Enriching Community with the Missoula Public Library

The Missoula Public Library and its rural branches are more than just places to check out books, and the proof is in the numbers. In 2025, 23,000 people attended programs at the main library and its six branches. More than 50,000 Missoula County residents have a library card, giving them access to traditional media and so much more.

This week, the commissioners spoke with Slaven Lee, director of the Missoula Public Library, about everything from the bookmobile to cooking classes and more.

Thank you to Missoula's Community Media Resource for podcast recording support!

Transcript

Josh Slotnick: [00:00:10] Welcome back to the agenda with your Missoula County Commissioners. I'm Josh Slotnick and I'm joined here by my friends and colleagues Dave Strohmaier and Juanita Vero and our friend and colleague, Slaven Lee, who runs our library. Welcome, Slaven.

Slaven Lee: [00:00:24] Welcome, Slaven. Hey everyone. It's so great to see you. Wait, before we.

Juanita Vero: [00:00:29] Need to do a little background. Who are you, Slaven?

Slaven Lee: [00:00:32] Who am I? Start at the beginning. Okay. I was born in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. That's a nice name of a town. Okay, okay, that's. That's good. Home of the Mothman. Um.

Josh Slotnick: [00:00:43] The Mothman?

Slaven Lee: [00:00:44] Yeah. It's a folklore. We probably should. No no no no no, you can't just drop Mothman. What? Who is the Mothman?

Dave Strohmaier: [00:00:52] Is this, like, Sasquatch? Kind of.

Josh Slotnick: [00:00:54] Or of West Virginia?

Slaven Lee: [00:00:55] Of West Virginia? So, as you can imagine.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:00:57] What is the Mothman look.

Slaven Lee: [00:00:58] Like? A man with moth wings.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:01:01] Okay.

Josh Slotnick: [00:01:02] Is he of Sasquatch size.

Slaven Lee: [00:01:03] Or moth size?

Dave Strohmaier: [00:01:07] He's a little man.

Slaven Lee: [00:01:08] He's like regular man size. He appears when something bad is going to happen. Like he gives premonitions or omens. Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:01:16] So if you see the Mothman, go home and batten down the hatches.

Slaven Lee: [00:01:19] Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. He appeared in 1979 before this bridge collapsed during rush hour.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:01:25] The Carter.

Josh Slotnick: [00:01:25] Administration.

Slaven Lee: [00:01:26] During the Carter.

Josh Slotnick: [00:01:27] Bridge collapse.

Slaven Lee: [00:01:28] Yeah, in Point Pleasant.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:01:29] There could be a book in our very own library about him. Often, I.

Juanita Vero: [00:01:32] Bet. Way to bring us back.

Slaven Lee: [00:01:34] Way to bring it back.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:01:35] But. But we were learning about a little bit about you. That's right. And how did you show up here and become affiliated with our library? Other than I think the job was offered to you, obviously.

Slaven Lee: [00:01:45] Oh, yeah. But the working towards that job started probably 2 or 3 years before I got it. I had a personal strategic plan to get the library director job. Wow. Yeah. Tell us about that.

Josh Slotnick: [00:01:55] What was your runway like to get this gig?

Slaven Lee: [00:01:57] Um, well, I mean, I had community already in Missoula. I was living in Austin, Texas at the time.

Josh Slotnick: [00:02:03] Already the director of a big time library.

Slaven Lee: [00:02:05] I was the director of collections at the Austin Public Library. Basically all the books and materials.

Josh Slotnick: [00:02:11] Austin's got like a million people in it, right?

Slaven Lee: [00:02:13] At least.

Josh Slotnick: [00:02:13] So being director of collections at the Austin Library is probably equivalent to being the director of the library in Missoula.

Slaven Lee: [00:02:19] I would say, because my book budget was more than our entire budget.

Juanita Vero: [00:02:23] Well, there you go.

Josh Slotnick: [00:02:23] I think you just nailed it. So this was, I would say, an upward move in terms of places, but maybe a sideways move in terms of responsibility.

Juanita Vero: [00:02:33] Oh, careful how you answer this.

Slaven Lee: [00:02:35] It was all upward.

Juanita Vero: [00:02:36] All upward.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:02:37] That is the right answer. You did not take the bait.

Juanita Vero: [00:02:39] Yeah.

Slaven Lee: [00:02:41] Yeah. So I just, um, had been kind of paying attention to the development of the new library for a long time, and was just really impressed by the culture House model that had been adopted, which I could talk a little bit more about.

Josh Slotnick: [00:02:54] Because I bet a lot of people out there don't know what that is.

Slaven Lee: [00:02:56] Yeah. So the Missoula Public Library, specifically the Downtown Library, because we do have branches, was built based on a Swedish culture house model, where the first library in North America to adopt this model. And it's essentially museums and libraries co-located in one building with other nonprofits. So at the building here downtown, we have Spectrum Discovery Area Families First, the University of Montana Living Lab, and MCAT Media Resource all in one building. Under the agreement that we base all of our services around the concept of collective impact. Basically, we share resources, whether it's people, ideas, stuff, in an effort to improve the community at a higher scale because we're all working together to improve the community. But enrich.

Juanita Vero: [00:03:43] Enrich.

Josh Slotnick: [00:03:43] Has the co-location yielded a synergy that you don't think would have happened otherwise?

Slaven Lee: [00:03:49] Absolutely.

Josh Slotnick: [00:03:49] How what? Some examples of that?

Slaven Lee: [00:03:51] Well, I mean, so the directors of each of the organizations meet once a month. We just had our meeting today. Our executive leaders meeting and Spectrum Discovery Area and the Living Lab received a federal grant to do this changing of the brain project. Teens will be recruited to be in a cohort to learn about science related to brain stuff. Um, and then they'll go out in the community and teach people about these brain related things. I'm a librarian.

Juanita Vero: [00:04:18] I'm struggling here.

Slaven Lee: [00:04:20] But anyway, it's a great well funded program that the partners are doing that will bring more teens into the library, which, you know, we're always trying to get more teenagers in the library. That's a tough population to get to come to the library sometimes. So that partnership between those two organizations will benefit the library because we'll see new people that we weren't serving before.

Juanita Vero: [00:04:40] So exciting.

Slaven Lee: [00:04:41] So they just hired someone to be the coordinator for that program, and they're just talking about what the activities will look like in the library building. And something neat with each of the partners that we have in the building is that they have an agreement to go out to our branches once a quarter and offer programs. So the spectrum discovery area, for example, they go out and do science programs in Condon or Swan Valley.

Josh Slotnick: [00:05:04] Can you talk a bit about our branches? Like where where where are they?

Slaven Lee: [00:05:07] Sure. So there's Swan Valley in Condon, Seeley Lake, Potomac, Lolo, Frenchtown, and big Sky.

Juanita Vero: [00:05:16] And the bookmobile and the bookmobile.

Slaven Lee: [00:05:17] Bookmobile is huge. Yeah.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:05:19] And so with all of those, is is Condon the only one that is not co-located with a school?

Slaven Lee: [00:05:26] That's right. Yeah. So the other branches are in public schools.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:05:29] And the you don't have to be a student at, at one of those schools to use the library. Exactly. Community member can just drift into the school and. Okay.

Slaven Lee: [00:05:39] Yeah, we have MoUs with each school that creates a structure for when the general public can come into the libraries. But yeah, they're open to the public with collections that you can check out. Programs, all sorts of things.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:05:51] Are the Missoula Public Library collections separate from all of the other books in those schools libraries? Or how does how does that work? Complicated.

Slaven Lee: [00:05:59] I gather this shouldn't be a trick question, but it's a tricky question. Okay, and I don't want to answer incorrectly.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:06:06] Okay.

Josh Slotnick: [00:06:07] That's all.

Slaven Lee: [00:06:07] Right. Because the kids have. Their school library cards. And with those, they're only allowed to check out school library materials. But then with their public library card, they can pick they can check out.

Juanita Vero: [00:06:18] Public library materials.

Slaven Lee: [00:06:19] Yes. And um, we have different parameters around what we select the library. It's a little bit more open because we're serving multiple audiences.

Josh Slotnick: [00:06:28] So our library is pretty much most people know who live close enough to frequent often is this is the spot, the host, the venue of all kinds of community events. Right. Is that something that was in the plan always from this library? How did we end up being kind of a venue space for all sorts of cool things?

Slaven Lee: [00:06:47] Yeah, I mean, the national trend in libraries, including our own after Covid, is that we're still slowly getting up to the same door count that we had before Covid times, and the same level of materials that we're handing out to people that people are checking out. The numbers are high, but they still need to kind of recover. But the number of people that are coming to programs is just astronomical. Last year, 23,000 people came to our programs at the downtown library and the branches.

Josh Slotnick: [00:07:14] Can you give an example of some of the programs?

Slaven Lee: [00:07:17] Sure. See, this past summer we had Indigo Palooza, which was.

Josh Slotnick: [00:07:21] That was huge.

Slaven Lee: [00:07:22] Yeah. A huge indigenous arts cultural storytelling event that we did in partnership with Chris Letter and Chickadee Community Services. So it was a few day long festival with all these amazing authors. Joy Harjo was in town, the first Native American poet laureate, and then tons of other authors and creators. And that drew, I think, something like 500 people. And then we have storytimes and Tiny Tales for kids every week. So storytime is more of a traditional a story is read and there's some interaction and a craft, that sort of thing. And then Tiny Tails is a program with music and singing along and stories and that sort of thing. Cooking classes in our demo kitchen, book clubs, as you would imagine, and even more programing as possible because of that, all under one roof model that I mentioned.

Juanita Vero: [00:08:08] What other things can folks do at the library? I mean, besides the programing?

Slaven Lee: [00:08:12] Well, of course, check out books, DVDs, music, vinyl records, that sort of thing. But we also have a library of things. Uh, wow. Um, so using your library card, you can. I think our, our top checkouts in the library of things are telescopes.

Juanita Vero: [00:08:28] Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah, I forgot about that.

Slaven Lee: [00:08:30] Auto diagnostic kits that you can use to figure out what's wrong with your car. Binoculars. We have something called a culture pass where you can check it out and go to things like the butterfly house for free or a paddleheads game for free. And then we also have genealogy classes and resources that people can use programs around. We were just talking about a little bit ago, one called Pain Savvy, which helps you navigate chronic pain that you might have and is led by an expert. So just tons of different things. There's also Resource Access Day, which is a monthly event that takes place on the fourth floor of the library, where all sorts of providers and nonprofits come together, usually around 50 to 70 providers and folks can come and get their needs met. Whether that's a free haircut. A salon is always set up just outside of my office. It's really fun. On haircut day, you can get connected with housing. Snap benefits become part of community organizing.

Josh Slotnick: [00:09:21] So I think our library is really amazing in that the the gamut of things running from that to a reading I went to last year, the book goes on. There's always this year on on basketball and Ascension. Yes, it's Hanif. I can't remember the guy's last name. Yeah, it was so good. He's a person of national prominence and that we have that and we have Haircut Day for people who are living outdoors under the same roof. It's pretty amazing.

Slaven Lee: [00:09:45] It is pretty amazing. And Hanif was such a big deal. I mean, he's one of my favorite authors.

Juanita Vero: [00:09:50] And have.

Slaven Lee: [00:09:50] Him.

Juanita Vero: [00:09:50] Here and.

Josh Slotnick: [00:09:51] Yeah. And his The way he spoke and the way he reads, writes poetry and essays. It's all kind of of of of the same piece of cloth. And I get this sense of just, of authenticity. When he was there, he was super human and real. And it was it was one of my favorite readings I've ever been to.

Slaven Lee: [00:10:06] Me too. I think there was something like 200 people there.

Juanita Vero: [00:10:08] Incredible.

Slaven Lee: [00:10:09] Yeah, pretty big deal.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:10:10] Everything you've described Slaven is in line with a recent book. I read that the title is palaces for people, and a lot of emphasis in this book is put on libraries, particularly in larger urban areas such as New York City or Chicago.

Juanita Vero: [00:10:28] Did you only read that because Slaven said to read what.

Slaven Lee: [00:10:30] I was going to say?

Juanita Vero: [00:10:31] I gave you. I was like, what a brown noser. Yeah, I just, I.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:10:36] I have no idea how I got the book. Maybe you gave it to me.

Juanita Vero: [00:10:39] Slaven gave it.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:10:40] I finally read it. I could not remember how I got it, but it talks about social infrastructure.

Josh Slotnick: [00:10:46] Is absolved because of the. As you recall that we all.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:10:50] When did you give us that book?

Juanita Vero: [00:10:52] Gosh. Last year.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:10:53] Have you read.

Juanita Vero: [00:10:54] It? No. It's on my bedside table. It's good. It's good.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:10:57] It's a good read. Yeah. And so clearly, that concept. Yeah.

Juanita Vero: [00:11:04] Heathcliff is coming next week.

Josh Slotnick: [00:11:07] Did you make the call?

Juanita Vero: [00:11:10] Well, we got Jacob. We got Jacob instead. Jacob is great.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:11:14] Well, thanks for providing the book.

Slaven Lee: [00:11:15] Thank you for reading it.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:11:16] Yeah. But clearly a smallish community. Smaller community, larger Montana. But overall, in the national scheme of things, is smallish community. Those principles still apply. Mhm. I guess in terms of the demographics you see served by our library across the gamut of services and opportunities that we provide. Are there are there specific demographics that you see being drawn to the library more so than others or.

Slaven Lee: [00:11:45] Yeah. This is exemplified in that book palaces for the People by Eric Klinenberg. And I see it here in Missoula County every day. The library is a third space. You've probably heard that phrase before, right? It's not work. It's not school. It's a place where people can come together. Not related to those things, necessarily, and it's a place that's free and open to the public and welcoming to everyone. So everybody uses the library. It's one of the few places in the community where people who have nothing in common are sharing space together, which is such a great tool for empathy. You know, learning about other people, learning about other people's lives. And I just see that in play all the time in the library. So everybody uses the library.

Josh Slotnick: [00:12:25] And there's been a lot made in media as of late around loneliness and young people who spend a lot of time behind keyboards or phone screens and don't ever really learn to flex the muscle of in real life interaction. Most recent time to the library, just maybe two weeks ago, saw a ton of young people there. I'm talking like teenagers. Do you have specific programing or are young people just going to the library?

Slaven Lee: [00:12:48] It's both today. M.c.p.s. Is having their battle of the books on the fourth floor of the library.

Juanita Vero: [00:12:55] That's great.

Slaven Lee: [00:12:55] It's a national program, but there are hundreds of kids at the library right now.

Josh Slotnick: [00:13:00] How does battle.

Slaven Lee: [00:13:00] The books work? That I don't.

Juanita Vero: [00:13:02] Know. Okay.

Slaven Lee: [00:13:04] It really like Commodifies or not, Commodifies makes reading, like, super competitive. So you have to battle it out to be the best reader or something. That's my very limited, where.

Josh Slotnick: [00:13:14] I saw a bunch of young people just walking by is in that makerspace.

Slaven Lee: [00:13:17] Yeah, in the makerspace is huge. Um, that's.

Josh Slotnick: [00:13:19] What happens at the makerspace.

Slaven Lee: [00:13:20] It's a free space where people can come and learn how to use 3D printers, laser engravers, sewing machines. We do a lot of mending classes. I see people of all ages come to our mending classes. So those sorts of things, those really creative skills, but also skills that help a person get a job. You can get certified to use a 3D printer and share that on your resume, or you can just create things for home that you need. I talked to a woman on the phone the other day. Her dog is really smart and whenever he's in the car, he gets seat belted into something in the back seat. He's a husky and he's smart, so he knows how to, oh, eject the seat belt. And she was like, I found a pattern online that I can create this piece using a 3D printer to keep my dog locked in his car. She's like, when is the makerspace open? So stuff like.

Juanita Vero: [00:14:09] That. Dave's question about demographics, the time that you've been at the Missoula library. Like how has that changed at all? Has it?

Slaven Lee: [00:14:16] Well, um, we did our strategic planning process my first year at the library, so it was it launched in 2023 after a year or so of planning. And we found through talking to people, surveys, collecting data that we needed to prioritize certain populations. So that's indigenous community members, teens, refugees and immigrants. And then people who are geographically isolated.

Juanita Vero: [00:14:39] Rural.

Slaven Lee: [00:14:40] People, rural folks who are living in rural areas, which are so lovely and wonderful but aren't always close to a lot of resources, which is why we got a bookmobile. So I've seen more people fitting those categories be welcomed into the library.

Juanita Vero: [00:14:54] Yeah, I mean.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:55] Great Missoula is an urban center for Montana, but in our county, we have a lot of people that live in very rural. And I would even say remote areas.

Slaven Lee: [00:15:04] Yeah. And from that strategic planning process, it was so clear that we needed a bookmobile because we didn't have one.

Juanita Vero: [00:15:10] But when did the bookmobile go away?

Slaven Lee: [00:15:12] A long time ago there was a bookmobile. But I would say that's like decades ago.

Juanita Vero: [00:15:15] I remember the bookmobile. I love the bookmobile.

Slaven Lee: [00:15:18] I can't remember the year.

Juanita Vero: [00:15:20] Of course, every Thursday. Oh my gosh. Like, I mean, we set our week by the bookmobile.

Slaven Lee: [00:15:25] That's in Potomac, right?

Juanita Vero: [00:15:27] Greenough sunset. Oh, sunset school.

Josh Slotnick: [00:15:29] On the other side of the tracks. You don't want to say Potomac to a Greenough person. It's. You can't do it.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:15:34] What sort of vehicle was used as the bookmobile back?

Juanita Vero: [00:15:37] It's like, you know, the.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:15:38] Conestoga.

Juanita Vero: [00:15:39] Wagon, the go fetch.

Josh Slotnick: [00:15:41] 50 with a topper.

Juanita Vero: [00:15:42] Well, you guys know the go fetch van? Yeah. Runs around town.

Josh Slotnick: [00:15:46] Yeah, it's.

Juanita Vero: [00:15:46] A box van. It was like that. Yeah. Like with a with a, like, accordion door on it.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:15:50] And you have a very nice bookmobile.

Juanita Vero: [00:15:52] That's right. Now bookmobile now is amazing.

Josh Slotnick: [00:15:54] First century.

Slaven Lee: [00:15:55] We have a very fancy sprinter van that has been customized to be some kind.

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:00] Of tech interface in there, too.

Slaven Lee: [00:16:01] So it has Wi-Fi? Yes. Yeah. And it's a very it's a fancy sprinter van. So it has all sorts of tech inside of it, but it's predominantly meant to bring books and enriching activities and as a means to decrease isolation. Sure, an expert who comes out and meets with people and builds community through that bookmobile.

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:21] Do you know if the bookmobile still goes to Sunset School?

Juanita Vero: [00:16:24] I think we do. Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:25] That's fantastic.

Juanita Vero: [00:16:25] Um, yeah.

Slaven Lee: [00:16:26] Which is in Greenough.

Juanita Vero: [00:16:27] Which is in Greenough. Yes. We would hear the the bookmobile pull in on the gravel into the, the parking lot and we would like we were so amped in school like, oh my gosh, we gotta go.

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:39] How great.

Juanita Vero: [00:16:39] Is that?

Slaven Lee: [00:16:40] Yeah, yeah. There's a StoryCorps video where this person from Washington tells her story of growing up on a migrant farm as a kid, picking crops and the bookmobile coming to her community that, you know, the tires on the gravel. Yeah. How much that meant to her and how it made her want to become a librarian eventually. That's why we use that video to fundraise to get the bookmobile.

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:00] Great partnership. I interviewed somebody for StoryCorps, and it was in the library, right?

Slaven Lee: [00:17:05] Yeah, because we did their big national tour a few years ago.

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:08] Yeah, that's a big thing. Just drop that. Just. We're part of the StoryCorps national tour.

Juanita Vero: [00:17:12] Yeah.

Slaven Lee: [00:17:13] No big deal.

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:14] After the reading.

Slaven Lee: [00:17:16] We're doing okay.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:17:17] I think I got excited about ice cream trucks.

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:21] Oh.

Slaven Lee: [00:17:22] Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:22] For sure, for sure.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:17:24] Someone mentioned the word tech earlier. So are there any emerging trends, technology, state of the art directions that libraries are leaning in towards these days? And my anecdote that I'll bring up last week I was able to link up with my daughter, who's a sophomore in college, and we visited a university library that still had this whole array of card catalog.

Juanita Vero: [00:17:50] Dewey Decimal System.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:17:51] Was it?

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:52] Well, as like an artifact.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:17:54] Yes. These were no longer being used. But I asked my daughter, do you know what these are? She had no idea. And I did not dive into the Dewey Decimal System or any such thing. But I did say that when I was in college, we actually used these things. And there's little pieces of paper, little cards in there.

Slaven Lee: [00:18:12] And I used those too.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:18:13] Yeah. So I guess we can see how technology has changed with libraries. But what are you seeing now and where do you see the direction of our. At least a couple of years ago, it was like the best library on the planet that we had.

Slaven Lee: [00:18:27] Yeah, it still is.

Josh Slotnick: [00:18:28] I thought.

Slaven Lee: [00:18:30] You know, that's a tricky one for me. I do get asked that a lot. And I want to have, like, a flashy answer. I think AI in libraries is something that's being talked about so much.

Josh Slotnick: [00:18:39] What would what what would an AI application in a library be?

Slaven Lee: [00:18:43] That's what I'm still trying to figure out myself. I think when it comes to media literacy and literacy, information literacy of understanding AI and the output that it can give you and and how to use it, that's a great place for the library. We're very good at teaching those kinds of literacies so that you can understand the tool, you can understand the content, you can use it, but also know how to discern the information, because misinformation data shows leads to a lot of isolation. So if we kind of circle back to that, like helping people understand these tools can really be helpful.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:17] Maybe an elders class would be really good. The other day I heard an ad on a podcast.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:19:22] Josh is thinking, personally.

Juanita Vero: [00:19:23] I have two of us.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:19:25] That was.

Juanita Vero: [00:19:25] Tricky. It was.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:26] It was.

Juanita Vero: [00:19:26] The.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:27] It was the ad on a podcast for an AI feature that would that offered a agentic procurement orchestration.

Juanita Vero: [00:19:36] What's that?

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:36] There you go. So I feel like I need some media literacy, because I would love to be able to understand what Agentic procurement orchestration is especially given that we work for an organization that does a lot of procurement.

Juanita Vero: [00:19:48] Are.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:49] Probably not orchestrated. It's more like free jazz.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:19:52] I think you're leaving us hanging.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:55] I don't know the answer. Okay. All I knew is that there was a comparison between Agentic and Mimetic, and we should understand the difference.

Juanita Vero: [00:20:05] Between the two.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:06] I'm guessing like agentic as an agency and mimetic as in mimicking and like, are you following or are you actually making something?

Juanita Vero: [00:20:13] But that makes.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:14] Sense. Really. What this is, is pointing to what you said. I'm sorry. Uh, literacy around technology and media. These are landscapes that are changing super fast and for young people, but as well as old people who don't want to be left behind and young people who similarly want to be included. So I think there's space for education in these areas.

Slaven Lee: [00:20:32] And content creation, too. I mean, AI is using publicly, um, shared information to create content, right?

Juanita Vero: [00:20:39] And that's that's our generative AI. Generative.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:20:42] I made a Sasquatch video the other day.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:44] Yes yes.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:20:45] Yes.

Juanita Vero: [00:20:45] So the generative AI focuses on creating context.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:48] And agentic.

Juanita Vero: [00:20:49] Based on prompts, while Agentic AI uses AI to autonomously plan take.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:54] Action.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:20:54] Exactly what.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:55] I thought. Agentic AI is the AI that people fear in terms of global domination because it's autonomous as opposed to.

Slaven Lee: [00:21:02] Well, but there's opportunity for us as people in community to have more data sovereignty and have more control over this data and create our own data sovereignty.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:13] That's a great phrase.

Slaven Lee: [00:21:14] Yeah, well, I definitely did not coin that. I'm not that smart, but public libraries could be a place for that. I just don't understand how yet.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:21] Yet you don't understand yet.

Slaven Lee: [00:21:23] And the sustainability is so important. I mean, the, you know, the environmental aspects of environmental.

Juanita Vero: [00:21:28] Yeah.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:21:29] There is.

Slaven Lee: [00:21:29] That. Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:30] Do libraries play a role in data sovereignty?

Slaven Lee: [00:21:33] I mean, they can for sure.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:34] What would that look like?

Slaven Lee: [00:21:35] I mean, there are some grant funded AI projects out there that are helping libraries do that. It's just not something we've really delved into yet. I did go to a conference in South Korea a few months ago. I was invited to come and talk about the Missoula Public Library.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:49] Well done.

Slaven Lee: [00:21:50] Thank you. Mostly they wanted to hear about our Sustainability and Green Library Award and what I can really connect to that to that is social sustainability and how we share resources with the partners and the community around programing and whatnot. But it was an AI focused conference.

Juanita Vero: [00:22:06] Sure.

Slaven Lee: [00:22:07] But it also was all in Korean. So I had my little headset on and I did my best.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:13] What are what are some events on the horizon you're excited about?

Dave Strohmaier: [00:22:16] So how do we find the event calendar?

Slaven Lee: [00:22:18] Okay, so Missoula Public Library, you can find our program calendar. You can sign up for a newsletter. We have a really excellent flier that we create monthly with highlights from the event calendar. So there are tons of ways to to find that information.

Juanita Vero: [00:22:30] Some of your favorites.

Slaven Lee: [00:22:32] I mean, in the past, some of my favorites are the restaurant downtown Basil has been doing cooking demos in our demo kitchen. So how to use things from the farmer's market, how to make bone broth, stuff like that.

Juanita Vero: [00:22:44] They do have very good bone broth. They really do.

Slaven Lee: [00:22:46] The Tamarack Grief Center is doing, I think, tonight, a cooking through grief class. Last year we did an event called Soups and Stories with All Nations.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:56] Oh, what a great idea for an event.

Slaven Lee: [00:22:57] Yeah. So an indigenous chef would come in and make a dish and talk about it and then share it with the audience while an elder told a story on zoom. Um, so that was so powerful. And I hope we do something like that again. Just last week, we had an anti-bias panel with some local leaders, including, uh, someone from gosh, I can't remember what an organization, a reformed white supremacist.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:23:22] Mm. That would have been interesting.

Slaven Lee: [00:23:24] Yeah. Came and talked with a panel of folks about hate crimes and anti-bias legislation and that sort of thing, and how to get involved. So that was really interesting. There were probably 150 people there. So things like that.

Juanita Vero: [00:23:37] Cool. Plus Lego club.

Slaven Lee: [00:23:39] Lego club happens every week.

Josh Slotnick: [00:23:40] That's right. Stem building.

Juanita Vero: [00:23:42] Yes.

Josh Slotnick: [00:23:42] That's awesome.

Slaven Lee: [00:23:43] I think that's Families First that does that. Um, we have a program called read with Dogs, where therapy dogs come to the library, and kids who are shy about reading get to read aloud to the dogs.

Juanita Vero: [00:23:55] Oh.

Slaven Lee: [00:23:55] Um, it's really special.

Josh Slotnick: [00:23:56] I see. Dave, here's one for you and me. The memory cafe.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:24:01] What's on the.

Juanita Vero: [00:24:03] Menu?

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:03] I just.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:24:03] Read it. Oh.

Juanita Vero: [00:24:08] Whew. If people want to get their library card, what do they need?

Slaven Lee: [00:24:14] Ah, thank you for asking.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:24:16] So there still are library cards.

Slaven Lee: [00:24:19] 50,000 people in this county have a library card.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:22] Wow. That's amazing.

Slaven Lee: [00:24:23] That's a really high.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:24:24] I think I have one somewhere.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:25] I do too.

Slaven Lee: [00:24:25] You better have one somewhere.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:27] Yeah. That's an incredible percentage.

Slaven Lee: [00:24:29] Yeah I agree, and that's, I would say above the national trend. Um, our community Missoula County. I agree. Yeah. Like, and people are so supportive of the library, I see that. I see that all the time, every day. But recently, we kind of, with the board of trustees and some library staff adopted more progressive policies around getting a library card.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:50] What does that mean?

Slaven Lee: [00:24:50] Well, it used to be that you would come in with your photo ID, and even if it had your address on it, you also had to show us a piece of mail with the address on it. And there were a lot of little things like that that sort of build up to become barriers to getting a library card. So now a person can come in and if they forgot their ID at home, they can get a temporary card and then come back at another time and show us their ID and get full privileges.

Juanita Vero: [00:25:13] Which what does it cost to get a library card?

Slaven Lee: [00:25:14] It's absolutely free to get a library card and you can check out as much as you want. So that's pretty exciting. And we're part of a statewide collective called The Partnership, where we share resources with about 40 other libraries in the state. And we are a hub here in Missoula for the state of Montana. We lend probably five items to every one that. Oh, I see.

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:34] So if you're in another part of the state and you want a book and it's only available at our library, You can still get it through your library.

Slaven Lee: [00:25:41] Yes. And the same is true for us. If we want something and Missoula doesn't have it, it can come from Kalispell or Great Falls or places like that.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:25:50] How good are people at returning books?

Slaven Lee: [00:25:52] They're pretty good.

Juanita Vero: [00:25:53] How long can you check a book out for?

Slaven Lee: [00:25:55] 21 days.

Juanita Vero: [00:25:56] Okay.

Slaven Lee: [00:25:57] Oh, this quiz I'm going to get. Really? My staff are going to drag me for getting things like that wrong.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:04] What's the process on choosing what new books to bring into the library?

Slaven Lee: [00:26:08] We have several librarians who are considered selectors with a capital S, and what they do is they check out all of the sort of top resources for book reviews. They take guidance from our vendor, Ingram, around what's popular at other libraries in the country.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:24] Gigantic.

Slaven Lee: [00:26:24] Ingram is huge. Yeah. And we've we've just established a relationship with them because our former vendor went out of business.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:31] They were contemplating purchasing Portugal. I'm not.

Juanita Vero: [00:26:33] Sure the country.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:37] As to the scale of Ingram, that's all I.

Juanita Vero: [00:26:39] Was bringing.

Slaven Lee: [00:26:39] Oh, yes.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:42] It was a minor purchase. Just increased, you know, breadth in the portfolio.

Slaven Lee: [00:26:46] Dad jokes.

Juanita Vero: [00:26:48] Are exactly.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:26:50] I bet there's a book about.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:52] There's a book about it.

Juanita Vero: [00:26:53] Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:54] So the selectors, do they make these decisions as a collective or does each of them get to do a certain amount?

Slaven Lee: [00:26:59] Right now they they do a certain section of the library using their professional expertise, using our policy around book collecting materials. We try to collect everything for everyone, which is challenging because we only have so much money. But we try to, you know, expose people to multiple views, multiple authors, multiple subjects, you know, varying diverse subjects.

Josh Slotnick: [00:27:20] You run into space issues with every year adding new books. Or do you funnel some out to how does that work?

Slaven Lee: [00:27:26] There's a very detailed process around removing materials from the library when they are no longer circulating or they're out of date. So not censorship removing, but it's called weeding.

Juanita Vero: [00:27:38] Oh, I was gonna say there's a term for this, but. Okay. And it's really just weeding. That's what it's called. Yeah.

Slaven Lee: [00:27:43] You run reports. You. You look at all these other factors, and then you take things out as needed to make space. But we also invest a large percentage of our book budget in online materials and digital in ebooks and audiobooks.

Juanita Vero: [00:27:58] Libby.

Slaven Lee: [00:27:59] Libby is huge.

Josh Slotnick: [00:28:00] Libby is an awesome service.

Slaven Lee: [00:28:02] Absolutely. But the publishers kind of scam libraries a little bit, honestly, around selling ebooks to libraries. The licensing model for it is not great. You know, if we buy a physical book, it can check out as many times as we want. But when we buy an ebook, we get a certain amount of licenses, five licenses.

Juanita Vero: [00:28:18] And then.

Slaven Lee: [00:28:19] And it's gone once it checks out five times and you have to either buy it again or you don't have it anymore. And it is.

Juanita Vero: [00:28:24] So.

Slaven Lee: [00:28:25] Expensive.

Juanita Vero: [00:28:26] Wow. I did not realize that we should.

Josh Slotnick: [00:28:28] There's a lot to see if there was a workaround or like a collective nonprofit. Kind of.

Slaven Lee: [00:28:33] There is on a national level.

Josh Slotnick: [00:28:34] On a national level. I don't mean us. I mean on a national level.

Slaven Lee: [00:28:36] Yeah. But we certainly participate in those discussions as we can.

Josh Slotnick: [00:28:39] Yeah, I love Libby.

Slaven Lee: [00:28:41] Libby's great. Yeah. Yeah. Libby is so popular. That's the app that.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:28:45] We're not talking about the community in northwest Montana.

Slaven Lee: [00:28:48] But we could love that.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:28:49] Okay. Okay.

Slaven Lee: [00:28:50] They have a great. You know, they have libraries there. Um, we're talking about an app called Libby that public libraries all over the country use to check out digital resources to people, ebooks and audiobooks. So you can put yourself on a holds list if something's not available, which is confusing to people because you would think a digital book would always be available.

Josh Slotnick: [00:29:10] One would think yes. But because.

Slaven Lee: [00:29:12] Of.

Josh Slotnick: [00:29:12] Licensing, always the book that I want is on hold. But it does come up.

Slaven Lee: [00:29:15] Yes, exactly. So it's an app that you use to read or listen to books.

Josh Slotnick: [00:29:19] For free instead of.

Slaven Lee: [00:29:20] It's a library version of audible. Exactly, exactly. And audible is very expensive.

Josh Slotnick: [00:29:24] It is. It is.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:29:25] And I still like a physical book.

Slaven Lee: [00:29:28] Me too. That's my preference.

Josh Slotnick: [00:29:30] Me too. There's just time place. Well, driving across the state is nice to listen to a book.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:29:34] Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:29:35] Yeah. Whenever I read and drive, it goes badly.

Slaven Lee: [00:29:37] Well, you can listen. That's reading.

Josh Slotnick: [00:29:39] Too. Hence Libby.

Slaven Lee: [00:29:40] Yeah. Audiobooks. That counts as reading as well. Yeah, yeah.

Juanita Vero: [00:29:43] We're going to argue about reading versus listening.

Slaven Lee: [00:29:46] No, there's no arguing.

Josh Slotnick: [00:29:47] We had both is the answer.

Slaven Lee: [00:29:50] Well, we had talked about the bookmobile a little bit. And I just want to note that the bookmobile was made possible by, I think, around 150 donors and organizations that we raised money to purchase that bookmobile. And in its first year, it made something like 4000 visits. All over the county. Wow. Definitely. With a focus on places outside of Missoula, the city of Missoula. And we take programing out via the bookmobile. So, you know, some storytimes at one of the stops, or science programs with spectrum discovery area, that sort of thing. So that feels really important to me. The bookmobile circulated 7500 books and other materials in their first year, too, so that's pretty huge. They give library cards, all those things, and then something I wanted to mention to you. We recently polled voters in the community about what they think of the library, and some really positive messages we heard from the community were that they love, that we celebrate the freedom to read. And what that means is that we just want to provide non-judgmental service to people, non-judgmental materials, and access to materials to celebrate reading. And we use that phrase freedom to read, because that feels really important. And then also, the people who took the poll really had a lot of positive things to say about library staff.

Josh Slotnick: [00:31:05] It's great.

Slaven Lee: [00:31:06] Yeah. Which the pollsters said they had not heard in other communities where they've done similar polls.

Juanita Vero: [00:31:10] Our library staff is there long term library staffers? I've heard all over the.

Slaven Lee: [00:31:14] Map, but yeah, there.

Josh Slotnick: [00:31:15] Are getting a job at the library is trying to get into the Foreign Service or something.

Slaven Lee: [00:31:18] That's how I felt trying to get a job at the library.

Josh Slotnick: [00:31:20] Multi-year runway. I know I've heard that people just don't leave.

Slaven Lee: [00:31:24] Hopefully that's a sign of it being a good job. Yeah, of course it is. I mean, usually that's an indicator. We do have someone at the library who's worked there for 49 years.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:31:32] Wow. Wow.

Josh Slotnick: [00:31:33] Amazing.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:31:34] They definitely use card catalogs back in the day.

Josh Slotnick: [00:31:37] They did.

Slaven Lee: [00:31:37] She is the cataloger for the state of Montana.

Josh Slotnick: [00:31:40] Oh well, I get to ask you our standard last question. So as somebody who's in tune with media books and otherwise, have you run into something in the recent past that you thought, man, that was a little nugget of wisdom that was really memorable and I'd love to pass on.

Slaven Lee: [00:31:57] I'm a big fan of Sarah Schulman. She's, um, she's an activist and writer and playwright. She's just one of my favorites. She has a new book called The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity, and she just talks about how obviously solidarity is necessary for social justice and progressing society in a lot of ways, but that often people in movements think that it has to be easy, that everyone has to agree with you for you to be in community in solidarity with others. So she kind of talks about how that purity can prevent communities from moving forward.

Josh Slotnick: [00:32:29] Oh, so good idea.

Slaven Lee: [00:32:30] Yeah. And one example she uses is activists who actually flew to Spain and went to war during the Spanish Civil War to fight fascism. Back in this country, where they were from, they were labeled prematurely anti-fascists because it was before World War Two and before the rest of the country had kind of been like, oh yeah, this is bad. So she talks about that and just talks about how it takes a while sometimes for movements to take hold. And one thing she said about leadership is that real leadership is about helping people be effective where they're at. So meeting people where they are and understanding that you might not agree with each other, but you can still be in a coalition together.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:33:08] Oh yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:33:09] So that's such a such a powerful reminder. Yeah.

Slaven Lee: [00:33:12] Right. And especially because we, we serve everyone that's so important. So that's really been resonating with me.

Josh Slotnick: [00:33:18] That's a good one for this moment. Yeah. Thanks a lot. Thanks for everything you do at our great library.

Slaven Lee: [00:33:23] Well thank you. Thanks for having me. I mean, thanks for my successful personal strategic plan. Working out.

Josh Slotnick: [00:33:29] Well done.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:33:31] Thanks.

Juanita Vero: [00:33:31] Yeah. Thank you.

Josh Slotnick: [00:33:32] See you all soon. Thanks a lot. Thanks for listening to the agenda. If you enjoy these conversations, it would mean a lot if you would rate and review the show on whichever podcast app you use.

Juanita Vero: [00:33:43] And if you know a friend who would like to keep up with what's happening in local government, be sure to recommend this podcast to them.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:33:49] The agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners is made possible with support from Missoula Community Access Television, better known as MCAT, and our staff in Missoula County Communications Division.

Josh Slotnick: [00:34:01] If you have a question or a topic you'd like us to discuss on a future episode, email it to communications@missoulacounty.us.

Juanita Vero: [00:34:08] To find out other ways to stay up to date with what's happening in Missoula County, go to Missoula.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:34:16] Thanks for listening.