and welcome to another dish and a focus on tonight we'll be talking about the prince and public library and libraries in general and my guest tonight is brett bonfield who's the executive director of the princeton public library and brett thank you very much for coming on show tonight thanks for having  e i know you're busy guy a lot of things are happening at the library but before we get into that we want to talk a little bit about you so that the audience knows exactly bit about who you are and what you've done we know that you've been the executive director at the library  the library pipeline which is a nonprofit that provides opportunities funding and services for libraries and library professionals he is also treasurer of the new jersey council for the humanities and has the american library association were serves on its committ organizations and the freedom to read foundation brett oranges undergraduate tricks and markers and as masters in library science from drexel university and library journal name to a mover and shaker in two thousand and twelve which is something that not in new jersey and you know basically what you see as the future and vision of the library you know and in the years to come i love questions yeah but one of the so was so successful i  think it has everything to do with this community i think that it's a community that loves street and loves it its library and we have been fortunate to bring in a really amazing staff that really appreciates this community and that the community responds to i think that people can kind of have this very simple narrative that because it's princeton and prince and princeton has access to resources well of course it's going to be a great library but it it's not that simple i mean there are not to disparage any other communities but you know we're busier than me and it's the policies that have higher per capita incomes than princeton does and i think that the fact that prince of his chosen to invest in its library and create a new building you know roughly fifteen years ago and then the donors chose to provide funding for us to completely redo the second floor within the last year while we complete the project you know a few months back and we raised the money over the last couple of years it shows that that princeton truly believes in the idea of a public library that they support a public library and i mean just as with the schools i mean you tend to do better then municipalities that have greater resources because you connect with the people in the community and you provide the kind of education that they want for their children so we were an educational institution as well we provide instead of you know k through twelve it's students of all ages so you know birth and pre k straight through to you know retirement and and into you know older age creatively grave absolutely yeah i mean what we do is allow for self directed learning and this is a community that truly appreciates that kind of resource and of course we also have directed learning we have a lot of lectures and classes and and other programs and again i think that's something that we've invested in really heavily relative to other libraries of our size and that cuts across again ages incomes languages everything i mean  people take tech classes and they come and see authors speak and you know we have a much busier programming schedule than you'll see in almost any other library and that brings brings people in the door and you know as with you know the garden people like yeah i mean i think that it really all works well together i mean i think that if if you go to her in programming in the ignore your collection oh it's not really much of a library anymore so we certainly don't ignore the collection and and we a very very good job and my my colleagues who have been working with for the last year and a half of just really blew me away in terms of how well they really can anticipate what people are going to want to read i mean it's really easy to to react and say well you know we've got a long waiting list for this book so of course we'll buy more but to know they're going to want to read this book or they're going to want to watch this movie is truly impressive and it's almost like they're mind readers at this point where they just know it we need to have this on the shelf because this book or this movie or what is going to really hit and resonate within our community so it's it's very impressive so yeah i mean i again while we've overinvested relative to our peers in terms of the programming and classes and things like that we've done anything but neglect you know the the collection itself i mean we have fifty thousand plus movies that you can stream not just the d v d collection you can you know so and again and that's become incredibly popular and we've chosen partners for  that that provide the kinds of films and documentaries and educational courses that people in princeton really love and so you know has to work together and it's it's very impressive to be a part of all of that and  right along and that was fine up until the time when it wasn't and that time period seems to heard within the last few years so i mean there just was a study that came out that claims with some degree of specificity and and credit and credibility that isolation is is one of the chief killers in this country that people are are cut  off and isolated from each other and there are problems that arise you know in terms of you know cognition and mental focus and and that have physical aspects i mean obviously i'm a librarian i'm not a physician i can't tell you for sure if th study is entirely valid but we have seen studies over time robert putnam's bowling alone in these other kinds of studies that talk about how people can be really cut off and what they really want their library to be in addition to a place that provides programming in addition to a place that has this wonderful collection is a place to gather because we don't have quite as clubs anymore it's not necessarily the case in princeton but in general people aren't participating in religion as much as they used to and so there aren't these other kind of focal points for people to come together and so we provide study rooms for people now because we've created this second floor that doubled the number of students actually more than double that so  to nine study rooms where we have this modern technology classroom where the old classroom was only available for up to twelve people now we've had almost forty people take classes together on technology where but people also just need a quiet place to actually sit and read and so we created that for them we've created a newsroom where people can have magazines around them and where they can have i pads   so this is the second floor is this comprehensive space that allows for people to gather in multiple different ways and multiple different numbers of people everything you know from a one or two people in a study room you know up to know the newsroom where the the technology classroom and then the other thing that we've done that i think is is really exciting is for people who grew up with dewey like we did maybe really comfortable but for a lot of people do is not intuitive and do it was created you know over a hundred years ago it's been showing its age for quite some time and so we've gone to more bookstore like categories and so you know healthier cooking and things like that so for browsing you can kind of have these bookstore like categories and then within that they're doing based so for people who know do it like we do you can go right to the shelf you can say you know health and then it's the doing number but for people who just want to browse it makes a whole lot more sense we're calling them neighborhoods and we've got twenty neighborhoods where we have different collections of books around the floor in those neighborhoods are near the area where people are most likely to use and so the technology question of books is right you know the technology classroom or that poetry is right in the quiet area that sort of thing so that's that's the second floor in a nutshell but it's a lot going on there and we are really excited and people are truly responding and that's the the most exciting part i mean you go there and you just see every seat filled in so as you put it and people are booking the study rooms just like we expected and it's it's it's truly satisfying to see it's good it's a good feeling yeah so i know the labor does a lot of work with a lot of different bodies of organizations in the communities like you know the known prophets in the schools and maybe we could talk a little about that too about the work that the library is expanding itself and assisting others with yeah i mean our goal is to be a hub for all of the non profits and other services that are available to people in the community i mean we certainly have people coming to the reference desk asking questions and we make or we call the information to ask now the good you're asking questions and we make referrals and we actually started tracking the number of referrals we make to each other non profits to to restaurants or people to write you know recommendation because we actually want to be able to assess just how good we are at being partners but yeah i mean we and we started noting in our connections quarterly magazine you know when we offer a program in collaboration with the other and whether it's with the schools or labyrinth books or many many other partners we really want to be a great partner to all of the other institutions and businesses  in princeton and so in addition to working really closely with probably somewhere between sixty five and seventy five nonprofits in town we also work really close with the businesses too because that's also really important so i serve on the  umer chance association board because again we really want to make sure that that the business is understand the value of the library that we understand how to be a really good partner to the business and so it that's that's what a modern libration be and that's certainly what what we can be because of of our location and because of how people view us in this community and so we we really want others to help build us up and we want to build others up you talked about being on the board and bill huge other of how do you know whether the void worries be needs of the community that is one of the most difficult questions for public libraries i think in in k through twelve you've had your own kind of battles with with what does it mean to be assessed and are you being assessed accurately and that's certainly been going on in different self assertion self to their self assessment there is then there's assessment from that imposed on you from the outside i'm sure you could do and have done many many shows on that topic  in libraries we've had both the good fortune of soli assessing ourselves and in some ways the disadvantaged where there is no external series of guidelines that that say what a library really supposed to be so unlike public safety unlike k through twelve  education unlike health care where there are more defined metrics libraries are still working out what the accurate benchmarks should be to understand if we're doing something a bit better than the next library up the road or they're doing things a bit better than us so we came up with a plan for two thousand and seventeen that is all about objectives and key results and we've we've shared it on our website and printed it out and it's available in the library and we want people to know you know what are our five key objectives are our five major objectives are and what the key results are under each one because we want to assess ourselves as appropriately as we can to make sure that the tax dollars that are coming in to us in our in trust and with you know millions of dollars each year from the taxpayers in princeton pipe as one of the lead pipe a sort of just like the dog in monopoly people who play queer remember the lead pipe because it was kind of distinctive but the idea was that we were taking a lead pipe to the assumptions that people had about what a library is and could be and the title of the journal is much longer than most journal titles are and most of the articles are much longer than your typical journal article they were there are between two thousand and five and five thousand words and they were all published online so people aren't used to necessary certainly reading long form but the idea was to to really investigate what assumptions librarians had about what libraries were and to figure out if we could identify a problem with those assumptions and maybe offer an alternative view so everything every article was meant to identify a problem and offer a solution is meant to be you know a positive critique and and practical and  that were made and it's been going on for ten plus years all of the original founders have been able to roll off and replace themselves and the new board is phenomenal and talking about some really cutting edge issues within librarianship the kinds of things that are happening in society which are challenging and in schools that are challenging and for businesses that are challenging in fact libraries too and they're taking a really creative view on identifying those problems and offering potential  that it comes through that you have a love of books and libraries that's that's easily being seen to you is one of the broader question and that has to do with things that are happening on the national level the national level or even the state wide level as to what trends do you see happening you know with weber's you know today and you know in the years to come so on the statewide level it looks like there is going to be well there's been a bill that's been signed that would allow the voters of new jersey to decide if they want to put one over one hundred million dollars into construction for new libraries now where we're fortunate that right now we don't actually need any construction but a lot of libraries are not able to turn to local philanthropist to rebuild and so they've got all the shovel ready projects and you know they they would qualify for this funding if the voters decide that something that they want to do and so we could see a huge number of new libraries getting built and that's good for everyone even if princeton isn't necessarily benefiting directly from you know the this influx of funding that if it's  released having better libraries for us to benchmark against and having more and bigger libraries that are better funded to try new programming and try out new projects we pay attention to each other and we share resources so in the same way that you know better high schools around the area doesn't detract from princeton you know that it actually adds ideally to you know the kind of discussions that are taking place across the schools eager to see this pass and i think that can really increase the level of of library work that's being done in the state federally we are kind of in a somewhat different situation in that m  l s which is institute of museum and library studies which is the federal agency that funds library services has been on the chopping block now it's funded for next year but after that it may not continue to get funding and i am a less does not get a ton of funding i mean the they mostly have enough funding to fund research they don't really give us much money directly so it's we get almost all of our funding municipally and that's every public library that's not just princeton and we just for comparison we have over a five point five million dollar budget and we get about seventeen thousand from the state and that's the appropriation that gets passed through the state that's federal so i mean it's a tiny portion of our of our budget is federal but what i am less does is  research on assessment and research on benchmarking and researching and all these things that we really rely and so if if we lose i am less funding on it on a federal level that's going to really set us back because we're not going to be able to continue to have the kind of even basic output level benchmarking like how many people walk to the door how many books circulate or how many people attend programs or things like that if i have a lesson funding that we may not have the money to to just know even the most simple measures so something really positive happening on the state level something that's a positive happening happening federally i think i can keep going you know if you know if that it's even answering the question for you because of the two things that i'm most aware of right now that i'm  princeton and what we're able to do in the other things is you know things like net neutrality and other things around privacy dramatically affect library i think one of the things that people don't know about public libraries is we have  you know job security i mean it's really about the idea of not question research and that question the the interest that that faculty members have in researching areas across the top across the spectrum of humanity when you walk into a public library we give you that right every single person who who walks into the public library can research whatever they want we're not going to look over your shoulder we're not going to tell you not to research it and when you return it we delete the record if you're ever having borrowed it because it's it's not up to us to turn over your records to anyone else who might be interested or to get hacked and have anybody know that but you know lose been been researching syria you know i mean any number of reasons why you might be researching syria and as far as we're concerned that's up to you you know or whatever other topic that you want to research and there are you know through through different you know bills that are being introduced but certainly also just through erosions that are happening in terms of corporate practices you know through facebook or google and some of the others amazon where they're more and more invasive of people's privacy and intellectual freedom and we don't want people to have to  compromise that and so libraries are working really hard to make sure that we remain a bastion of intellectual freedom and also and privacy and confidentiality and also help educate people about how they can protect themselves from mundane but can really affect how people think about what what's ok to even search so you know g mail is sort of infamous for you know marketing pregnancy items to people who haven't told family members or coworkers that they're pregnant because they know they've done some searches or that had some e mails back and forth or whatever and and now there are companies that will actually market the ability to  tell employers whether or not their employees are likely to be present pregnant and then you know the idea is that it's for staffing right that you know you might have this person out on maternity leave but that's really invasive and people may not necessarily want to share that information for again for any number of reasons and you know we're not pushing people toward any specific area of inquiry our goal again is to just allow people to to to really research the topics that they find interesting and to feel safe doing that and there aren't that many places and in the world that allow that you know america is one of the few places where people have that assumption that they really can do research without you know i mean you know we believe we can vote here without anyone we're seeing voting rights all over the world right i mean so we're we're it's not something you take for granted and it is something that can be eroded pretty quickly so you know libraries are definitely all libraries you know school libraries through university libraries are working really hard to protect these  of the fall are the september twenty third saturday september september twenty third we have the children's book festival and for anyone who has never been to the children's book festival they are in for a treat and it's over eighty authors and just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of eager young readers and their families treating these authors like the superstars they deserve to be i'm just so thrilled just to see the books to read the books to get them to sign to talk to the people who wrote them and it's it's just an incredibly joyful day so i september twenty third should be circled on everyone's calendar and then we also have the we have an annual benefit for the library beyond words  understands public performance he's a phenomenal speaker but also as a writer he's a great writer so we're very eager to see his keynote and then elements and again talking about our partnership with local businesses elements is providing the food there also are  make the software that that it's behind the library's operations really really great i think it doesn't sound like an exciting answer until you start talking about what it could allow know what it can allow is for you to find whatever material you want really really easily either in printer online it allows you to you know arrange for renting know reserving a room or understanding you know in real time you know this program is about to start or understanding how many cars are in the parking lot and wear spots available and getting your you know your you validation taken taking place really easily or you know one stop shopping instead right now the library allows you to have access to various apps you know so if you want to be the new york times it's over here in the wall street journal is over here if you want to stream this movie it's over here but if we can synthesize all that bring it together and really make it all a seamless experience i mean i think you don't necessarily think about you know amazon or whole foods or mccaffrey's even as this kind of software developer but they make the experience so much better because their operations team their operations teams understand what a great software and so i think that it's a kind of thing that once we really get it right which i think we will do over the next probably you know three four years you'll wonder how you ever use the library before i want to thank you very much for dropping by tonight and have a great conversation and hope all goes well with the upcoming events newsmaker on focus on have a good night