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JOHN SZABO: Good morning, welcome to L.A.

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The city of angels.

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We are absolutely delighted to have all of
you here in fabulous downtown Los Angeles

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and the wonderful central library of the Los
Angeles Public Library.

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My name, I know many of you, it's wonderful
to see so many familiar faces.

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I'm John Szabo.

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So thrilled that you all are here.

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Particularly, I was telling more of this earlier,
because of the conversation that we are all

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having today about engaging communities.

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At the Los Angeles Public Library, we are
all about this work.

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About engaging communities and about looking
at how, as public libraries, how we can do

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meaningful work and help communities and neighborhoods
address some of the biggest issues they face.

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I think public libraries are incredibly well
positioned to have that kind of impact.

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Particularly delighted to be having this conversation
at the Los Angeles Public Library.

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Recently, we're still on cloud nine because
we were in Washington a couple weeks ago as

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a recipient of the National Medal.

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[applause]
>> Thank you very much.

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We thank the Institute for the Museum of Library
Services 

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for that.

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Our community member, one of the things you
do is select a community member who represents

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the good work your library does.

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I think that's a challenging test for any
library or museum to do that.

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And for us, in L.A., with the 4 million people
in the city that we serve, very, very challenging.

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We could not have picked a more wonderful
person to represent the people of this city

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than Sergio Sanchez.

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He and his wife Francesca came citizens through
the Los Angeles Public Library and our citizenship

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which we'll be chatting about later in the
day.

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Incredibly eloquent, talking about the public
library services and its impact on his life.

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The bus trip was 1,000 photographs and pointing
out monuments and a grand experience and what

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wonderful things it said about libraries,
I think, and about our nation.

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That here, Sergio, who had become a citizen
just a year ago, through the library was having

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this kind of experience, in the White House,
with Michelle Obama and talk about the library

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and what it meant to him was over the top
fabulous.

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Public libraries are workforce development
institutions, they're integration institutions,

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they're public health institutions, we're
all about learning, school readiness and the

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opportunity to talk about leveraging public
libraries to do work in those areas, I'm so

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excited to have that conversation today.

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It's a full day, I know, but please, take
a moment, if but 30 seconds to venture out

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to see this amazing building.

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It is one of California's grandest buildings.

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One of the world's, I'm totally bias, but
one of the world's most fabulous libraries.

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The portion of the library you're in now was
built in 1926, four years after King Tut's

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tomb was discovered.

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Hence the mosaic pyramid, the fabulous globe
chandelier in the rotunda with the 48 lights

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representing the 48 states in the union when
the library was opened.

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We have sphinxes in the library and the building
suffered a very tragic fire in 1986.

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400,000 volumes were destroyed, much of the
building was destroyed, but the effort to

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rebuild started the L.A. conservancy movement.

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It 

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is quite grand.

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You can see the waterful of escalators and
all the multiple subject departments that

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we have.

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It's a building that Angelino's absolutely
love and adore.

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The passage of measure L restored an enormous
amount of funding back to the library and

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allowed us to hire staff back and restore
hours of operation and has been really wonderful.

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We also have in the getty gallery, off the
main rotunda, an exhibit going in, you might

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peek in there.

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It's called to live and die in L.A.

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We're taking this opportunity, not just to
talk about menus and there's a fabulous coffee

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table book that may be for sale in the library
store, I don't know.

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Called to live and dine in L.A. It's really
magnificent, but we're taking this as an opportunity,

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speaking of engaging community to talk about
hunger in L.A., to talk about food insecurity,

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to talk about food deserts and have that conversation
throughout our branch libraries across city.

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We did a similar project with our sheet music
collection called songs in the key of L.A.

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Where we had an awesome concert in downtown
L.A. where Stevie Wonder performed music off

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the dusty sheet music collection of the Los
Angeles Public Library.

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So, without further adieu, I want to thank
you all so much for being here.

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Just thrilled and I'd like to introduce now,
the marvelous, wonderful, Maura Marx, acting

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director of the Institute.

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[applause]
>> MAURA MARX: I just wish the marvelous,

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wonderful John would keep talking about the
great things going on in Los Angeles.

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It's so exciting to be here and hear about
that work.

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And you know, thank you for making my task
easy.

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I'm Maura Marx, the acting director of the
Institute.

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We welcome you to the third of our convenings
that we're holding this year.

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This one is a little bit different than the
first two that we've held.

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The first two, one was in Washington, D.C.,
it was on the national digital platform, the

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second was in Kansas City, and that was on
learning and libraries and both of those were

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really very directly related to our funding
priorities.

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We decided we couldn't let convening season
pass without having a third convening, that

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is not related to a funding priority, but
that holds up the wonderful work going on

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in libraries that is about serving diverse
needs of the community.

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And how libraries are evolving to do that
and I think Los Angeles is such a wonderful

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example of that.

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We were so thrilled to be at the White House
with John and with Sergio and to hear the

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story of Sergio and Francesca and their son
and how their lives were truly changed.

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Sergio and Francesca came to the library because
of their son, having no idea that their lives

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would be enriched so much and they would go
on the path to citizenship and achieving the

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GED and all these doors would open to them
just by going to their library.

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We wanted to hear from you what your strategies
are.

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What your partnerships are.

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Any insights you have, so we can hold them
up for the rest of the profession.

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That's why we're here today.

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We think libraries promote a better quality
of life in communities.

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We want to hear your insights about ways to
do that.

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I had a lot more to say, but John said it
so beautifully and eloquently that I won't

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even try.

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So, I should welcome the hopefully many visitors
who are joining us via live stream.

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At our last two convenings, we had over 400
people at each.

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So, welcome to you, out there.

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You can participate, even if you're not in
the room with us via Twitter.

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The hashtag for today is IMLSFocus.

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Comment, send us questions, we'll monitor
it throughout the day and we'll feed those

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comments and questions to moderators.

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We'd love to have that kind of input from
anyone on the live stream.

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And I also just wanted to, for those of you
out there, remark on who's in the room today.

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Our program staff at IMLS did a terrific job.

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You can look on our website, actually if you
just look at the IMLS focus website, you can

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see the full list of attendees, but program
staff just did a very thoughtful job of inviting

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our grantees from public, state, university,
tribal, city, suburban, rural libraries, library

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associations, partners, both federal and nonprofit.

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So we have a great group here today with a
lot of expertise.

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And I will get out of the way and let them
start to share that expertise.

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That's the other admonishment, please, to
those of you in the room, please do share.

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This is not sort of sit back and relax meeting
where you can hide back there, this is a meeting

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where we really want to hear from you.

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And...when you do share, there, because of
the live stream, we have the microphone, the

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floater mic, please speak into it, say your
name and affiliation so that people know who

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you are and that we can record that.

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Other housekeeping notes.

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The schedule John and I were on for half an
hour which we're not going to use, so we will

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have time, hopefully to go out and visit places
in the library, we encourage you to do that.

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The restrooms are sort of down the hall to
the right and then to the left, keep going

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left.

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Coffee and breakfast and lunch, I think most
of you have found out the door, up to the

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right.

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And with that...I'm going to hand it over
to the first session.

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Thank you all for being here.

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[applause]