How a Library Can Change Your Community
with the Urban Library Council’s Shamichael Hallman
Your local library is an important hub for building community.
Today, Lisa is talking with Shamichael Hallman, Director of Civic Health and Workforce Opportunity at the Urban Libraries Council, about the many ways libraries are evolving beyond only a place to borrow books. In fact, Shamichael’s been working on transforming libraries into recording studios and makerspaces with entrepreneurship resources, civic programming, community events, and spaces for people to gather.
Shamichael believes that libraries can be places where people learn, create, connect, and participate in the life of their communities.
Lisa and Shamichael talk about libraries as bridges where people with different backgrounds and perspectives can come together through shared experiences. A cooking class, a knitting group, a coding workshop, or a community event can create the conditions for people to encounter one another in ways that begin with shared interest rather than political identity or disagreement.
In this episode, we explore:
How ShaMichael helped reimagine Memphis’ Cossitt Library as a creative and civic hub
The difference between “more than books” and “books and more”
How libraries can be embedded into existing community gathering places like malls and barbershops
And what each of us can do to participate in the future of our local library
Shamichael is also the author of the amazing book Meet Me at the Library: A Place to Foster Social Connection and Promote Democracy. Reading it will inspire you to get a library card and use it, organize an event, volunteer, share what your library offers with your neighbors, and advocate for the libraries that make your community stronger.
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Shamichael Hallman: When you think about a library, there's a certain image that comes to mind, but I need you to look again. Take a second look because there's so much more that's happening there underneath your nostalgia and underneath that initial thought that we need to think about. We have to protect this institution because it is under attack.
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Lisa Kay Solomon: I'm Lisa Kay Solomon, and this is How We Future, where I talk to some of my favorite changemakers about shaping tomorrow, starting today.
My guest today, Shamichael Hallman, is helping people see public libraries in a whole new light as places with books and more that offer connection, creativity, economic opportunity, and a thriving civic life. Shamichael is the Director of Civic Health and Workforce Opportunity at the Urban Libraries Council, where he helps build creative programming for thousands of libraries across North America.
He's also the author of a great book called Meet Me at the Library. In our conversation, you'll hear how libraries can bridge divides and bring people together through shared interests and how we all play a role in making our local libraries stronger and more welcoming. You're just going to love learning what Shamichael is doing and how he reminds us that building a healthier civic life can start with recognizing the extraordinary potential of the places we already have in our cities and towns.
Let's dive into it with Shamichael Hallman.
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Shamichael Hallman, I am so excited to welcome you to How We Future for our Civic Futures edition because the work you are doing across the nation in public libraries and reimagining what they can be for the epicenter of all the goodness we want to see in our society is just something I want everyone to know about. I'm thrilled to be in conversation with you today. Welcome.
Shamichael: Well, thanks for having me, Lisa. It's always a joy to be with you, and you are very much a part of that journey.
Lisa: In preparing for this conversation today, even though you and I have known each other for a long time, I realized just how self-serving How We Future is because I got to spend hours with you for this conversation, and particularly, Shamichael, maybe we'll start here. Your TED Talk is one of the most riveting presentations I have seen. I want every person who is enduring what will inevitably be a fall of noise bombardment as we enter this political season, getting close to the midterms, to watch this. It's like 15 minutes of meditative joy about what's possible. Let's start with that incredible TED Talk about the work that you were doing at the time at the Memphis Library.
Shamichael: The Memphis story is really where it all starts. I gave that talk unknowingly just a few weeks before the pandemic was to hit, but the overall thought process behind that talk was to let Memphis know what was happening with that library. The Cossitt Library, which is situated in downtown Memphis, is the city's first public library, and it's had a really interesting history. I was very fortunate to be tapped to come in and help lead the renovation of that library.
We did some really cool stuff there that still remains today. If you were to walk into that library today, you would see recording spaces or audio and video sides, where you could do a podcast, you could do a voiceover, you could do a documentary film, and everything that you need to be able to do that in terms of camera and microphone equipment, those sort of things. It's all there with your library card. It's totally free.
There is a makerspace and a craft station. We added a bunch of resources; sewing machines and sergers and these Cricut machines that are really great for scrapbooking and doing intricate things. There's all sorts of great things that are there. There's a performing arts space there, a multi-use performing arts space. Now that space is being used by artists and entrepreneurs and actors and just a whole range of creatives that are using that space.
At the time, it was something radically different than what people equated with a library. The talk was not only to introduce that concept to the community, but then to wrap that into two things, to wrap that into this concept of inclusion, to say that, "Hey, the public library is a public space." When you walk into this space, you're going to see a little bit of everyone, different beliefs, different orientations, different places where people even slept the night before.
One of the core things that you have to agree to when you hop into public space is to make room for people. It was a plea, particularly for people to be open and to be curious and to be receptive to different people that were there. Then the other piece was to really get people to tap in, to move the library from a place of transaction where it says, "Oh, I come and get a book, and I leave, to one where it is a co-created space, a co-designed space where people are bringing their gifts and skills and talents and really transforming the place in new ways.
Lisa: When I listen to it feels almost like a pep rally for the library, but for Memphis. I'm so great to hear your thought process behind it because it really felt like, "Come on, you need to know about this, you need to feel pride about this." There's so many interesting things about what you did there that I just want to pause and tease out a little bit.
One is it was a very local endeavor, like Memphis: this is for you, about you, we're going to lift the floor, we're going to open up the skies, but it was also part of a national civic re-imagine effort. I felt like you were doing something that had incredible proximity to your neighborhood, but at the same time, were trying to put some new points on the board for at least the nation to take note of.
Shamichael: Yes. That initiative, re-imagine the Civic Commons, was so vital for me in getting a new lens on the importance of our public spaces, libraries, parks, community centers, waterfronts, plazas. These are the places where people gather. These are the places where people should be able to come together. To think about how we re-imagine these spaces, how we invest, how we maintain, how we activate those spaces in a way where it could bring the community together was really important.
I saw that. Actually, the work that we did in Memphis, and I say we because it was not just me; it was a whole team of people, but we got so much inspiration from seeing the way that other cities in Philadelphia, in Detroit, Chicago were activating parks and were really leveraging lakes in a way that brought the community together. We took and borrowed many of those lessons and pulled them into the library.
Lisa: I love that. You know, I'm a big believer of building on bright spots and also having appreciative inquiry for the stuff that's going well, which can be hard to do when all you're doing is reacting. The talk is also so powerful because I feel like it brings a lot of social science to life. Specifically, you talk about the importance of libraries. You mentioned this earlier around building social cohesion and libraries as invitations for bridges.
I very much felt Robert Putnam's work in that, and his work around initially bowling alone, this idea that we are losing our social cohesion, particularly around bridging capital as opposed to bonding capital. Bridging being one that really invites a diversity of perspectives and communities to come together and find bonds. I was thinking about my own experience at the library. Another part is the invitation to explore, that it's also like a portal to all these new opportunities.
We tend to think of it, the library card as the portal because it gives you an opportunity to check out books. I think the way you reimagined it was like a portal to meeting your neighbors as well as advancing the things that you're excited about. I wonder if you could just talk about some of those frames a bit.
Shamichael: Yes. The bridge was really intentional. I talk about that in the talk. The way that this library is situated in downtown Memphis, if you go around the back of the library, you will see two bridges. Those bridges take you out of Memphis, Tennessee, into West Memphis, Arkansas. There was a period of time, like right before I gave the talk, where one of these bridges became inoperable. It was like, "Oh, wow, this bridge was vital for not only transporting commerce, but in helping people leave one orientation and then enter into another orientation."
I started to think about, "Oh, this is exactly what the library is doing." Every day, this is not only through access to books and knowledge and recorded information, but through the activities that the library is doing. I can't tell you how many times where we would do a program around sewing or knitting or around coding or cooking, and you would see people from very different walks of life who showed up, who were interested in the thing.
What we saw was that when these people came back multiple times to the same event and saw similar faces, that it didn't really matter necessarily in that moment what the political affiliation was or even what part of town people were in. At that moment, it was just, "Oh, hey, you do a thing, I do this thing, we both love this thing. Let's figure out how we can help each other. Let's figure out how we can have coffee after this." It was just a really important moment around how public space could foster shared experiences and how that shared experience could really lead to new and lasting and vibrant relationships.
Lisa: The power of space, that third space that is welcoming, that is public from the beginning, incredibly powerful. One of the things I try to teach my students when thinking about how to imagine new futures and really bring them to life: it's one thing to imagine, but it's a whole other to do the incredible work that you did, community building, partnering, bringing it to life, fostering it, stewarding it. Is this idea of build on what's fixed and design around what's flexible?
Through the library lens, I think about it as still, to this day, let's hope it continues and even deepens, in part through this conversation and all the work you're doing, libraries still foster trust. They still are a place of connection in our local spaces that don't necessarily feel, for lack of a better way of saying it, tarnished. You can still go in there and feel like, "Okay, there's going to be something for me. The space was created for me."
The flexible part is not just about books. It's about you. It's about helping you launch your business. It's a coworking space. It's a performing space. I just love it as a great example of building on what's fixed, a place you go that has your back in some capacity because it's on behalf of the community, and we could use that space in all different kinds of ways.
Shamichael: Yes, that multifacetedness is something that has become increasingly important. Actually, I just gave a fresh TED Talk about that, Lisa, that hopefully we'll publish soon, the idea for Tech Democracy. In that talk, one of the things that I mentioned is while I was doing that work in Memphis, I didn't have a library background. The only language that I had at the time of trying to convince people to come to this library was to use this phrase, "Oh, this place is so much more than books. You got to come check it out."
In fact, the title of the book, Meet Me at the Library, was me trying to tell people, like, "Hey, I know this sounds strange with this library and what I'm telling you it is, but if you meet me here tomorrow, I will show you around. You will see what's here." That sort of phrase of more than books was something that I carried with me for a long time. It wasn't until, I think, maybe the last probably two years or so that I swapped that phrase. I now no longer say that it is more than books. I now say that it is books and more.
It's a very, very small change, but at its core, it recognizes the importance of the book. You mentioned this, that when you walk in the library, there is a diversity of books written by a diversity of people from a diversity of backgrounds and understandings and ways of approaching life. All of those books are on the shelf. We're able to go and freely access those books and engage with the ideas and engage with the narratives and take those back to our neighborhoods, take those back to our families, take those back to our jobs. That is vital. That is something.
I would say on top of that, that is done in a way that protects your privacy. The library doesn't care what books you pull up. It's not tracking what books you pull off the shelf. That is one of the values of the library that I think we don't talk about anymore. Not only can I pull these books off the shelf, but I can pull whatever I'm curious about. No one is going to track that. I'm not going to get an ad three minutes later about what's happening. I think that is important for civic life that we can engage with these different ideas.
It's through these ideas, it's through these one of competing interests sometimes, that we can grow. It's also through these competing ideas. Sometimes we see ourselves. My heart has been warmed in so many cases where people, something is happening in their life, a life moment, or something is happening within how they are viewing or how they're having to evolve. They say, "Man, I was feeling alone. I went to the library, and I found this book. This book spoke to exactly what was happening in my life at that moment." I think that's just really powerful.
Then, of course, if you sit on top of all that, on top of getting these really great books and great resources, there are all these other things that are happening. I've had the great opportunity to visit libraries all over the country and see where there are kitchens in libraries and makerspaces in libraries and entrepreneurial help and all these really interesting things that you see that really just warmed the heart and warmed the soul.
Lisa: I think the phrase "Meet Me at the Library," which you could see prominently displayed behind me, I feel like it's the modern-day Mr. Shamichael. I really do. I often think in this divisive world; I think a lot about phrasing and framing and invitations. It's a real art to find something that you only want to nod to, as opposed to find a way against it. Do you know what I mean?
Shamichael: Yes.
Lisa: No one's going to say, "I don't want to meet you at the library." They might say, I don't have time to meet you at the library, but no one's going to say, "That's a terrible idea." You cannot smile when you have an invitation, "Meet Me at the Library." I think that your attention to that detail of not making books other or less than, more than books suggests that books are somewhere here and there's more to have, books and more; that's a great example also of a reframe that is filled with abundance.
A big part of what we're trying to do and how we future in these conversations is remind people that even though so much of the messaging around us is about scarcity, we actually can have an abundance mindset. It can be about the and more part, and more in your community, like get to know your neighbor, and more in what can happen in the walls of these libraries and even in the playgrounds and outside of these libraries, making it beautiful from the very moment that you arrive, before you even get in the door.
I just think there's so much in there that are lessons for people, even if they have nothing to do with libraries, like how could you make your school that exciting, like meet me at the playground, meet me at the foyer, whatever it is. I just think that the designer in me gets very excited about that as a total reframe. It's actually a good, you'll notice, very dog-eared, and we're going to talk about it. You mentioned Civic Health, and you mentioned -- you gave us a little preview of your TED Talk to come. I'm excited about that.
Given how many times I watched your other TED Talk, you were really one of the first to help me see the connection between libraries and our Civic Health. I know that's really the center, one of the centers of your current role at the Urban Libraries Council, where you are the Director of Civic Health and Workforce Opportunity. Again, interesting to combine those. Talk to us a little bit about your own journey realizing the power of libraries, specifically in the context of Civic Health. What even Civic Health means?
Shamichael: The library for me, I grew up in a really small town in Alabama. My town actually didn't have a library. I actually had to go to the next town over to Leeds, Alabama, where there was a really great library. I remember in that library was one of the first times that I felt seen, sort of a nerd, a bit of a geek, shy kid. I got there and recognized that, "Oh, there are these other shy kids who are nerds and geeks seen. I also love comic books and also love books about airplanes and these sorts of things.
What I found in the library at a very young age was, "Oh, this is a place where not only I can grow, but there are other people who want to grow in the same way that I am growing. This is a really wonderful way to connect together. The concept of Civic Health for the book, I was actually pulling that from a definition that came from the 2020 New Hampshire Civic Index, which was looking at a number of things in terms of the ways in which people in a community strengthen well-being and enhance interconnections and build trust, and help each other, and talk about public issues and challenges and even volunteer.
As I have been doing work in the library, you mentioned at the beginning of the conversation the Civic Commons work. All of the work that I was doing in Memphis, that we were doing in Memphis, we really were trying to center the library in two ways. The first was really around socioeconomic mixing. The thought there was that if we can design and we should be trying to design not only the physical space, but all of the activities that we do, in such a way where there would be a diversity of people who were coming and enjoying experiences together.
Certainly, there are times in the library when you want to do something for a specific audience, for people who are in a sandwich generation of raising kids and parents, or people who are looking to upscale themselves or whatever that might be. There are some times where you do want to get very specific. There are other times, and many more times, where we were trying to think about what is a way for us to do this program around cooking or around dance or around self-improvement in a way where we could truly bring together a cross-section of Memphisians to be in the space? That was a guiding principle.
The other one was around civic engagement. It was, can we encourage people to see this as their library? Not just a library in their community, but as their library. One of the things that we did there was with every community survey, we asked two questions that always were consistent. The second-to-last question was, "What do you want to see in this library? What sort of programs, events, ideas? What do you want to see?" People would say, "Oh, well, it would be great to-- I've got this guitar that's been sitting in the corner of my house, and I would love to actually learn how to play this thing, finally pick it up. People would say taxes, like, "Hey, I struggled with my taxes, right?" Then the last question was, we would ask, "Well, what do you want to bring to this space? What could you do here that would be of interest?" Surprisingly, some people said the same thing, like, "Oh, hey, I play the guitar, and I wouldn't mind teaching a class once a quarter, or I'm an accountant, and it would just be really great to come and share this knowledge that I have at tax season."
What ended up happening was we recognized that we could just play host. We didn't have to do all the things, that we could just create a welcoming space where people could show up and help each other, and in the process, new relationships could form, and in the process, people could help each other. That's a messy thing. I talk about it like I'm making it seem like it's super easy to do, but bringing people together takes work. You have to establish norms of respect and curiosity, and there is work to be done there, but what we learned that, consistently, the work is worth doing.
Lisa: You're reminding me so much of an earlier conversation we had with Jennifer Dulski, who, for a time, was president of Change.org and wrote a book called Purposeful. She talks about the three Cs of starting a movement, because I do think you are restarting a library movement in some ways, where she talks about courage. I think, in this case, Shamichael, this idea of reimagining what this could be, community, how to do it through and with community, and commitment. You got to keep showing up, even during the hard times, and I appreciate you just flagging.
This wasn't all like, "Let us give you as much money as possible." We love to support public things without any ROI. It really takes so much work behind it. Maybe that's a good segue to continue the civic health conversation. I love that definition. You write it out here in the book, where it really has a much more holistic definition that is about well-being and connection and longevity. I think, again, you're trying to bring these things together that are in plain sight.
I'm always amazed, just as a quick side, where a new book will come out and be like, "The secret to living longer is relationships," and everyone buys that book. Then, create some really complicated program to build relationships or do whatever, and you're like, "Just go to the library." It's right there. You want to live longer? Just go right there. You want healthier kids to be less isolated and depressed? Go to the library. Right there.
I just think I'm really bullish on spreading this opportunity that is like, "It's in your community," like the Red Ruby Shoes. It's right there all along. Maybe that's a segue. Tell us a little bit more about what you've been up to the last few years, switching from focusing on Memphis to a much more national stance of supporting libraries.
Lisa: Yes, it's been a joy, actually. A few years ago, I moved from Memphis to the Washington, D.C. area, and I work for an organization called the Urban Libraries Council. We are an association, an action tank of about 200 public library systems in the US and Canada. As you mentioned, Lisa, I have two portfolio areas. The first is around economic opportunity. Here, we're looking at all the things that public libraries do to help people, to help entrepreneurs, to help people upskill themselves.
Particularly, the thing that I have done in that bucket is retool a tool that we had called the business value calculator. Here, we're specifically looking at the economic value, the economic impact that libraries have in assisting entrepreneurs. We're looking across four domains. The first is around programming. Libraries host programs on how to launch a business, how to have an entrepreneurial mindset, how to price your product. These are things that either the librarian is doing, or they're inviting someone from the community to come and give a class on that.
The second area that we're looking at is around research services, so books and databases. There's some really powerful databases that are totally free that most people just don't bother to look at. You go to your website, and if you go to your library, your local library's website, and look at the research or learn more, there's generally a link to all sorts of databases. Some of these databases are particularly helpful for entrepreneurs because they're the places where they can go to do market research, to understand where they should launch a brick and mortar, these sorts of things.
The third area that we look at is physical space. If the library has meeting rooms that entrepreneurs can use, if there is a coworking space, innovation space, recording studios where people can go in and do anything that would enhance their business, take pictures, or record a promotional video, these sorts of things.
Then the last area that we look at is equipment. This is very much tied to that space. If there is a 3D printer, if there is a camera, a laptop with creative software, any of these sort of things that entrepreneurs can use. What we ask of our members and our members are some of the largest library systems in Chicago, LA, Toronto, but also smaller systems in cities like Lexington and Memphis. We say, "Hey, give us the numbers." Let us know how many times people came to these programs, how many times people went to leverage this equipment or use this space.
What we say is what the tool does is to say, "Okay, hey, if someone couldn't go to the library, if they had to go into the private market and pay for these things, what would they be paying? What we're discovering when people give us these numbers is that libraries are generating tens of millions of dollars of economic impact. They're not even talking about it in some cases. Most people don't even associate the library with that thing. That has been very important to lift up.
Lisa: It's so exciting to just, again, reimagine the options we have available. I think so much of the fear that's being created right now is around how work is going to change and if there are going to be opportunities, particularly with the advent of AI and just so many other macro-level shifts. Knowing that there's a safe place in our community to help you reorient, or you don't have to do it all yourself, you don't have to pay for it all yourself, that there are these resources and people there to help you find what you're excited about and support you on the way because they care, because it's part of the fabric, not because they're waiting to extract something large from you.
I just think it is such an important message for people to know. I know, Shamichael, I want you to talk a little bit about it. It's not like you're sitting in your R&D lab of one being like a programming. There's a big part of your work that's about surfacing. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how your model of learning across the library systems is helping the system get stronger.
Shamichael: Yes. I think that's probably coming out most clearly in the second portfolio that I have, which is around civic health in democracy. There, we're running five programs right now. One is on bridging. We're looking at the many ways that libraries are stitching communities together. Two of them are on civic learning, and we're looking at the library as a lifelong civic learning engine. Another one that we have just started that I'm really, really excited about is on libraries and local news, libraries and civic media.
Here, what we are seeing, Lisa, is, and what we're really encouraging libraries to do, is to think about local media, whether that's the local news agency or the public radio station in their town, to think about what are the shared values that they have with those folks about information literacy, about increasing narratives, making sure that everybody's voice is heard. What we're seeing as we run these projects, as we run these programs, we do this in cohort-style learning.
We generally have 10 to 12 library systems that are sending a couple of employees, of staffers, to learn together, to do together. What we are seeing is not only the ways that we can support libraries to continue to do this work, but we're also seeing the ways that libraries are doing this work already, just naturally because of who they are, and it's not necessarily being communicated in a way that would be effective. We're learning so much. We're learning the local news piece.
We're just starting there, but already we're seeing just how in-tune libraries are with their communities. We ask these folks in an application process, like, "Hey, what are you seeing in your community?" These librarians are talking about data centers. They're talking about team takeovers. They're talking about issues of climate justice in their community. It's like, "Oh, wow, man, these librarians are so much more than what we consider librarians to be.
A huge part of my work right now is reflecting that back to the general public to say, "Hey, I know that when you think about library, there's a certain image that comes to mind, but I need you to look again. Take a second look because there's so much more that's happening there underneath your nostalgia and underneath that initial thought that we need to think about. We have to protect this institution because it is under attack. We think about funding. We think about a number of issues that are coming in terms of books that are on the shelf. This is not an institution that is shielded from the political fray. We do have to protect it because I do wonder that if it didn't exist right now, I don't think we could create it again, actually.
Lisa: I think that's such a good reminder about the importance of not taking it for granted because we think like, "Oh, these are protected," but they're not. I remember spending some time on your site and just being amazed at the diversity of programming, to your point about how well-connected the librarians are to understanding their community and really responding to what they need. Sometimes in reaction, but a lot of times proactively, about, again, raising the floor.
I just want to call out how much more inviting it is to say, "Meet Me at the Library." Even then, like, "Save democracy," which is important, but very abstract and a little opaque. If you're like, "Hey, just come here and listen about what's happening or why this matters." Shamichael, another featured guest in the Civic Futures season of How We Future, is Evan Weissman from Warm Cookies from the Revolution, who, like you, is just breaking down these barriers for everybody to get involved in civic health.
In fact, of course, he talks about his work as the first civic health club. For him, I think he says, making cool civic programming, that's fun, "That doesn't suck." I think he says that, like, "That doesn't suck." Whether it's having Civic Stitch and Bitch where people come and crochet and talk about things, or the huddle where they go to a bar and talk about the new stadium that's going to be built with your taxpayer dollars. Why don't you think of yourself as an owner of that stadium? You are.
I think it is all of this invitation to really get involved in a way that's very inviting and not just offensive. It's important. A big theme of what I try to share is this frame of optimistic offense. If you have scarcity dollars, go put it in the library. Go check it out. I just think that the way that you're curating and listening to what's happening around the country, across these systems, is such a powerful jump start for folks to say, "I want to get involved, but I don't know how."
Shamichael: I would like to just say just one quick thing on the reactive versus proactive thing, Lisa, because I increasingly hear this. People who say, "Oh, well, why is that happening at the library? That's not the role of a library. That's not-- I just wanted to be, "This is a place of books." I get that. Absolutely. Mission creep is something that every institution has to be mindful of. In so many cases, particularly as we get further away from the urban center of places and we find ourselves in small towns and rural towns, the library is the place.
There is no other place to go in many cases, a place that is trusted, a place that anybody, regardless of political affiliation, religious belief, what they have in their pocket money, the library is that one place. I think it's even more important when we think about it through that lens that we have to protect such places.
Lisa: You're reminding me, Shamichael, it's not quite a library, but it's very library adjacent. I had the great privilege a few weeks ago to interview this incredible pioneer named Elaine Petrocelli, who 50 years ago started one of the first independent bookstores in the Bay Area called Book Passage. She really, I think, thought of it more like a library than a bookstore. Yes, they sold books, but more than that, they have community events, they have author events, they have democracy events.
As you're talking, you're reminding me of a story she shared. After 9/11, she went to the store to close it for the day, like the day of 9/11, because there was so much happening. When she got to the store, she saw something like 50 people there just waiting to go inside to be together. They wanted a place to be. Just the power to be a steady place to gather when we feel so overwhelmed is so important for us to remember.
Shamichael, looking ahead, are there some things on the horizon, of course, besides your TED Talk coming out, which can't wait? What else are you excited about, looking ahead at some of the work and some of the things you're seeing in the libraries around these systems?
Shamichael: Professionally, I'm really excited about these programs. I think the local journalism program, libraries, and journalism. We have another program that is on libraries and dialogue. Then these civic learning programs, I think there's just going to be so much that's there. One of the programs is focused on emerging adults, 18 to 24-year-olds, college-age students. We know that's a group of people that the library traditionally has had a tough time engaging, as many other organizations do.
We're already learning some really cool things. One of the libraries that's a part of that program decided that they would send both their teen librarian and their adult librarian into this program. I think what might come from that, Lisa, is that the librarian might create a new position that is like an emerging adult librarian. To think that this work that we're doing might shuffle up the profession is something that's really fun.
On that note, I'm going to start back writing. I'm in conversations with a few publishers now to take Meet Me at the Library and to turn it into essentially a training manual for the next generation of librarians and library professionals. To think about that book in an academic context is something that I'm truly grateful to even be in conversation with right now.
Lisa: Oh, my gosh. We definitely want to be a part of that. You're also making me think, Shamichael. As you know, a big part of my civic work is infusing civic engagement into student athletics. If I think about even on college campuses, where are the two epicenters? They tend to be around sports, and then they tend to go study at the library. One of the big insights we've had with Joe Kennedy, who actually has a position not only in running the team, which is what All Vote No Play has come to be, but he also now is a physician running sports within the Obama Foundation.
He has this dual role because also there's basketball courts and all the rest. Go to the gathering places. You're making me realize that there's an opportunity for athletes to go to the library and to do some of their work there.
Shamichael: Oh, absolutely.
Lisa: Maybe we don't need to install a gym in the library. There's plenty of studying that happens with the film rooms and all the rest, but to really promote civic engagement in a whole new way where people are already gathered and to really help us reimagine, as you said, the bridging space that it can have. I'm going to get to work on that, definitely. I want to end, Shamichael, with your call to action at the end of the book, which I just think is so powerful for those that I hope, at the very least, listening to this, have woken up some nostalgia about what the library meant to you.
I know even, as I said, preparing for this, it reminded me. As a very young girl, my mother taking me to the library when she was finishing her dissertation. I was hanging out at the Ludington Library in the main line of Philadelphia. One of the things I loved was the fact that they had these really cool orange chairs that would spin around. Shamichael, I can't remember what I did yesterday, but I have vivid memories of that as a kid. Of course, allowing my mother to do something extraordinary, which was finish a PhD later in life and continue to do great things.
I just hope everyone listening here at the very least can pause and think about what the library has meant to them, and then to reimagine how they can get involved in some ways. You have a great outline. I just want to read it here. You say, "Sign up for a library card and use it. Be an advocate for your library by writing letters of support to your local elected officials. Vote for candidates who support libraries. Organize events at your local branch, a concert, a book club, a community dialogue, or whatever excites you. Volunteer for an upcoming event. Join your friends of the library group.
Take the things I've shared in this book and spread the word about the value of the library to neighbors, friends, and decision makers. Libraries inspire, empower, and transform not only the people who use them, but also the communities in which they are situated. Public libraries are not an artifact of the past. They are essential to the future." Thank you, Shamichael. Thank you for reminding us of that. I'm so excited to share your work. I'm so excited to be on this journey with you. We really appreciate everything you're doing for libraries and the people that use them and learn from them, and grow from them, of all ages, to help us feel better about the present and shape better futures.
Shamichael: Lisa, thanks so much for having me. You are a core piece of that work. Your work inspires me to continue to push the boundaries even more.
[music]
Lisa: Thank you for listening to this episode with Shamichael Hallman. After talking to Shamichael, I am so inspired by the idea that public libraries, what many of us loved most in our childhood, can also be the source of expanded opportunities for what's to come. This week, here are some small things to try. Get a library card, visit your local branch, and find out what's happening there. If you already love your library, think about how you can help others discover it too. As Shamichael reminds us, public libraries are essential to our future. Thanks for listening to How We Future. I'm Lisa Kay Solomon, and I'll see you next time.
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Links from the episode:
Meet Me at the Library by Shamichael Hallman
Shamichael’s TED Talk: Reimagining the Public Library to Reconnect the Community
