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>> if you are tweeting today, use the hashtag gbf, and we need your feedback. surveys are available at the tent and on our web site. complete a survey for a chance to win a $100 visa gift card. i'm pleased to introduce author kristen green. she'll be signing books immediately after the presentation, and copies of her books are on sale in the politics & prose tent, a great partner for us this year. a quick word about buying books. even though this is a free event, it does help the book festival if you buy books. the more books we sell at our event, the more publishers are willing to send their authors here to the book festival. purchasing books from politics & prose does benefit the local economy. it supports local jobs, supports our book festival. so if you enjoy the program and you're in a position to do so, please consider buying the authors' books here today.

so let me introduce kristen. kristen green is an author who grew up in farmville, virginia, and that's important because it's important to the story. she graduated from the university of mary washington in fredericksburg. she is a graduate of the harvard kennedy school of government. she is a journalist. she most recently worked at the richmond times dispatch. prior to that, at "the boston globe" and san diego union tribune. she currently lives in richmond, virginia. she has a husband, jason, and two daughters who you'll become intimately familiar with when you read this book. so let me tell you about this wonderful book that we're presenting here today, "something must be done about prince edward county." it is a new york times bestseller, it's a washington post notable nonfiction. and for those that want to support kristen, it is up for

library of virginia people's choice award, so you can go to the web site to get this book voted as a people's choice award. it's an interesting book not only because i'm a lawyer and i love race relations topics, brown v. board of education is something that i studied in depth when i was in law school, but also for those of you that do not know that gaithersburg was voted recently the most diverse city in america. so those of us here today who live in gaithersburg may not fully appreciate that race relations were not always as they have been. and that's what this book is about. kristen grew up in farmville, virginia, in prince edward county, and for those of you that do not know this, in the wake of the seminal supreme court decision, brown v. board of education, which ruled that segregation of schools and education was unconstitutional, prince edward county was the only county in this country to close its schools rather than desegregate their schools.

and what this book is about, it's an interesting introspective where she goes back to look at her own family's involvement, her own community's involvement with this very troubling time in our nation's history. so the book will flip back and forth between the history -- which i love, i'm a nonfiction guy -- but it also talks about her own experience with that history and confronting that history. so i encourage you to listen to kristen here today, go to the politics & prose tent, consider purchasing this book or, as i did, i went on amazon and purchased the book as well. so without further ado, i'd like to bring kristen up to the stage, and let's welcome her. [applause] >> hi, everybody. thank you so much for that kind introduction, and thank you to gaithersburg for having me here today for this event. i'm glad so many of you came out, rain or shine. and i'm just thrilled to be here and to be able to share my story

with you. i grew up in prince edward county, virginia, which is the only community in the nation to close its schools for five years rather than desegregate. it was a story that i didn't know growing up. i only knew little bits and pieces of what had happened in my hometown well before i was born, is and i became a journalist and was working on the west coast when i started to develop an interest in learning more about what had actually happened in my hometown. it took a long time for me to develop a curiosity about what had happened because the story wasn't really talked about where i came from. it was kind of pushed under the rug, you know? and i think the way that the story was shared was really oversimplified. so when i -- i became a journalist and ended up moving to the west coast, and i i became a more curious person. i developed an interest in

writing about people that newspapers don't do a great job writing about, and that's people of color, immigrants, people who live in poverty. and i was working on that and moving to san diego where i became, i had friends for the first time who were people of color. i met my future husband, a multi-racial man, and became more engaged in learn aring about this history. about the same time, "the washington post" magazine did a really great, exhausting piece about what had happened in prince edward, and it was really the first time that someone who wasn't connected to me was telling a fuller story of what had happened there. and reading that made me think that i needed to learn the full story and that maybe it would actually be a good book. and that was about ten years ago. [laughter] you can have an idea of exactly how long this kind of project takes to accept that you're actually going to do the project and then take it on. let me go back to the beginning

with you and explain what i learned when i set out to write about what happened in prince edward. in 1951 a 16-year-old black girl walked out of her black high school in farmville, virginia, to protest the conditions of that school. of course, in 1951 schools were segregated, so there was a black high school and a white high school x. she had seen the white high school that was just down the street and knew how much better the facilities were at the white high school. so she led a protest with her fellow students to walk out to protest the conditions of that school. and the protest attracted the attention of the naacp in richmond, virginia, who initially wasn't interested -- weren't interested in taking on her case. but they did agree to come to farmville and meet with students and their parents there. and after seeing how dedicated these parents and students were to their cause, they told them that they would be willing to take on their case.

but it was on one condition, and that condition was that they would seek integration rather than equal facilities. a year earlier, in 1950, the naacp had changed direction and decided that equal facilities were never going to be enough and that they needed to seek desegregation in schools and in all facets of public life. and so the students who had this core committee of students who had planned for months this walkout actually had to take a vote on whether they were going to agree to go along with what the naacp was asking. and according to students who were there, their decision to go along with this only won by one vote. [laughter] that's crazy to me. and so this case ended up becoming one of five cases in brown v. board of education. so brown is an umbrella case which i didn't realize until i started reporting this, that prince edward was the only case of the five that was

student-led. and it produced 75% of the plaintiffs for the entire brown case. so i think that that case emerging from out of prince edward county is kind of what set the stage for what happened many years later when the schools were closed. i i think white leaders were embarrassed that this case was filed against them, and they suggested that they would build a black high school for the students. they would replace the high school as had been requested of them for many years if only the black students and their parents would drop this suit. but by that point, the black families wanted to move forward with the suit. and so white leaders did go ahead and build this new high school in 1953 anyway. as you know, the brown decision was handed down a year later. i think the white leaders' response to the brown decision had a lot to do with embarrassment, right? they were -- and also fear.

they were afraid that their community would be held up as an example to the rest of the nation and required to desegregate their schools as an example. senator byrd, senator harry byrd, led a pushback to brown v. board of education that came to be known as massive resistance. he believed that communities should push back to this requirement to desegregate schools and that if virginia pushed back, then the south would get behind them. and if the south, you know, refused to desegregate its schools, then the rest of the country would realize that they were never going to get on board. i don't know if he hoped that the case would be overturned. i'm not sure what his logic was there. but that was his thinking, right? and so there were a lot of people in south side, virginia, where prince edward county is located, that supported that logic. and so they -- and in prince

edward county and other locations, they formed this group called the defenders of state sovereignty and individual liberties. and in farmville that group suggested -- just six months after the brown hearings, the brown decision -- that perhaps closing the schools was something they should do to avoid desegregation if push came to shove. and i found in my research that the local are newspaper also suggested this within six months of the decision. and the pages of this newspaper that were shaping public opinion said, you know, we're going to refuse to desegregate our schools, and if we have to, we will close the schools rather than do so. so they put this idea out there very early after the brown decision. i think for me working on research, that was a real turning point, to realize that a court did not require prince edward to desegregate its schools until 1959.

the brown decision ended up coming on the backs of black families because of the way the decision was written. and even a follow-up decision didn't make clear exactly how desegregation was supposed to happen and on what timeline. so black families were forced to go to court and ask schools and school districts to admit their children, right? is so i think, i think in prince edward, you know, they were out ahead of the game and figuring that they would be forced to desegregate. this action, by saying -- they took a stand that they were going to close their schools if they had to. and realizing that they had taken that position so early, right, and that they had had so much time to come up with better options, to come up with ideas that wouldn't have affected so many children, that, for me, was a real turning point in my research. at the same time, i also realized that my own grandfather had been one of those people who

was a founding member and an officer of the defenders' organization in prince edward county. and that changed a lot for me about how i approached this book, because the book was no longer, you know, i could no longer blame my town for what had happened, but my family was also at fault. and at that point the book became much more personal. as i told you, i had met my future husband, a multiracial man, and we were planning to have children, and i knew that those children represented exactly what white leaders in my town were trying to prevent, which was a mixing of the races. that was their biggest fear. that was the thing that they most wanted to avoid. and when it became more of a personal book, then that allowed me to kind of explore my grandfather's role and how i felt about that and to look

deeper at what had happened in my hometown. so let's jump forward to 1959 when the court did finally say that prince edward county had to desegregate its schools. prince edward, white leaders had been prepared for that day, right? i said they had mentioned this idea of closing the schools. they didn't just mention it. they raised money for that five-year period to try to start a private academy should the need arise. so so they had people promising funds for that period of time. in addition, the board of supervisors there, the governing body, had gone to a month-to-month financing model so that they could just close the schools at any time, you know? if courts came to them and told them to desegregate the schools, they would be ready to immediately close the schools. so when the courts finally did require in 1959 that they desegregate, they did as they had threatened to do and voted

not to fund the schools. and by not funding the schools, they shut down all public education in prince edward county. the moment that decision was made, these people that had been planning for years to start a white academy went ahead and launched one, and they did so by calling all the white churches in town, the white, you know, volunteer groups and kind of civic organizations and asking if they could use basements of their churches and use the rotary halls in order to hold classes for the white children. their plan was to have a school up and running come fall of 1959 so that white children would have somewhere to go. black students did not have this opportunity. i mean, for them to have started a private academy would have gone against what they were trying to accomplish, right? and so -- and i also think that

they didn't, nobody really knew how long the schools would be closed. even oliver hill, the naacp attorney from richmond, couldn't believe that white leaders were really going to go through with this, right? that they would really close all public schools. they thought this was a threat. and even though, you know, the doors had already been locked in the summer of 1959, he was convinced that the schools would still reopen that fall. some families, black families that were worried that their kids wouldn't be able to graduate went ahead and made plans for their children. particularly like the kids who were older, you know, juniors and seniors in high school. everybody realized how important it was for those kids to get a diploma. i mean, if you think about today how important it is, at that time for a black child to get a diploma a really meant something. so these families had worked so hard for that moment that they were trying to find ways that their kids could graduate. and so some students were sent

to live with family members, you know, older sisters or aunts in the north in particular. some students went and lived at a college in north carolina, an ame church related school that was -- that had agreed to take in about 60 students from prince edward county. and then the black churches also started these training centers in the basement of their churches where they were not considered schools, and they were not taught by official teachers, and they were not full-day programs, but they were meant to engage young students so they could have some involvement with schooling even though they wouldn't be going to school that year. and so parents of younger kids did send their kids to those training centers. but i have to tell you the vast majority of black children did not go to school that year and did not go to school in subsequent years.

nobody had any way of knowing that the schools would be closed for as long as they were. so children who were old enough went to work in the fields with their parents. i mean, and that exfrom income -- extra income, i mean, most people in prince edward were tobacco farmers, and so the extra income they could get from extra hands actually meant something to those families. and so it was a positive in that way. but it also meant that when the schools would reopen many years later, the students were lost. they had been working all those years. they weren't going to go back to school. and so this generation of children came to be known as the lost generation because so many of them were denied an education. on the other hand, i just want to point out that there were many families who made huge sacrifices so that their children could be educated. and that wasn't something i realized going into this. i really wanted to write this book, because i wanted to tell

the stories of those children who were telephoned an education, and i want -- who were denied an education. and there were so many different trajectories of what their lives looked like after the schools were closed. the one thing i had never considered was the way that families were torn apart once that decision was made, that because families really wanted their children to be educated, you know, i write about the ward family in the book where the two oldest children were about to graduate. they had a rising senior and a rising junior. and so those children were sent to the ame church school in north carolina, and then a younger daughter who was entering high school, ninth grade, would live with her grandparents in a neighboring county during the week, and then on weekends she would come home to her mom and dad. but dad was working second and third jobs in order to provide the money that these kids needed to be at grandma's house and to be at a school in north carolina. and so betty jean, the ninth

grader, told me it was like it ripped their family apart. they went from being this happy, joyful family where friends were coming and going all the time, you know, they lived right in the heart of farmville to really being, like, she and her mom on the weekends at the dinner table. and they would never be a family like that again except for christmas time. they never would sleep under the same roof again like they did then. and i came to find that that ripping apart of families really echoed the indignities of slavery, you know? and i had never thought going into the project about what that would be like, to have your children just, you know, ripped away from you so that they could get an education. those stories of the children and what their lives looked like after the schools closed were some of the most meaningful parts for me of reporting this book. there's one student who's a really good student, and she was 9 years old when the schools closed. and her dad promised her that no

matter what she would get an education. and he was going to see to that. she and her brother would walk three miles each way to one of those training centers. her neighborhood school had been only a mile away, so that was much further. and the students, the white students would pass by on the bus and spit out the window as she was walking to this church training center. they did that for two years, and on and off she would ask, she would ask her dad like, dad, when are we going to go to a real school? he would keep reminding her, yeah, you are going to go to a real school one day, i'm going to make sure. and finally after two years and there had been no movement towards reopening the schools, he decided he had had enough. he worked at the railroad, and he had a project in an adjoining county, and some of his white peers at the railroad helped him to rent a house in appomattox county. and it was rundown house that really wasn't habitable, and

they set out to make that house appear habitable. he worked on the front yard cleaning it up, and he repaired broken windows, his wife sewed curtains for those windows. but it wasn't until the year the school began, her dad was going to drop her off behind the house each morning with her brother, and they were to stand behind the house until they heard the bus coming down those county roads. and it was then and only then that they were to go through the back door of the house, through the house, out the front door, through the front yard and up the steps of that big bus. and they were never to tell anyone that they didn't live there, because if they did, their education would be at stake. that story just gives me shivers even today every time i think about, you know, what she had to endure to get an education and what her parents were willing to

sacrifice to make sure that happened. years later that woman, dorothy holcomb, became a school board member in prince edward county. she also worked at the state employment office in prince edward county, and kids she knew from her neighborhood would come in seeking unemployment benefits or looking for jobs, and she would have to go to the other side of the desk and help them fill out the forms because they were illiterate. so this five-year period of not having school, you know, not only affected those can kids and their parents -- those kids and their parents, but it has affected generations of children in prince edward county, right? because the illiteracy of those parents has resulted in their children not being as literate as they would have been otherwise, right? and i think about all of the myriad of other effects of not having an education.

it means not only you didn't get to achieve your dreams in life, but the economic situation that they were in would have been totally different had they had a high school diploma, had they been able to go to college, right? it might have meant that they could leave that town and get better jobs. it might have meant they could buy a house. so the impact on that generation and subsequent generations has been really significant. and that's part of what i wanted to explore in this book too. i also wanted to hook at what those -- to look at what those public schools looked like after they reopened and the effect on the town today. so that white academy that my grandfather and other white leaders helped to found that year in 1959 when the schools were closed, both of my parents attended that school. they later returned to prince edward county and enrled my brothers and me in that school. and i was a student there in 1986 when prince edward academy, when it was then known, finally admitted black students. i found in my research that the

only reason it did so was in order to have its 501(c)(3) nonprofit status restored which had been taken away for discrimination. when i was interviewing the man who was the headmaster of the school the whole time i was a student there and i said, you know, when you integrated prince edward academy -- i referred to it as integrating. he said, huh-uh, when we admitted black students. so that told me a lot about what the thinking had been for so many years about race relations in that town and where the academy stood in relationship to the public schools. i found in my research that -- i mean, my belief is that the town would be better off if there were only the public school system because such a small community in rural virginia is unable to really fully support two school systems. and without the support of those white families who for generations have supported the

private schools, the public schools aren't really able to prosper in the way that they need to. and i think many public leaders still view the schools as the black schools and continue to support it as such. and so i find that the school system is underfunded and inadequately supported by the whole community. it's not embraced as the whole community's public school system. i want to wrap up so that i can take a few questions. we just have a few minutes left. yes, ma'am. >> [inaudible] >> what got the public schools reopened, is the question. good question. it actually required another supreme court decision. yeah, in order to reopen the schools. and that was 1964. a lot of people really had hopes that the kennedy administration would be able to do something and reopen them sooner. but they had just as much trouble doing that as, you know, black leaders did in building sport in prince edward.

so it did require another supreme court decision, and it was a full five years. yeah. yes, sir. >> you lived there -- [inaudible] what do you think there was about the mindset of those who lived in farmville that set that apart from the rest of the south where they said we will not come my, we will close? >> you know, i don't know that it was something about the mindset that made them, that set them apart from the rest of the south. i think -- the only thing i can come up with that makes sense is that they were really, truly embarrassed about being part of that supreme court decision, of being one of those five cases. and i think that that made them really want to do something to push back. and i think that senator byrd, you know, had a huge authority

in that town and was meeting behind the scenes with, you know, prominent leaders there. and so maybe -- they may have used themselves as a test case, you know? they may have thought, like, if we can do this, then other communities can do this. i mean, and there is evidence to support some parts of that. like, the white leaders that had created that academy that i attended created a little booklet explaining how to do this. and they suggested to atlanta and to new orleans that those communities were also capable of doing what little, teeny prince edward county had done. and they were traveling around the country like espousing these views that if you want to shut down your schools and start a white academy, here's how you do it. and so, you know, i don't know that they had some particular viewpoint that was really different than the rest of the south, they just might have had more will to do it because of the back history there. i can take maybe one more question if anybody has one. yes, sir.

>> how difficult was it to find the students, and what kinds of interviews did you conduct? >> how difcult was it to find the students. you know, i've been a reporter for 20 years, i have never covered a story that was so rich with people you could interview. i basically had to stop interviewing people at a point where i reached so many. i have to give a little plug for mollton high school which was the school those students walked out in protest. it is now an amazing civil rights museum. if you're ever in virginia and have a chance to go to prince edward county, i really encourage you to go to the museum. they're a great partner in that community to help heal the rift between blacks and whites there is. blacks can come in and tell their stories of what happened to them, whites can tell their stories and learn about the history that they were never taught. and when i was live anything prince edward reporting the book for one summer, i went to every event there for, you know, over the summer and went to weekly events there for a couple of

years. and there are so many students who were affected that, i mean, i really could, like, walk into a grocery store and probably find, you know, five in a single outs to walmart -- outing to walmart. it was very rich with students that had lived that experience and from various perspectives, you know?

[inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> hello, good morning. welcome to the seventh annual gaithersburg book festival. i'm a longtime supporter of the festival. more importantly, i'm a friend of mayor judd ashman whose inspiration and leadership created this event. he gave me the opportunity to introduce this author and book today. mayor ashman did not order rain for this year's event, but i think he does take credit for the past six years of sunny book festivals.

thank you for being here today despite the rain. gaithersburg is a wonderful city that proudly supports the arts and humanities. we are pleased to bring this fabulous event thanks in part to the generous support of our sponsors and volunteers. when you see them, please say thank you. a few announcements. for consideration of everyone here, please silence all devices. and this is being recorded by c-span today. if you're tweeting, use the hashtag gbf. we need your feedback. surveys are available here in the tent and on our web site. complete a survey for a chance to win a $100 visa gift card. joanne conrath bamberger will be signing books immediately after the session. a quick word about buying books. even though this is a free event, buying books here does help the book festival.

the more books we sell at the festival, the more publishers will want to send their authors here to speak with us. purchasing books from our partner, politics & prose, benefits the local economy, supports local jobs and supports our book festival. so if you enjoy this program and you're in a position to do so, please buy a book. joanne bamberger is a journalist. an award-winning writer, attorney and a publisher and editor-in-chief of the broadside, a noted digital magazine. joanne contributes commentary and analysis to outlets including msnbc, cnn, fox news, good morning america, xm radio, al-jazeera america,bbc radio, "usa today" and others. she has also written for "the washington post," the daily beast, the washingtonian magazine, the washington

examiner, legal times and others. working mother magazine called her one of the most powerful moms in the social media, and she was a 2011 finalist for the prestigious social media award. it should be no surprise then that she has undertaken to write this book, "love her, love her not: the hillary paradox," about a woman who is attempting to break the ultimate glass ceiling, the presidency. this book, publishers weekly says, will please those with an endless fascination of all things hillary. it is a collection of about two dozen essays edited by ms. bamberger, written by a collection of women authors, all women authors, sharing their views on hillary clinton, whether you love her or love her not. please welcome ms. joanne bamberger to gaithersburg and our seventh annual book festival.

ms. bamberger. [applause] >> thank you, tom. thank you for that wonderful introduction. thank you to everybody for coming out on this lovely day. the e-mail that i got yesterday from carolyn who puts this wonderful event together said, don't worry, it's just liquid sunshine. [laughter] so thank you to the gaiters burg book festival. i apologize in advance for my rain hair. there's nothing i can do about it. [laughter] some of you probably understand. so when i started putting this book together, obviously, hillary had not yet announced that she was going to run for president. so it was a bit of a gamble, but we figured probably not too much of a gamble that hillary had probably pretty much made up her mind in 2014 when we started this project. and it's something that the question of the love her, love her not and sort of more interestingly this whole likability question that we hear so much about in the media is something that's really

fascinated me not just to her, but to really all of us as women and women who work and sort of what are the different standards that we hold for men and women especially in the national spotlight. so when hillary was running in 2008, this whole likability question came up. it was talked about a lot in the media, and i think it was highlighted in the january 2008 debate when one of the questioners said to the her that -- to her that a lot of the voters liked her ideas, but they found barack obama to be more likable than her and how did she feel about that. and she said, well, that hurts my feelings, but i'll try to go on. [laughter] and that probably would have been the end of it, and i'm not sure we would have really thought about it much more if

then-senator barack obama hadn't, with a bit of a side eye, said, well, you're likable enough, hillary. and sort of in that moment i felt, and it seemed like that a lot of voters sort of stopped paying as much attention to her because they just didn't find her likable for whatever reasons.

>> i started doing some research into this whole question, and it doesn't take much. you'll find a variety of articles with titles like hillary clinton's likability problem, must hillary be likable, saying nice things about hillary clinton has become a subversive act. wait, does hillary clinton have a likability problem? hillary clinton doesn't have a likability problem, we do. so it's something that, obviously, the media talks about a lot, but there's not much depth there. they just sort of throw those things, those words to out and say, well, she's just got too many problems, and we just don't like her, and why would we vote for her because of that there's

a book called unlikable about hillary. can she be stopped, hillary clinton will be the next president of the united states unless -- dot, dot, dot. and on top of that, i discovered that there has been so much academic research into hillary clinton since the 2008 election. titles like rhymes with blunt, texts and betweens from hillary and is she attractive enough. there are books written about her and sexism in the media, and there's so much -- and growing every day -- that i've come to the conclusion by the end of this race whatever happens, there will be enough for a full curriculum in hillary studies. so taking all that into account, it became clear to me that we have manager of an obsession

with hillary clinton -- something of an obsession with hillary clinton. but sort of in a bigger scope, it's not just about hillary. it's about women leaders, women in the national spotlight and how do we look at them. and using hillary clinton as a lens through what women have to go through. there's also been research done on this whole likability question. in the last few yearses, an organization called the barbara lee family foundation which does a lot of work with women who run for elective office, harvard has done research, the pew research center, and they've found that for women voters to find women candidates qualified, they have to also find them likable. by, like, a 90% margin. it's kind of crazy. and on the flipside, women voters -- to find male candidates qualified -- do not have to find them likable. so two words: donald trump. he obviously wasn't in the picture when i started working on this book, but i think he

bears that out. so again the question was that's really nice, that's really interesting, but why? where is the meat on the bones of this? how do we figure out why we have all these feelings? and i finally came to the conclusion that the way to get to the bottom of it was not really to keep more research -- keep doing more research, but to start asking women voters of all political types, ages, backgrounds, affiliations to get as diverse group as possible to answer that question and ask them why they felt the way they felt about hillary, how it impacted how they viewed her as a candidate and whether it would impact whether they would vote for her or not. and one of the conclusions that i came to writing this book is that for hillary clinton to win, she has to be perfect. and perfect is different for each one of us. and and how do you thread the needle of being perfect? that you almost have to be mary

poppins, practically perfect in every way. but it's different for every person. and we live in a culture where that message is sent to women, especially high achieving, more professional women. we've got the whole "lean in" book that came out and that whole movement basically saying we weren't working hard enough or we weren't doing enough, we weren't being quite perfect must have to get ahead in our careers. and we're bombarded constantly with articles and the cultural issues about do we need to reinvent ourselves, you know? how can we change ourselves to be better or more perfect in our careers. so i reached out to these women, and i asked them, i said here's a list of essay ideas, and let's talk about your ideas. and i loved that so many of the women came back to me and said, well, that's a really nice list of topics, but i have another idea which just sort of confirmed more for me that we all have these various feelings about hillary clinton. and, ultimately, i think what

came out of this book is that we hold women leaders -- especially those who seek national office -- to a standard that's really almost unachievable. because if you, if you are a democrat who agrees with her ideas, it would seem that you would logically want to support her. and there were so many things that, that came out of this that suggested that's just not the case. so i'm going to, in a minute, i'm going to read a little bit from the introduction and read you some of the titles of the essays, kind of give you a better flavor of what that is. some of the essays are by people you'll recognize probably. sally kohn from cnn, nancy giles from cbs sunday morning is in the book as well as some, you know, new and rising writers. elise saw worthington, i wrote

an essay as well as the introduction. emily -- [inaudible] from the american spectator. you know, there's conservatives in the book as well who have things to say about hillary. and a woman from memphis who produces a podcast called hey, that's my hummus. and it's a multi-ethnic, multi-religious podcast about issues and coming together. the essay topics range from millennials who found it to be a plus, not a minus, that hillary stayed with bill after monica lewinsky as well as baby boomers who have a hard time forgiving hillary for that decision. there are conservatives who won't vote for her but who admire her for the path that she's taken and paved for all women. there are women who couldn't support her in 2008 because of judgment of her life choices, but who have had a change of heart in 2016 because of their own personal experiences. one of her neighbors from chappaqua has written one of the essays, and i visited the neighbor's to house, and we

laughed, and we sort of paraphrased sarah palin by saying, well, i can see her house from my porch -- [laughter] which she actually can. and one woman wrote an essay who was a teen during the clinton years in arkansas. and, yes, there is a pantsuit's cay. [laughter] but it's -- essay. but it's not really about pantsuits. i thought when i started this project that there was nothing original that could possibly be written about hillary's pantsuits, and i was completely wrong. and it's actually, i mean, they're all my favorites, but it's actually one of my favorite essays because it really talks about how, more broadly about how women are judged and how we present ourselves and what we wear and how we do our hair and how hillary's evolution inspired this one writer to sort of just own that and really stop worrying about it so much. so i'm going to read a little bit -- let me read some of the essay titles, too, and then i'll

read some of the introduction. worshiping the brilliance of hillary's pantsuits. i don't need hillary clinton to be perfect. a krone of my own, hillary clinton and the general-ex feminist experience. without hillary clinton, what would conservatives have to write about? one is from a bernie supporter entitled hillary for president of the universe. a yankee in a southern belle's port. six degrees of hillary clinton: my chappaqua neighbor. won't let the team down this time. there are some that address some of the more serious issues like whether she can be commander in chief or not, what kind of family issues she should be addressing and one very humorous one entitled flotus, is scotus, potus, shmotus. [laughter] that's not mine. i'm going to read from the introduction and, hopefully, we'll have time to take some

questions at the end. our country has a very complicated relationship with hillary clinton. some people love her for her fearless advocacy work around the world with women and girls, some people hate her because they think she's a wicked political opportunist. some are confused, teetering on the fence, wanting a woman elected president during their lifetimes, but they're just not sure hillary is the one. conspiracy theorists from her husband's days in the white house claim she can't be trusted because there's a complicated joint clinton plan for each of them to be president. she's been called the most hated first lady by "the new york times" but was voted the most admired woman mt. world 17 times in gallup's annual poll. progressives, who should be active in her campaign, yearn for another democrat, any other democrat, and some gop women are looking for a way to support her without feeling like republican benedict arnolds. she's nagging, cofiving and

controlling. and -- conniving and controlling. don't forget polarizing. she's a powerful advocate and a thoughtful friend. she's obsessed with power. and she's a selfless champion for others. when it comes to hillary clinton, we just can't seem to make up our minds about whether we admire her for all the things she's englished or whether -- accomplished or whether we detest her because she's a woman who's not afraid to admit her own ambitions for political power. hillary even started getting criticism from both sides of the political fence minutes after she announced her 2016 candidate i for president osen the details of how and when it happened. why was it on a video? why not a live announcement? is she pushing the estrogen factor too hard? our endless fascination with all things hillary gives her a national profile most poll to decisions can only -- politicians can only dream of. the law firm partner, the first lady, the wellesley graduate, the presidential candidate. but, of course, there are the

hillary distractions; the pantsuits, the nutcracker, the hair styles, the vanishing e-mails that most white house hopefuls are glad they never have to worry about. there's no doubt that when it comes to the range of emotions americans feel about hillary, she is in a category all her own. she's on the receiving end of a visceral level of love and hate that transcends that of almost all of her potential opponents. but how have we become so conflicted over one woman with the kind of goals and ambitions that most of us would encourage in our mothers and daughters? given the various levels of conflicting emotions clinton brings out in so many of us, one has to wonder whether our hillary obsessioning deserves its own -- obsession deserves its own therapeutic diagnostic code. the media jabs about her age and looks which gave rise to various act academic explorations aren't going away. the same vengeance as it was in

2008 as evidenced by headlines like affluent grandmother is 2016's front runner. while others suggest that a grandmotherly hillary, along with her daughter chelsea, could be the 2016 mother/daughter secret campaign weapon we've all been waiting for. the good news is that if her critics' concerns over her age are carried to their logical conclusion, a postmenopausal hillary will at least be awake for the infamous three a.m. phone call whether it be from hot flashes or age-related insomnia. [laughter] so where is the love? high profile supporters like feminist gloria steinem contended in 2008 that hillary was much more qualified than barack obama, noting that if obama had been a woman, she would have been skewered over her lack of qualifications. hillary is worshiped in culture peoples like bff -- memes and that now-famous text

highlighting secretary clinton in her bad as is s shades and blackberry looking as if she were already running the world while others, including president obama and vice president biden, vied haplessly for her attention. so why do we play the hillary love/hate card with such vigor? i believe it's less about whether she voted for war in iraq, what she knew about benghazi, her votes in the senate or, as she once infamously remarked, whether she should have forsaken her professional goals to stay home, bake cookies and have teas. i think it's because she has dared to embrace through her life more than one version of herself, presenting a three-dimensional view of modern womanhood rather than a portrayal that so many of us expect of politicians, especially women, in the harsh national spotlight. hillary clinton brazenly dared to step out in the most public of ways from our expectations of women in general and first ladies in particular.

she landed in one of the most gendered roles in america, that of first lady of arkansas, when her husband served as the youngest governor in the country, and she's been trying to escape the constraints of that role ever since. in 1992 at the age of 45, she was the kind of first lady we had never seen on the national stage, someone who was already an accomplished professional in her own right with a life separate from that of her husband that she dared to cultivate. but for many voters, even decades after women's lib, she was viewed more as a wife who didn't know her place rather than someone representing the majority of women at the time, those working outside the home in their own careers. they was deemed too big for her britches, she was too ambitious for a politician's wife. she was too educated. she was too smart. some said smarter than her husband. who knew whether we could trust a woman with that kind of

agenda. so i go on in the introduction to explore some of the other research that we talked generally about, and then hand it over to the women who write the essays who really have done an amazing job exploring all these various aspects about her. and the one thing i've really found interesting and rewarding in this whole process is that so many people who have read the book have said, you know, i never thought about her that way regardless of a -- which essay was about. it made them sort of take a step back and think about not just how they viewed her, but how we view women in politics and on the national stage, and, you know, whether we should sort of think about things differently, especially when we don't hold men to the same standard that we hold women to. so i'd love to take any of your questions. yes. >> [inaudible] have you ever met hillary, and do you know if she's read your

book? >> have i ever met hillary, and do i know if she's read my book. i have not met hillary. i saw bill clinton once many years ago at some, you know, huge, massive event. i met chelsea at the clinton global initiative several years ago as part of a press event, but i've never met hillary. i don't know if she's read the book. i know that shortly after it came out i was contacted by some of her people who said they had gotten wind of the book, and could i provide them a copy and, obvious, which i did. and reached out to them a couple of times and said, so, hope you got the book. don't know if you have any thoughts, i would love to hear from you, and i have not heard anything back. not surprisingly. i mean, to be honest, there's a wide range of opinion in this book. there is no outright i hate hillary or i completely love hillary. it's much more nuanced. and so i'm guessing maybe that, they felt they didn't have to

worry about that. [laughter] i think -- >> i'm of the same generation of hillary roughliment my sense was men were being raised to be successful, and women were being raised with the message to be nice. and i'm just wondering if there's anything in the book or your research that has supported that idea of how important nice is to women of that generation plays into this. >> so the question is, you know, that men are raised to be successful and women are raised to be nice and sort of how does that play into the research and the various essays. that's true, and i think that's sort of borne out by the research from the barbara lee family foundation, the whole that you have to be likable to be seen as qualified as a woman whereas male candidates don't need that. and so what does that mean, to be likable, you know? there is a certain niceness element to that and how you treat people.

i think that's cheerily, we've -- that's clearly, we've clearly seen that with the candidates we have now. and when we look at donald trump and how he yells on the campaign trail, how bernie sanders yells, regard less of what you think of their political views, it's easier for them as men to get away with that than it is for her. there's so much about, you know, is she shrill, is she yelling, and i think that's shorthand for is she nice enough, yet to be leader of the free world, commander in chief, you know, that's sort of the flip side of that coin. and that's addressed, there are a couple essays that whether we're ready to see a woman as commander in chief. can she be tough enough or will she be viewed as too nice. and i think, sadly, still in our culture today women have to sort of walk that line. you have to be nice but firm. you have -- and find a way to thread that needle.

hopefully, we will be able to see that whether it's with hillary clinton or some other woman candidate in our lifetimes. .. >> how is she going to deal with the donald trump/hillary clinton, how does she deal with his yelling and not being nice and how does she campaign against that? we saw her dip her toe into that this week.

interestingly she was on the campaign trail and there was a headline, and hillary is marking donald trump on the campaign trail and how horrible it was that she was buying into and taking that. when i watched the video, what was hardly marking, was barely even doing any sort of imitation of him, it was so slight. given that reaction, people often just read the headlines and don't watch what is going on she has to be careful and i was talking about this with someone the other day and not that i am a campaign advisor in any way but i would like to see her own who she is, just the you. that is going to be different in every situation. she gets criticized for that, which hillary are we going to see but none of us are two dimensional figures, we all have our nice faces, stern faces,

firm faces and everything else and i would like to see her own that but not take his face. when any candidate take debate of another candidate that is not a good thing. you had a question. >> women -- how do you think men judge hillary? that is as interesting as women judging women? >> the question that the book focuses on, women judging women and what about men and do i not find men judging women not as interesting? the thing that got me was the research on how women view women candidates differently than male candidates and that is what i wanted to focus on and that is why i made the decision to have just women writers in the book. that said i haven't come across

that must research and possibly that is because that is how it has been. that has been our standard. we had male candidates and often publicly judged women. women judge women just as much but i wanted to explore this question especially because it is such a cultural issue like a magazine, tv show, how women judge each other. we have the real housewives and how does that impact how we as women view other candidates. that is what i wanted to explore. we have time for one or two more quick questions. >> hillary's capability for personal characteristics were called out the most in the essayist discussion of her likability. >> which characterization -- >> capabilities, experience, which are the most prominent in their discussions of her

likability? >> which prominent in her discussions of likability, the positives i think people focused on is that she is just as much if not more so a policy whomp like her husband and to the extent she talks about issues she wants to advocate for she knows the facts, she knows the figures. whether you agree with those are not are a different issue but they found that is one of the things they liked about her the most when it came to her likability. the flip side of that coin which you didn't ask about that fascinated me is there were so many women in the book who on some level felt that they could not forgive her for not leaving bill over the monica lewinsky scandal and whether they could trust her and felt she put her ambition ahead, i was shocked at that. the more i thought about it the more i thought -- a teen boy

said she is not a feminist because she didn't leave bill and i said isn't that the most feminist thing she could have done? if she had the idea she was going to run for president at that time she wouldn't let that put her off course? i was shocked that on some level that sort of undercurrent runs through the book and how do we as people as women voters get past that? so i think we are out of time but thank you so much for coming out. i really appreciate it. thank you. [inaudible conversations]

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>> hello! good morning! welcome to the seventh annual gaithersburg book festival. my name is jean taft. i am a committee member of the festival and publicity manager at johns hopkins university, glad to have you here. let me make a couple announcements. gaithersburg is wonderful city that support the arts and humanities. we are pleased to bring this wonderful event thanks to the generous support of our sponsors and volunteers. please say thank you to them. for the consideration of everyone here please islands all devices that might make any noise. if you are tweeting please use hashtag gbs. we need your feedback. surveys are available here and on our website. if you complete a survey you enter a chance to win a $100 visa gift card. a quick word about buying books. even though it is a free event it helps if you buy a book. our friends are here on site to brave the weather and would

really appreciate your support. purchasing books from our partner supports local jobs and support our book festival. please enjoy the festival and the program today, buy a book and come back and see us. i don't think i'm going out on a limb saying if you are here or watching at home you are probably a book nerd. i wish that was cooler when i was a kid. it doesn't have the same taste it does now. i remember going to a library, my mothe

cover a lot of ground today and one thing i want to get to his libraries are not always what you think, not the exact shelves and that is it. we have a bunch of great people here to talk about stuff. i want to give a brief introduction to what their job titles are and let our panelists talk about what they do and get into some questions and ask questions later on. bear with me a minute and i will introduce people and have them tell you a little bit about themselves. at the far end we have becky clark, director of library of congress publishing office which collaborates with private sector for consumer products based on

library collection was next to her we have maryellen, virtual service manager for montgomery county public library in rockville, maryland, she has a social media preference, next to her we have emily, executive director of the american library association where he has been the past 17 years. next to her we have keira, review director for the library journal and school library journal and also a former head of children services at darien library. and to give you a quick synopsis of what they do beyond their title, this is some of the fun. >> a pleasure to be here today. i am director of publishing at the library of congress. i joined the library in march of this year so i am very new.

i was previously one of jean's colleagues at johns hopkins university press when i was with educational outreach and i can say jean never stole any change during the time we worked together. omission of the publishing office is to publish or cope publish work that would include books as well as what we call sidelines for the industry, calendars, posters, notecards that illuminate or shed light on the library collection. our most recent book is revealing new york at the other half. if you haven't had enough literary business today and happen to be in washington monday there is going to be a books and beyond talk about the new book monday in the madison building at the library of congress from 12:00 to 1:00 so it would be great to have you there. all the events of the library are free. >> i am happy to be here.

i am from montgomery county public library, from your local library if you live here. i manage our virtual services for the library system. we have a very robust website with access to our catalog and e-books and the magazines, downloadable music and it is all available for free with your library card so we have 21 locations with active programming. and bring your children and family and it is all free. we have outreach teams here today, hope you will stop by and say hi to them at their table and they can tell you more about our services. >> good morning. i am emily and i have the best job in the world because it is my job to make sure people in this country have access to the best libraries. i get to talk to all kinds of librarians and find out the

innovative things they are doing and make sure congress passes no law that restricts them from continuing to make those things available. i also try to make sure the funding is available so that everybody no matter where you live get access to the best services because we are not your grandmother's library anymore. we are books, magazines, movies, also music, the internet, the computer, 3-d printers. people in our community want it, the library will work very hard to make sure it is available to them. that is my job, to make sure that can happen. in washington we do government relations, working with congress and the federal government. also the legal system, making sure if there is a law that is

going to be restrictive we try to overturn it in the courts, also supporting other lawsuits to make sure services are available. we most recently were involved in the google book search suit to make sure google could continue to make books available, all books available online and also information technology policy. 3-d printers, we are working on all of that and that is why i love my job and you should love your library. >> good morning. i in the review director for publications called library journal and school library journal. if you haven't heard of them that is okay because they are publications mostly read by librarians. my job is to be in charge of the editorial piece that review several thousand books every

year. in excess of 12,000 books and materials, publishers, the big 5 publishers, medium-sized, independent small presses and even self publishers send all the books and materials is our job is to review it because librarians when they are building their collections and making materials available to the public they need to know that what they are buying is good and that they are spending their budget dollars on materials that will be useful and appreciated and used by their community so are publications help them do that. >> thank you for introducing yourself, much better job than i could have done. we will ask questions to the panel, everyone feel free to jump in and add and subtract however you might want to react. we will start with keira for a second. although you are now carrying the front end, people are

deciding on books and worked in a library, several libraries, behind the scenes, how a collection works. if you were to start a library today, how would we start it? >> every library is different because every community is different and when you talk about building a collection your first starting point is your community, your patrons, looking at the demographics in the surrounding community, what people want, what people need, what are the age groups that are coming into your community center and starting their. if you are looking at a specialized library like a law library or medical library it would have what we call a deep collection, narrow focus but what is in that subject area superdeep, many materials digging into that one field.

your average public library would want breadth. not as much depth but a breadth of collection because you have babies coming in with parents for storytime looking for great books to read aloud. you have teens working on assignments that need research. you might have business leaders needing access to financial information or jobseekers so depending on your community needs that will determine what kind of collection you want so that is the broad sort of answer. more specifically looking at your budget and how much money you have to spend, libraries are not just books and materials, a huge part of our budget a big part of what we do is get nothing, give it away for free but there are also services and programs and trying to figure out the balance in your spaces. >> take a quick second to tie it into library journal school, if someone working at a publisher, publications you work for our

basic fundamental first step, explain that. >> the magazines that i work for we feature stories and columns and what is happening in the library field and innovative libraries and programs and services but a big bulk of it is that material review so we have a core of several thousand librarians who are volunteer reviewers, we send them the books and they think about it and they write their reviews with that audience in mind. peers writing for peers. when a librarian sits down to think about i need to buy some new fiction for my collection they want to know what the book is about first of all because there are thousands, tens of thousands of books being published every single year and more and more it seems like. if you heard the reports that print is dead or dying don't believe it, print is alive and well. come to my book room and i will

show you the many boxes of books we get every single week. librarians are faced with a deluge of material coming out, what do i buy, how do i buy it, that is what reviews do, give them a book they need so they don't have to read every single title and understand what they are getting. that is our main purpose but a great library and will never read one review. other sources like publishers weekly, kirkus reviews, a great library and will never just read one source, she will be as diverse as possible and try to get diversity of opinion before making a selection. >> you were saying earlier you might not be familiar with the magazine. the reason you should be familiar with a magazine like library journal or publishers work lee is they do three publication reviews. when looking at your local newspaper, their reviews tell you the book is coming out months down the road. savvy book people who want to get ahead of the curve i

recommend looking at library journal. when we talk about libraries we often times, at least i tend to think more of public libraries. the second you talk a little more about the role of academic libraries. >> the most important thing a library can do is serve the community that surrounds us. for a public library that is a geographic face for geographic library, academic library, scholars and students who are on campus or within a campus system. last week i heard a conference speaker discussed the difference between information and knowledge and i think that is a distinction that is really helpful in appreciating the importance of libraries. at their most basic level libraries are repositories of information but it is what they do to share that information through lending, programming and publishing that enables their patrons to transform that

information into knowledge that is meaningful to their lives. the libraries can't fulfill that role effectively without understanding the needs of the communities they serve so the constituents of academic libraries are scholars and students and the activities that inform and support knowledge transformation in the campus library are focused on effective research and scholarly communication so in recent years academic libraries have become less quiet than they used to be. when i was in college a long time ago the library on campus was very very quiet. if you went in there to study you went in there to study alone. you were not there to talk about anything with your fellow students. he went into a study room and locked yourself in and didn't say a word to anybody. today that is very different. there is a recognition on campus, it is a social process

of academic libraries who created spaces for students and faculty members can come together and have conversations, study together, do work groups. i was attending a seminar at the university of north texas just yesterday and we were in a seminar room and there was a student group in the seminar room next to us and i don't know, i think they were doing a role-play of some sort because they were really loud and animated and at first we were tempted to knock on the window and shush them the way librarians are supposed to do, used to do. but that social process, that information and exchange is what transforms information into knowledge. >> anyone who wants to jump and jump in but i want to work through some questions i was interested in knowing. one of the things you were talking about earlier is you

were talking about funding and a lot of interesting stuff in this area of the country. in the dc office whether it is lobbying or policy your bills, what are the things, you mentioned google books. what are the topics you are working on as far as issues right now? >> the big issues for us ivy implementation of the new education bill every student succeeds at. we need to make sure as this bill moves forward and is implement across the country that school libraries are integrated into the learning environment at every school. because we know a student who starts out in elementary school, having access to an effective school library program graduates from high school ready to go on to higher learning or to begin a

career. if they don't have access to an effective school library program, when they go to college, it takes a year of remediation until they are on the same level with other students at that college and they have a great deal of difficulty finding 20% jobs because they don't have the digital literacy skills and other collaborative skills that you learn from a school librarian. we are very focused on implementing that bill in a way that has school libraries integrated right through it starting in elementary school right through high school. we are also very concerned with workforce innovation and opportunity act which passed two years ago and we are waiting for the department of labor and the department of education to release the regulations to tell us how this bill is going to be

implemented because as any of you who have been unemployed know, the place people go for assistance when they are out of work or looking to improve their skills is their local public library or community college library. we want to make sure as the congress did when they passed this bill that in the 21 stoop century libraries are integrated within this nation's workforce development system so that is for the state and local level. we are also very interested in cybersecurity and privacy. we are involved in student privacy, we are concerned with cataloguing at the library of congress and we want to make sure that as i said, no laws are passed that restrict librarians from doing their job and at the

moment there is an appropriations bill with a rider that would restrict the library of congress from doing its job of updating catalog -- cataloguing headings which you would think is a boring subject, but because of what some members of congress are doing it makes it a quite interesting subject and so we are concerned about that. every day there is something new. when i first started 17 years ago i thought it was going to be all about books. boy was i wrong. every day some new issue comes up and i think thank goodness i will not have to deal with that but there is a library component to it. nothing goes on in this country that doesn't impact libraries. and that is why i love my job because every day is different and every day there is something big happening. >> thank you for your work on

the bill, which is huge actually having school libraries be part of legislation. one thing we are doing is looking at that act and talking to librarians and schools about what that means practically because a room in a school filled with books is not it. it is a start. there are a lot of public schools that over the last decade lost their school librarians and that has huge impact on students and faculty and teachers. a room with books is not a library. the heart of the school is that room with those books and a certified school librarian who can make those connections among the materials with the students and the teachers. that is a huge piece of it. >> i should have said, don't mean to dominate the conversation but to the school library it is so important for the student but also so important for the teachers because teachers have experts, expertise, content expertise in

a certain issue but not all teachers, who are good teachers, really know how to integrate technology into their lesson plans, really know how to find interesting electronic resources that will enhance their lesson plans. that is the job of the school librarian. if you have a school librarian and the teacher is able to work with that librarian, every teacher's classes are going to be better. when the class is more interesting more students pay attention. when more students pay attention they learn more. that is why it is so important for every class every year that you are in school to have access to that school library and for every teacher in the school to have access to that school librarian so that that librarian can enhance the student experience but also can enhance the curriculum and teacher's ability to really teach in a 21

stoop century way. >> i want to chime in on what the public library is doing for the process, public libraries today are places of learning, where learning happens for people of all ages from birth through senior citizens but we do have a major initiative going on right now related directly to schools. we are participating in president obama's connect and initiative and this is to put a library card in the hands of every school student in the county. last spring we had a very positive partnership with gaithersburg elementary and every gaithersburg elementary student received a library card which allowed them to borrow books, come to our programs and use all library resources and in spring we kicked off the partnership for the whole

district so there is over 150,000 students in our district, over 220 schools and we are working with those schools to make sure every student has a library card. we kicked it off with elementary school students and we will move through middle and high school. one of the important things for us with this initiative is to recognize that learning takes place in all kinds of places. it can take place formally in the classroom but not all kids learn that way. sometimes informal learning and hands-on learning is the way to attract those students. we offer a lot of different programs at montgomery county. we have a lot of programs for them to learn about science, technology, engineering, the process of creation and making things. we also offer book clubs for kids to participate in, poetry writing, we have a wide variety of programs available and it is not only the school students, we also offer things for students,

people who might've left school and are looking to get into another career. we have online courses for them to train for new careers and we are doing a lot recently in the workforce developed area and the library is one of the first places people come to if they are jobhunting and need to learn to work on a resume or how to find a job and it is through our programs and computers that they are able to gain access to new career paths. i also wanted to add that we are much more than books. books i just the beginning. a lot of you would be surprised to see what community hubs we are today. we are all about collaboration and being a place for the community to come to gather. we offer a lot of meeting space and a lot of opportunities for people to come in and learn about new subject and find out about different ideas.

>> that is great. i would like you to take away a lot of themes from today but one thing that makes sense to me that i alluded to earlier and we all touched on a little bit. libraries are more than books. i have an elementary school daughter, when she went to her first day of kindergarten, where is the library? we don't have a library, we have a media center. why can't we call it a library? it is more than books. back in the stone age when i was a kid it was more than books then too. there is nothing new under the sun. we could probably spend the rest of the day talking about technology, what is going on. anyone -- did we miss any piece of the technology to talk about? >> i can tell you what we are doing in montgomery county with technology. we have opened two digital media labs. they are focused on helping teens gain digital literacy

skills, ready for 21 stoop century workforce and in those technology labs teens have access to software and technology they may not of been able to afford on their own so they can create music, record videos. we have 3-d printing which most people don't have their own 3-d printer at home. they can see a demo of how it works and they can also learn how to design their own 3-d creation. they also offer a lot of clinics and services for people to learn to use wireless devices. that is the way we really bring technology to everybody because a lot of people are making the transition from print to using an e reader or e-book or somebody's kid gave them their old ipad and they are learning to use it. we provide the personal connection for people so that they can learn to use the new

technology. >> the 3-d printer is more than just a toy. a 3-d printer is crucial for entrepreneurs and innovators working on trying to come up with new inventions and that sort of thing. they can use a 3-d printer to create their first creation as they take it to try to sell a business or business idea. as far as innovators and entrepreneurs go having that 3-d printer is crucial for them to be more successful. we know in the 21st century that small business is where all of the new jobs are coming so having those innovators and entrepreneurs have access at the library to this free resource which really allows them to jump ahead, to move forward with their inventions is really important. >> if you haven't seen a 3-d

printer in action, it is fascinating, really amazing. something i want to talk about, we talked a lot about this is new, this is new, we talked a little bit online, what is the same? what are the things that are still the same? it is not your father's library but there are a lot of good things that exist that have always existed. what would you point out? >> one of the things we talk about is the third space, this theory that most people have two major places, their home and adult's working for kids, school. it is important on an emotional and sociological level to have a third place at a third-place is starbucks or a community center. many communities the public library is that third space where you are not in school or at work or at home with your family but you can find

inspiration, you can find a 3-d printer or a quiet spot to sit down and talk about a great new book. that service, that important third piece of modern life that is so important is still the same and library still provide that space for people and we still have many books and materials in addition to the cool programs and technology and 3-d printing, there are many many books and it is a great discovery place. there is great serendipity in a library you don't necessarily achieve browsing an online site. you walk through the stacks and find a display or something and discover a new author or collection of poetry or whatever it is at your library and that is something really special and important that is never going away. >> i also add the other thing that hasn't changed in all these

years is you can borrow books, materials, videos, dvds, all sorts of material you can download to your advice and that is all free. >> personal connection with the library staff in the library. i have worked in other places besides libraries but i find people that work in libraries really care about the customers and patrons they are serving and customer service is the first point of concern and they want to make sure everyone who comes in their doors feels welcome and can get access to the information and resources that they need. >> building on that, what hasn't changed is the library and. in every library there is a library and who is trained to serve you and the best way that you need.

what has changed maybe is the service but it is always the same base so libraries have always offered story time but we have more targeted story time. we have always offered helping parents and encouraging parents to read to their children but we teach caregivers how to effectively read to their children and it might change but it is improving upon those classic star wars that are so important. at the beginning of the building blocks of creating a reader it is so important for everything in life that you be a good reader, that you enjoy reading. that is what libraries are about, fostering a love of reading so that you can enjoy it, you can learn so that when you go to school you can learn things and for the rest of your

life you have always got that wonderful warm feeling, an activity you can fall back on and just enjoy whether it is for 10 minutes reading the newspaper or three or four hours reading your favorite novel. it is always there for you. >> something a lot of people don't know is a term called readers advisory, library and use this all the time, rita's advisory is the skill of having a reader in front of you and saying what do you have? that is a good new book. and of course at that moment a lot of people's mind immediately go blank. librarians cultivate this skill called readers advisory so when someone asks that question you have many titles or know what kind of questions to ask that individual to find out what is the right book for them and the secret is all librarians love to do this. if you ever spot a library and don't ever feel bad about going

up to them and saying what new books should i read? what do you have for me because you make their day. they lived for people to ask them that question so they can start their mental rolodex. >> absolutely. we could go on forever. pages of questions i want to get to, i would love to talk about censorship and diversity. i want to put emily on the spot for a quick second and ask her a simple yes or no question, maybe not simple. as everyone probably knows we do not have a librarian of congress. the president has nominated carla hayden who is local from maryland, heads of the baltimore library. you have seen the process started at least. is she going to get confirmed? >> yes. [applause] >> a fabulous librarian of congress, she is going to bring to that job new energy, new ideas and there have been

librarians of congress before but none like carla. this country is in for a treat because she understands that the librarian of congress is a leader both in the united states and to the rest of the world, to show other countries how great libraries are in the united states and to open them up and give them ideas about how they too can aspire to america's version of libraries. >> mary ellen quickly give me a couple things people don't know about the montgomery county public library. a couple hidden gems. >> okay. we have 21 locations and we just opened the silver spring library last june. if you have not visited it it is beautiful, it is amazing. we have touched on this before about we are more than books but i invite you if you haven't been

into one of your local branches recently come on by and see what we have to offer. we have a branch online available through our website 24 hours a day 7 days a week, it is available wherever you are as long as you have your library card. you can download e-books, magazines, music, you can take online classes, you can learn a new language, learn to talk like a pirate through one of our services, you can take a bunch of different classes to help prepare you for a career change if you want to be a project manager there are project management classes where you are learning to drive, we have a practice test for drivers education and test prep and so much information available to you here in montgomery county and we also offer world language collections. if you are not a lawyer with those in several of our branches we have materials in other

languages. keira was mentioning rita's advisory before. made me think of something we are trying to do in our library system of taking traditional library skills like the readers advisory and use them in the 21 stoop century. we started an online rita's advisory service called what do i check out next, this is one of our favorite things to do. they love to read, they love to talk about books. you can see the meetings of groups of librarians who work on this, everyone comes out with a long list of books. they really do enjoy providing that service and with summer vacation coming up you might want to send them an email, talk about a few books you like or dislike and they will send a personalized list of books to read. the last thing i will mention is some are is right around the corner and our summer program is about to kick off on june 1st and a program that is offered for everyone. this year we have a program from

babies all the way through adults. there is something for everyone. it has an online component and an in person component as well. please consider checking that out as an activity to do with your family this summer. >> for those in the viewing audience, there are summer reading programs in every community across the country. it is so important that children continue to read throughout the summer so please enroll your children in the local summer reading program. >> we are spoiled in this area. not only do we have these great local libraries but one of the greatest if not the greatest library institutions. tell us the hidden gems we might not know about in the library of congress. >> first of all i want to tell you the library is the oldest cultural institution in the country and the largest library not just in the country but in the world. how many of you have visited the

library of congress? that is great! that is awesome! i want to ask the kids in the audience if they can tell me how many miles of shelving hold the library? how many miles of shelving you think we have? >> give me a number. 2000? >> pretty good. anybody else? >> what do you think? 40,000? 40,000. >> i'm going to disappoint you. it is 838 miles of bookshelves which is pretty huge. we have 3.6 million recordings, 14 million photographs. those of you in the audience who know dorothy laying's iconic photograph micro mother may not know that it is one of 100

150,000, 170,000 photographs depression era collected in the farm services administration. the library also has the content of abraham lincoln's pockets on the night he was assassinated. those include two's pairs of spectacles and the lens polisher, a pocket knife, linen handkerchief and brown leather wallet containing a $5 confederate note and tween 9 newspaper clippings including several favorable to the president. you can see a 3 dimensional digital exhibition of these materials on the library's website. i will include one other which is that the library has 5 stringed instruments from antonio strata very. these are on display in the library but in accordance with the wishes of the donor who specified the instruments should not be displayed merely as relics, but needed to be played,

they are pulled out periodically and offered to professional musicians to play in concerts that are open to the public. the library is also home to the dayton miller flute collection so if you like flutes there are nearly 1700 of them in the collection at the library of congress. i will do one other which is we have the world's largest collection of comic books, 5000 titles and 135,000 issues of comic books. >> i also want to say again library journal is a great source. i would like to think everyone comes out of this knowing a little more about the library and also to educate yourself you can't do better than this if you go to your local libraries

there. they probably would not be subscribing. i will ask emily this question. directive element of everyone on the panel. what can we all do here out there in the tv world to support our libraries? do we go to your website? is there a place to go to see what is going on, supporting the library and of congress or supporting new bills, funding, what can we do? >> we need your help because libraries are expensive, they are a good investment but they are expensive. there are 16,400 public libraries in this country, almost 100,000 libraries so that takes a lot of investment. you can go to our website www. ala.org. there is a button to click for the legislative action center. if you go there that links you directly to congress and we are constantly putting up alerts on

specific bills. every time to see a city councilman or the mayor or county commissioner or your senator or us representative, tell them how important the library is to you and tell them how much you want them to ensure that we can continue to get library services and please, when we put out a call that we need your support, please do so. we don't have money for pacs, we don't have a lot of money, we are not wealthy people. so we depend on what you call grassroots and that is normal people picking up the phone or emailing their member of congress or their senator or their governor and saying we want you to support libraries.

>> the mayor, the governor, the united states congress needs to know that and respect that and make sure that that happens going forward. and that a takes hundreds and thousands of calls from people like you. >> i couldn't have said it better. what a great point. we have, i think, time for maybe a question or two. does anybody in the audience have a question? if not, i will go on. >> it's not a question, but i wanted to thank you very much for your comment about dr. carla