going to go aboutachieving that, and it's based a
lot on community feedback wedid, as well as stakeholder
feedback.
So lots of meetings with ourboard and with staff to get
their thoughts.
But we did focus groups, we hada community survey and, if

(44:42):
anybody's listening to this,that they did the survey.
Thank you very much.
One of my goals was I wanted tobeat the the per capita survey
return that they did at Austinpublic library, which is where I
used to work before I came here, and Austin had a survey return
of 3.7 per per thousandresidents, which is actually

(45:05):
really good.

Speaker 2 (45:06):
That's really good, yeah, yeah we were over five.
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
Well, I think that also shows that Galvestonians
give a crap about theirinstitutions which I'm very
thankful that they do, and Ialways use a different word, but
I don't want to lead into theircase.
They didn't make the edit.

Speaker 3 (45:26):
So we were thinking about it.

Speaker 1 (45:26):
So I mean a different word, but I don't want to lead
to their case.
They didn't make the edit, sowe were thinking about it.
So I mean a lot of information.
But then we also looked at youknow I mentioned before about
kind of libraries are new thingsnow, and you know things that
happened because of the pandemicand that happened to libraries
and happened, you know, bylibraries.
In response, you know, richard,this was like an opportune time

(45:48):
to take a step back.
Look at our services, look atwhat pivot services we created
to accommodate changes in oursociety and you know what's,
what is the best path forwardfor serving Galveston.
So we're very excited aboutthat.
But then we're also looking atour facilities because of course
now we know what we want to do.
Now the question is where do wedo it?

(46:09):
How do we do it?
Do we have the right space todo it?
I mentioned that the Moody Wing, which is the newest part of
the library, is now 53 years old, well past the lifespan and
lifecycle of a commercialstructure, and so we are really
now well positioned to bethinking about what is the
future space for the library andwhat kind of space do we need

(46:33):
to be a library of the futurefor Galveston.
We're not ready to.
You know, I think maybe by thetime this podcast is edited and
airing, we might have that out.
I don't know how long yourprocess is, but I will say that
at this moment we are thinkingof something really kind of big

(46:54):
and iconic.
We have what we call agenerational opportunity.
So the Moody edition was agenerational opportunity to
create something big for thelibrary and for Galveston the
original Rosenberg building.
That was a generationalopportunity.
You know it's been 50 years.
It's a new generation.
We are primed to do something,make generational change for the

(47:20):
library and how the libraryserves the island and how the
library serves the island, andsomething that you know it's not
.
You know I mentioned that theplan is a five to 20 year plan,
but the result isn't a five to20 year.
We're looking at something forthe next 50 to a hundred years.
Create and build something thatwould serve Galveston for the
next 50 to a hundred years.
That's our hope.
That's what we're looking to dobecause we have real estate.

(47:46):
The library owns a block and ahalf.
You know that entire block thatthe building sits on, plus the
half a block behind ashton villa.
That's all library owned and sowe have.
We have, you know, we're kindof a step ahead of the game a
lot of other institutions thatare looking to, you know, expand
or change uh their facilitiesfootprint.
You know we don't.
We already have the land uh,potentially uh to to do that, as

(48:07):
opposed to others that wouldhave to go acquire land and then
think about what to build uh,and so.
So we're really excited aboutthat.
I think I think in the next fewmonths we're going to be
bringing some things out for thepublic to see that hopefully,
wood yeah, that's what it's it'sfake wood, it's fake wood uh

(48:27):
hopefully, uh, it'll besomething that excites and
energizes the current generationof galveston.
Uh, and and they recognize thatthis is a uh, we're, we're
poised with a great opportunityto build something truly
transformational, uh, for thenext 50 to 100 years, for.

Speaker 2 (48:43):
Galveston.
Well, of course, keeping theoriginal 120-year-old building
right we have no intention ofknocking that down.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
I mean there are moments, if anybody you know
when we're in a historicbuilding, you know we have great
historic preservation on thisisland.
But anybody who manages or ownsa historic building knows
they're a pain in the took us tokeep up.

Speaker 3 (49:06):
They're expensive.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
It's hard, but no, we have no plans.
There are no plans Of course,the only plans are to continue
to care for and preserve theoriginal Eiffel Wing.
Now, I would say there's noplans to tear down the moody
wing uh, to to start anew, uh,although I think that was

(49:29):
discussed at one point, thatthat was a was a potential path
of doing something new would beto tear it out and start over on
that side, uh, but we couldfundamentally change the the
moody wing, uh, you know, aspart of this, uh, you know
process, yeah, uh, that's whatthey get.
You know, one of the thingsthat we suffer from, uh, in that

(49:51):
half of the library is nonatural light oh, yes, because
that was.
That was a design aesthetic ofthe of the late 60s and so he
said you built these, you know,uh, because neo-modern buildings
that, uh, that had no windows,that were all boxy and uh, and
the idea was like at the time,especially with libraries, is,
you know, as I mentioned before,light damages papers.

(50:14):
They're like, okay, let's justcut out all the natural light,
uh, but that's not good for thepeople.
No, it's not it's.

(50:35):
We need our vitamin D and you'reseeing some really amazing
library designs coming out thatare incorporating a lot of
natural light in various ways.
And there's design things youcan do without making a glass
building but you can bring in,you can create things that draw
that light in and then disperseit around the building to create
open, airy spaces that peoplewant to be in.
And I think that's somethingthat perhaps the Rosenberg
Library suffers from a littlebit, especially in the Moody

(50:59):
Wing, is that aesthetically,it's not a place that people
necessarily want to be in.
It's not the that peoplenecessarily want to be in it,
it's not, you know, uh, you knowthe old wing, obviously there's
the historic charm of the, ofthe 1904 building, uh, you know,
has a lot of attention and Ithink it draws people in there,
uh, you know.
But the moody wing, it's just,it's function, it's all function

(51:19):
, yeah, and it's and it'sserving well.
I mean it is functioning well,but it doesn't promote people
wanting to come and stay andhang out and do things, and I
think a big part of that is it'sdark and dizzy.
Yeah, because that was thedesign aesthetic of that time.
Now is a good time to changethat.

Speaker 2 (51:39):
Yeah, and then I can have a window.

Speaker 3 (51:42):
I don't have a window in my office.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
I call it my sensory deprivation chamber.

Speaker 2 (51:47):
Nothing but artificial light, so very
excited about the future.
Yeah, I want to kind of talkabout you for a minute.
So, you're an author of acouple books, or one or two
books.
How many books have you written?
Four.

Speaker 1 (52:00):
Four books.

Speaker 2 (52:01):
And I'm under contract for my fifth.
Okay, so tell us about thebooks that you have out.

Speaker 1 (52:05):
Okay A little bit.
So I'll back up a little bitjust to take a chance to talk
about me a little bit, just tomention that I run a library but
I'm a historian by trade andtraining and so I've been, but
I've always done my history ofwork in public libraries.
The first book I did was calledAustin's First Cookbook and it

(52:28):
was a book that came out of anexhibit I curated at the Austin
History Center about 19thcentury foodways in Austin, and
that exhibit was all kind of alook at the whole foodways, how
food got to places, how peoplegot to food, what they ate and
what they grew and whatnot.
And in that exhibit I uncovereda copy of a book.

(52:57):
It was called Our Home Cookbook, published by the Cumberland
Presbyterian Church in Austin,texas, and it was published in
1891.
Uh, and I discovered that, tothe best of my knowledge, it was
the very first cookbook everpublished in the city of Austin
and the second cookbookpublished in the state of Texas.
Uh, and I thought amazing, butthis copy, our copy, was falling

(53:20):
apart.
It was in many, many pieces.
I said this would be great toshare with the world as a
reprint.
But I didn't want to justreprint it.
I wanted to use that reprint asa foil to talk about the
history of Austin Foodways, thehistory of cookbooks and why we
do cookbooks, why this cookbookexisted, a little bit of history
of the women who submittedrecipes, because it was one of

(53:45):
the few early cookbooks wherethe recipes were signed, and so
that's what.
That was the book.
So it's really it's a story ofthat cookbook and kind of the
food scene in Austin in 1891that led to the creation of that
cookbook.
And then I even took I took afew recipes and tried to update
them to to modern tastes.

(54:05):
No-transcript, what was thebest recipe.
There is a recipe in there forsomething that's called dressed

(54:28):
eggs.
Dressed eggs, dressed eggs, andthe best way I can describe it
is think of deviled eggs.
But up to notch and I'm sayingdeviled eggs is my kryptonite I
could eat it.
You put a platter of 24 infront of me, I could eat the
whole thing, and then future mewould then regret that decision.

(54:52):
But I love that.
But these dressed eggs decision, uh, but I love that.
But these dressed eggs andthey're.
The key is is it doesn't use acream in the, in the, in the egg
yolk mixture, it's butter, okay, and then they're baked oh my
gosh.

Speaker 2 (55:07):
And then served cold oh my gosh.
So yeah, uh, that soundsdelicious.
Yeah, yeah, so, and I stillmake them.

Speaker 1 (55:15):
Oh my god that's, that's one of my like.
If I'm bringing something to apotluck or something that's,
that's a, that's one of my go-to.
You know potluck recipes.
I love these eggs, uh, so, andthen the next book.
Uh, so, the next book it was,uh, the first part it was.
I did two books with, uh, thedallas stars, uh, and an

(55:37):
organization that I now headcalled the Texas Hockey History
Society.
Oh, my gosh.
So I'm a sports historian.
I've always done a lot ofsports and I've done journal
articles and stuff about minorleague hockey in Texas, but also
Lamar Hunt, who's still, tothis day, the only person
inducted into three differentsports halls of fame.

(55:58):
He's in the football, tennis andsoccer halls of fame Because of
his role as starting soccer,football and tennis leagues in
the country.
So I did a book.
It's called Texas on Ice EarlyStrides to Pro Hockey.
It's really kind of a coffeetable book and I did it with two

(56:18):
other guys in Dallas and it wasa book.
It's not something that'swidely available.
It was published by Brown Booksin Dallas but it was done as a
giveaway to Dallas Stars seasonticket holders.
Oh, that's cool, that is reallycool and it was really just kind
of telling the early story ofdevelopment of ice sports in

(56:42):
Texas up until the very firstpro teams that played in Texas
in the 1941-42 season.
There was a team in Dallas and ateam in Fort Worth in the
American Hockey Association andin between the two hockey books
I did a book on.
It was one of the ArcadiaImages of America series books

(57:06):
on historic movie houses ofAustin and also from an exhibit
I curated in Austin about theold movie theaters and kind of
the development and change ofmovie exhibition business in
Austin.
And then I did a second hockeybook with the Stars group.
It was called Texas on Ice ProStrides to the Stars, and so it

(57:29):
told the story of the post-warWorld War II up until the
arrival of the Dallas Stars inDallas as the first NHL team in
the state.
But I can say this is the bookI'm under contract with.
I'm writing with a friend undercontract with Texas A&M
University Press and it's anarrative history of ice hockey

(57:51):
in Texas, from the firstorganized game in 1925 to
present day.

Speaker 2 (57:57):
Where was that?

Speaker 1 (57:58):
San Antonio, san Antonio, san Antonio, at the
Crystal Palace Ice Rink, whichwas built across Myrtle Street
from San Pedro Springs Park,which is the oldest park in the
state.

Speaker 3 (58:11):
Kind of fitting that the first ice rink.

Speaker 1 (58:14):
It wasn't the first ice skating, because I found
news stories and evidence ofwhen winters used to be colder.
The first ice rink.
It wasn't the first ice skating, because I found news stories
and evidence of, you know, whenwinters used to be colder,
although we've had a couple ofcolders recently.
But you know lakes and thingsLike.
There's news stories of theTrinity River freezing over in
Dallas and then people going outwith ice skates and skating on
the Trinity River and a lakefreezing in Waco in the 1890s

(58:34):
and people ice skating there.
And there's a great oral historyfrom the the, the son of the
founder of lamb's candies inAustin.
He remembered in the 1870s of alake like a little neighborhood
pond, I guess, more than a lakethat would freeze over in the
winters and they would go outand try to skate on it and and

(58:56):
play shinny, which is like aprecursor to hockey so didn't
you mention to me galveston hada hockey team at one point?
so there's reports of that, uh,in in the 30s uh, you know
there's.
There's from that time thatfirst organized game in 25 up
until the first pro teams in 41,there was attempts off and on

(59:19):
to form new leagues and therewas like what would probably
call semi-pro leagues or seniorleagues that you could sometimes
see in other places.
And in the in the mid to latethirties there was what was
called the South Texas hockeyleague.
This was after the Dallas icerink burned down so they stopped
skating because they didn'thave an ice rink.

(59:42):
After that that ice rink burnedin 33, and so they didn't have
ice out there.
So everything was south.
It was San Antonio and Houstonwere the two cities that had
rinks.
But there's new stories in theHouston paper of a Galveston
entrant in this league and thatthe Galveston team and it was

(01:00:04):
mostly soldiers that were atFort Crockett that had been had
been at Fort Sam Houston andplayed on the Fort Sam Houston
team in San Antonio.
They got transferred, or youknow whatever, to Fort Crockett
but they wanted to keep playinghockey.
But they would be coming up,they would come to Houston and
use the Houston rink.
But I can't find any.
There was nothing in theGalveston papers that mentioned

(01:00:24):
any team that played.
And when you actually get intoleague play and you'd see the
news reports in the Houston andSan Antonio papers by the time
league play started, there wasno mention of a Galveston team
playing.
So, yeah, but it's possiblethat some of the players on the

(01:00:46):
Houston they were the polarbears that they that there was
maybe some of those Galvestonguys that they would come up to
Houston and play.
Of course there's probably a lotof pickup games and stuff when
they would get going.
That's all I could find onGalveston's connection.

Speaker 2 (01:01:03):
That's awesome.
Damn, that's awesome.
That's awesome.
Jay, did you have a couplequestions?
Oh yeah, Turn the mic on.

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
I do, I do, oh good I can turn it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:15):
Yes, yes, yes.
So you were talking about howlibraries used to be like
subscription to free.
Was there any like?
I guess, like people now haveit open to being free, like free

(01:01:36):
to go in, and then they wouldrequest items to be in there was
libraries controlling what wascoming through still, or were
they just like okay, you wantthis?

Speaker 1 (01:01:47):
Let me just get it Uh .

Speaker 3 (01:01:48):
and then when it was under the subscription kind of
model, um under, like going fromsubscription to free, because
I'm assuming there was an influxof people going into the
libraries now.

Speaker 1 (01:02:01):
Yeah, and I can't speak to specifics, but
traditionally the way it'sworked is, yeah, the public
could always request stuff, butthere would usually be a
librarian or the collectiondevelopment department that
would vet those requests and tryto build a collection.

(01:02:22):
So not necessarily everythingthat was requested, but even on
the subscription model, noteverything that was requested
would eventually be bought.
There would usually be acommittee that would review the
requests and makerecommendations, hopefully based
on some type of collectingphilosophy.
Right now we have librariesthat have what's called a
collection development policyand most libraries have one.

(01:02:43):
The libraries that do theirjobs well have one.

Speaker 3 (01:02:45):
We do at the.

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
Roseburg and it's on our website.
Go to the homepage, go to thebottom, click on policy.
You can read our collectiondevelopment policy so you know
how we make our decisions aboutwhat we add to our collection.
That's kind of the governingidea behind making those
selections.

Speaker 3 (01:02:59):
Another question is at any given time, was there any
gender or age restriction forpeople going to the library?

Speaker 1 (01:03:08):
Libraries in general, the Rosenberg in particular.

Speaker 3 (01:03:11):
Let's do libraries in general, and then Rosenberg.

Speaker 1 (01:03:14):
Quick answer for libraries in general is yes, at
different places, differenttimes, there have been various
restrictions on age and gender,as well as race and and and
whatnot.
At the rosenberg uh, I I do notknow.
Uh, I am, I could be wrong, butthere's nothing that I have
read or learned that had anyrestrictions for children or

(01:03:43):
women in the library when it wasopen as a Rosenberg.
Now, there might have beenspaces within the library that
that they didn't allow childrento go into.
Maybe they had a quiet readingroom that was maybe just for
adults, which I could certainlysee that happening, because
libraries still kind of do thattoday, not that they forbid, but

(01:04:05):
they'll maybe more control thebehavior in a space because they
want to have a quiet space.
Versus children, that's kind ofloud, and if you go to our
children's library now, exceptwhen school's in session and we
don't have homeschoolers in thelibrary, the children's
department is quiet.
That's the only time thechildren's department is ever
quiet is when school's insession and we don't have

(01:04:27):
homeschoolers at the library.
So we do get homeschoolers thatcome in during the school day
as well and we're glad to havethem.
And we're glad to have them.
Now, there's always been anissue.
If I can expand your questionto talk about race in libraries,
just because you know, for somuch of our history has been
segregated and the RosenbergLibrary was no different than

(01:05:04):
that.
But we did have one of the, ifnot the first, libraries for
African Americans at what's nowthe old central cultural center.
That was the old central high,and then so the Rosenberg had
what was then called the coloredbranch, which was the
terminology of the day.

Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
And that that is actually still written on the
side of the on the entrance tothat on 27th and M.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
Yeah, and that was something it was actually.
The community had requested theRosenberg Library Association
to open a branch there and theRosenberg Library association
agreed, uh, without any uhcontention that I could tell in
the minutes and stuff.
Uh and uh, it was one of thevery first libraries for african

(01:05:47):
americans in the state and thenthe rosenberg, you know,
desegregated pretty quietly, uh,I think like a lot of things in
Galveston, it just kind of justhappened, and when that did,
they no longer saw the need tomaintain a second you know
location and so all that justkind of got absorbed.
You know, if you go to theRosenberg Library Museum's

(01:06:10):
webpage and go to our Treasuresof the Month all the backstories
there's two or three reallynice blog posts on there about
some of those first librariansof the of the color branch and
the work that they did.
So that's a great place If youwant to learn more about that
story.
Cool.

Speaker 2 (01:06:29):
Anything else.

Speaker 3 (01:06:30):
Oh, yeah, oh yeah, okay.
And then do you ever turn awayany donation that is, I guess,
being sent to you guys to beadded to a collection or an
archive?

Speaker 1 (01:06:43):
Was it monetary?
No, but if it doesn't fit ourcollecting scope we won't accept
it.
And we have two different kindof classes and so a lot of
people always want to bring ustheir books, and all books that
are donated to the library go totheir friends at the Rosenberg

(01:07:04):
Library, and it is rare that wewill add a donated book to our
collection.
And it's not to say that thatbook is not worthy of a library
or something we would want.
The way libraries work todaypurchase books to add to the
collection.
We don't just purchase the book, we purchase the catalog record

(01:07:26):
and the spine label and all thestuff that goes to make it
ready for someone to check out.
So that we don't have to dothat, we have our acquisitions
department, for the wholelibrary is one person, so we
have one person that places allthe orders, checks the books in
when they come from the vendorand gets them sent out for the

(01:07:46):
different departments to put onthe shelf.
If that person had to also puta wrapper on the book, create
the catalog record, update thecatalog record to our database,
put the barcode on it, put theRFE all that physical processing
that goes into making a booklibrary ready, we would never
get books on the shelf.
Yeah, and so that's why mostvendors who supply books to

(01:08:10):
libraries that's one of theservices they offer that we pay
a fee for, and so it's just muchmore efficient for us to just
buy the book, uh and uh and uh,get it on the shelf that way and
then the friends can take nicebooks and sell them, and the
friends are the friends of thelibrary, do an amazing job
supporting the rosenberg.
Uh, you know we get anywherefrom 50 to 75 000 a year in

(01:08:32):
direct financial support fromthem, uh for uh, mostly for
collection development.
So they sell books so that wecan buy books, which is kind of
fitting.
But they also support some ofour programs.
They usually give us money forthe our annual Galveston Reads
program as well as our summerreading for the children, and so
so that's kind of the book side.
Then, in terms of, then interms of archival donations,

(01:08:58):
again, if it fits our collectingscope, we will generally accept
it.
We don't usually turn thoseaway.
We do get people like there'sthe Texas Immigration Company
land grants that come up on themarket all the time and we get

(01:09:18):
many of them offered to us fromtime to time, and they're
amazing because they have thisgreat little map on the bottom
of the land certificate.
That's a map of Galveston Bay.
They're a really, really coolpiece, but we've got dozens and
dozens of them.
We don't need more.

Speaker 2 (01:09:33):
Oh, they're all generic, they're all the same.

Speaker 1 (01:09:36):
It's a land certificate.
Basically the difference wouldbe who who was issued to or or
if it was even issued to anybody.
You know, maybe a signature uhon it uh might be important, uh,
but uh, uh, you know, we, wejust have so many, cause we have
the records of one of thefounders of the company, james
Morgan, and so in the JamesMorgan papers we probably have a

(01:09:57):
whole box of them issued tovarious people and whatnot.
So we try not to duplicate.
Again, space is such a commodityin archival collections so you
have to be very mindful.
We have to be mindful of beforewe accept something.
One of the questions we have toask ourselves is can we take
care of this?
Can we be a good steward ofthis collection that's being or

(01:10:18):
object that's being offered tous?
And if the answer to that is no, then we're kind of ethically
bound to say, well, no, we can'taccept this because we won't be
able to take care of it, andthat's something that you see in
archives.
And then same thing with museumobjects is that we have to ask
that same question.
I will say that museumdonations so if it's like art or

(01:10:40):
an artifact the way our policycurrently reads is those have to
be approved by our board ofdirectors before we can accept
them.
So we can tentatively acceptsomething.
We can say, okay, if it's ourcollecting soap, we can
recommend it to the board sothat the board approve our
accession of this item.

(01:11:00):
And then, yeah, that has to goto the board vote at the next
board meeting and I don't knowif at the time the board hasn't
accepted something, but yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:11:11):
You never know yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:11:12):
You're right, and so we just have to be careful of
that.

Speaker 3 (01:11:14):
But again, we have to follow our collective policy
and stuff like that, uh, so yougood, yeah, yeah, I feel like
now I'm watching tennis.

Speaker 2 (01:11:23):
I know right well mike, thank you so much for
coming in today I reallyappreciate you.
I appreciate everything thelibrary has uh helped me with
with my research and um liveevents that we've done over
there in the past year or so.
So thanks for everything, man.
I really appreciate you, thankyou.
Yeah, thanks, appreciate you R.

Speaker 1 (01:11:42):
Yeah, okay, awesome.
Next time we'll talk aboutGalveston's charter work.
Oh dude.