As librarians, we are always looking for ways to bring meaningful stories and programs to our communities, but do you ever struggle with finding ways to do that? On this show Kase Johnstun, Manager of the Utah Center for the Book with Utah Humanities, talks about the ways this becomes easier through partnerships with state humanities organizations. There are 56 councils located in every U.S. state and jurisdiction that work to support local public humanities programs and provide prime opportunities for partnering to bring stories and programs to our libraries.
Transcript
Library Leadership Podcast is brought to you by Innovative. Innovative, a part of Clarivate, is a globally recognized library industry partner with nearly five decades of experience developing library management solutions, discovery tools, marketing and communication services, and digital resource management products. Innovative believes every person in every community deserves a personalized library experience. Learn more at www.iii.com
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
This is Adriane Juarez. You’re listening to Library Leadership Podcast, where we talk about libraries and leadership and speak with guests who share their ideas, innovations, and strategic insights in the profession. As librarians, we are always looking for ways to bring meaningful stories and programs to our communities. But do you ever struggle with finding ways to do that? On this show Kase Johnstun, Manager of the Utah Center for the Book with Utah Humanities, talks about the ways this becomes easier through partnerships with state humanities organizations. There are 56 councils located in every U.S. state and jurisdiction that work to support local public humanities programs and provide prime opportunities for partnering to bring stories and programs to our libraries. Enjoy the show!
Kase, welcome to the show.
Kase Johnstun:
Hi. Thanks for having me.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #1: Thanks for being here. Today we are talking about the valuable resource of state humanities councils. As we start, will you talk a little bit about what humanities councils do? 01:35
Kase Johnstun:
I got the opportunity this last year in October, to go to the National Humanities Conference for the first time. Humanities councils do so many different things within the state. They do anything from museums on Main Street, to getting into the universities and do projects like Clemente—where they bring university classes to students who are underserved, and then they do a lot of book stuff too, like I do for for Utah Humanities as the manager for the Utah Center for the Book. But the humanities councils—the goal with all of them really is to spark conversations and to get into places and talk to communities about what’s important to those local communities. That’s why statewide, most states have really thriving humanities councils or humanities organizations.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #2: Absolutely, which can be so valuable, especially working with libraries. Will you please share a little bit about your role with Utah Humanities right here in my home state, and how you work with libraries? 02:40
Kase Johnstun:
It’s an interesting question. So my position, Utah Manager for the Utah Center for the Book—there are 53 of us. We are all linked directly to the Library of Congress, where each state’s represented in the Library of Congress. The interesting part is, the manager for the Centers for the Book isn’t always housed within the humanities councils. Many of them are housed through the state libraries. Many are housed on their own, but I would say the breakdown is usually about 50/50, being the humanities councils or being state libraries who house the Center for the Book. So I mean, it’s really the manager for the Center for the Book nationally, is part of the library system. It really is. Most of them started that way. I know that Utah State started that way as part of the library system.
But my position, very specifically, is to do exactly what I talked about before, and that is to use books as a vehicle—authors as the drivers to a conversation. Through Utah Humanities, through the Book Festival, or through the Center for the Book Programming, our goal is not strictly books. Our goal is to use books and use authors and use libraries as venues to open up these conversations about whatever the author is talking about.
When we think about books, books are really just emblematic of our lives as humans in the humanities, as humans. They really just share an aspect of stories—give us a way to talk about the things that it means to be a human. Libraries are number one, community partners throughout the state because we rely on them as community partners to bring readers, and together emphasize the value of the written word and stories and how that touches everything—is what it means to be human. We love our libraries. They’re the absolute best.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #3: That’s marvelous. And you and I have been working on a project together recently with other librarians across the state in my region. Do you want to talk about how that partnership works with libraries? 04:47
Kase Johnstun:
My position does two things. First, 50%, and 50%—one is for the Center for the Book. The Center for the Book is obviously the direct link to the Library of Congress. Also November 1 to October 1 is programming with libraries, with bookstores, with other community partners to create these conversations. One of our big things for the Center for the Book is Humanities in the Wild. That is where we try to bring together a scholar, a scientist and an artist. That can be a writer, or a poet, or whatever it might be, and look at our environment. That’s one of our programs out—it’s for the Center for the Book, as an example.
The other half of it is the Book Festival, and that is our long-standing 25 year Book Festival in the state of Utah that goes from October 1 to October 31 to match up with National Book Month, or Writer Novel Month, or whatever it is. What we do with that is we want to host events with authors, like I said before, as the the drivers of the vehicles for conversation throughout the state from Saint George and Cedar City—if you don’t know that’s the southern tip of our state to Logan, which is the northern tip of our state, where we want to bring authors to libraries, independent bookstores, whatever the venue might be—coffee shops, to highlight their work, of course, because we’re celebrating books. We’re celebrating writing. We’re celebrating literacy. We’re celebrating all those things that books bring to our community.
Our goal is to have a diversity of books, and venues, and writers throughout the state. So we’re working with Park City and the Wasatch Back and all the libraries in Summit County— if you’re not familiar with it, it’s in northern Utah. We’re trying to put together the best Book Festival that we possibly can. We’ve got a lot of ambitious things going on this year because we’re switching up the format from just a statewide Book Festival where we have events scattered throughout all the time—going on the whole month, to a more clustered Book Festival in different regions throughout the state. That’s what we’re working together to ambitiously create, something wonderful—and the Park City Library is way ahead of the game, which we’re really, really excited about.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #4: It’s been wonderful working with you. I’m thrilled about the way your organization brings resources to libraries, and as you mentioned other places like bookstores, to get things going out into our communities. As a result we’re going to have an amazing Book Festival coming up next October. But what I’m wondering is for librarians who may not have worked with their state humanities councils or with their state Centers for the Book, what would you recommend for them to get involved? 07:21
Kase Johnstun:
That’s a great question. Our humanities councils statewide—I can speak for myself and a lot of other people in my position, program managers throughout the States, we want to be in the background. Our goal really is to provide, like you said, resources for libraries and others to reach out to us for funding, and marketing, and social media, and our connections throughout the state to create book events, to create workshops, to create whatever the libraries in their community feel is important for their community members. But we really want to be in the background. We want to help organize. We want to give resources—funding.
We have a full-time development director who goes out and gets the bigger grants—the NEH grants, the NEA grants, other grants. She works really hard. She’s really, really good at it. But she spends a whole year getting funding. And for us, we don’t use that funding for ourselves at all besides our salaries, really. We don’t use that funding for ourselves besides the Utah Humanities Book Festival for instance. Yeah, we put it on, but it’s our community partners that are the core of it. I am just the keeper of the web, tying all these different little webs together. We don’t want to be front and center. We rely on our community partners—libraries being one of our biggest community partners to reach out to us and ask, What funding can I get to put on this project and what resources can you give me? Because that’s our goal, we want to reach out nationally to get the funding so that we can do things locally with our community partners.
Libraries should reach out to their humanities councils and look at what programming they’re putting on. We have Museum on Main Street. We have so many different things that we do, but we really want to be in the background. We want our communities, our community partners to be out front with all of these different projects.
Just personally, when people come to me with a project I want to say yes to everything. I can’t say yes to everything, obviously, but if it creates discussion in the community based on what the community needs, we’ll find a way. We want to find a way. And there are different types of grants out there too, that we can say, Well, why don’t we apply for this together, and we’ll find out and maybe we can do it differently.
So, reach out. We don’t want to be in the front. It’s your community. We don’t know every community as well as you do as librarians, as people in the community. So, reach out.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #5: Yes, librarians do reach out. There are so many common threads that can be woven together between libraries and humanities councils. This humanness that comes as part of libraries can come through in so many ways in partnership with humanities councils. Can you share any insight or information about commonalities that might create inroads for collaboration? 10:32
Kase Johnstun:
Books are a nice, easy way to do it—we’ll start with books. But books are so much more than just, as you know, words on a page—especially when it comes to community. If you have a local author, for instance, that is writing about a local community. They’re writing about—as an example, this last year in the Book Festival, we had a lot of writers that were looking at redefining the West, looking at dispossession, looking at colonization, looking at resources. We had a lot of writers here in Utah that were looking at the environment and how that affects dispossession, and colonization, and everything. And, we have a lot of writers writing about the Great Salt Lake, and how it’s disappearing on us.
The books really serve as that way to talk about those larger issues. There’s going to be different issues for librarians and libraries in Michigan. They don’t have the water issues, I don’t believe, that we have here in the southwest. So it’s not just books like you said, libraries bring people together to talk about things that affect them all locally and nationally, but a lot of times locally. That’s really, really important for a librarian in Michigan, or Mississippi, or Kansas to have those authors that are speaking to what the local community is really, really passionate about.
So, if we can use books, or if we can use scholars, or we can use academics, or we can use kids, or we can use classrooms to ask kids what they’re thinking about the world around them—libraries are just such a great place to do all these things because all the resources are there. Librarians are brilliant. They have all the resources in their brain, because they’re scholars themselves that can point you to things that you would never even know existed.
I remember in graduate school, librarians were best friends because they could just point you towards things you didn’t even know you didn’t know, if that makes any sense. Libraries are these places that hold communities together. It’s through books, obviously, but it’s obviously through that discussion and it’s through this idea of what the community is passionate about. Local libraries know that more than everybody else does. There’s so many ways into those larger human conversations, and libraries are really such a great vehicle for it.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #6: That’s so great, Kase. And I’m thrilled about the partnerships that libraries and humanities councils can create. Is there anything else you’d like to share? 13:38
Kase Johnstun:
Just this idea that conversations are important. When I look at the Book Festival for next year in October, we’re ambitiously changing it. This is not strictly for Utah. We meet with managers for the Center of the Book every month, and we’re all talking about the same things. We’re talking about literacy, and we’re talking about the power of books, and we’re talking about how to navigate state legislatures, and what they’re doing differently across the states. And they are so different, they’re so different.
But, we’re getting together now and we’re trying to do things. We’re trying to discuss things that affect us locally, but also affect us nationally. Where can our voices be? Where can we create voices, because we are non-political, but we want people to have discussions. So it’s our writers, and it’s our readers that have that discussion where we won’t have an angle. We want to give everybody the opportunity to say something.
So looking at the Book Festival next year and looking at the Center for the Book for this year, it’s really, truly about getting everybody’s voice in, and books do that, and authors do that, and libraries give the opportunity to do that. But, just read. [laughter] Is that the best? I think that’s the best thing. I wish I could read all day long, but just read. Read something you don’t expect you’d like, and dive in.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #7: Read. That sums it up, and read something you might not expect. Which brings me to my next question. This is a leadership podcast for librarians across the nation. Do you have any favorite management or leadership books or resources, and why? 15:26
Kase Johnstun:
I personally don’t. When I delve into things that are nonfiction, my love is memoir and research based nonfiction. I’m sure that my wife has a bunch. I sure could go grab a bunch of books about leadership. She has her own business, so she needs it. So no, I’m not the best person to ask that question too.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #8: But I think it’s interesting because you mentioned memoirs and nonfiction. Sometimes books guide us in ways we don’t expect. I’m reading one right now called The Extended Mind, by Annie Murphy Paul, about how the world extends beyond our brain and guides us in many ways toward cognitive areas that help us in life, and in leadership, and in working with others. So are there any books that are just guiding forces for you, Kase? 16:06
Kase Johnstun:
I’m reading a book right now. I’ll show you. I think it speaks to exactly what you’re talking about. I always have six books—seven books, I’m always reading seven books at a time. Each of these books is doing something different in my life. If you’re reading a book about, for instance, Glen Canyon and Lake Powell—for those who aren’t familiar, Glen Canyon is the canyon that created Lake Powell. It’s a reservoir for water. There’s a lot of controversy if we should get rid of Glen Canyon here in Utah. So lately I’ve been reading a lot of books about Glen Canyon. It really delves into, although it’s not specifically leadership based, it shows what people do to get other people’s attention—what people do to lead within their communities. It shows what people do has an effect on others.
Right now I’m reading Dwellings for the 10th time by Linda Hogan. It’s a book of poetry about the earth. This is an indigenous writer. This in itself is a leadership book in the sense that it says, How do we look at the earth? How should we look at the earth? How should we invest in the Earth? So many of the books that I’m reading right now are asking and trying to answer that question.
Betsy Gaines Quammen’s new book, True West, is something that I’ve just fallen completely in love with. What Betsy’s done with that book is look at the mythology of the West. She’s looked at this idea that land is just ours and we should just take it, and how this has led to different mythologies throughout the last couple hundred years in the western United States. But what Betsy’s done, she goes into the homes of people that she completely disagrees with politically. She goes into the houses of the Bundy’s, who are really in the news all the time these days. These are people who are completely different to her politically. But she goes and sits down with these people. She has real conversations with them. You can just tell by reading the book that these conversations are real and they love her as a person. She always says, Well, they’re my friends now. Even like people who are so politically different than she is. I think the lesson in leadership there, obviously, is through these narrations, through this nonfiction she is telling us to have the conversation at the table with the people you would not expect to have a conversation with and agree with on a lot of different things. She goes out and she just looks at the mythology of the West, land ownership and the great migration west and how we just take land. There’s a lesson there. There is a lesson there, and that lesson is you wouldn’t believe how much we share in common until you sit down with somebody and have a meal with them.
So while I don’t specifically read leadership books—as an author myself, I know that writers are doing so much of that work and they’re doing it in a way that is really digestible. It’s digestible through narrative. It’s digestible through story, and it’s digestible through research. That’s just saying, go out and learn. Go out and learn for yourself and have those conversations. That was a really long answer to that. But yes, like I said, I can look around my office and I’ve got like ten books that I’m reading at once because they’re all speaking to something differently. So I hope that kind of answers.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #9: That’s a great answer. Read. Read broadly. It will guide you in life. It will give you perspectives that help you in leadership in the ways you want to be a leader, in ways that mean something to you. So I love that answer. Kase, in closing, what do libraries mean to you personally? 20:19
Kase Johnstun:
Oh my gosh, so I went to school—and this will age me. Obviously, the online databases and digital humanities were just starting. But being a reader, being a writer, I have to tell it in narrative. But when I went to my first bout of graduate school, Kansas State University had this library. You had to take an elevator to the stacks, and the stacks were four or five levels tall. You could just walk in the stacks for hours and hours and hours, and just pick out books and just read. Some of the best memories of the last 25 years of my life were spent in those libraries in those stacks, grabbing books—things that I just didn’t even know I would like at all, from authors like me who nobody knows, then go and find a nice, comfortable space in the library to read. There’s just something about those library days. There’s so many worlds living on those stacks.
That library, sadly, actually burned down a few years ago, and it was like losing a friend. I met my wife there at Kansas State, and she says the same thing. The way in which the books smell when you walk into the stacks. It’s just amazing. But the libraries just have so many different worlds in them and what they’ve evolved today to be as these community centers, places for dialogue, places for conversation—they’re even more important now than they’ve ever been. Instead of just holders of worlds, they are ways into worlds and discussions about those worlds themselves. Whenever I see somebody on social media saying libraries aren’t important, I just get so angry. I do my best to not send off mean comments. I just try to keep scrolling these days because they really, really are our gifts to our communities. So thank you, all of you for what you do.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #10: And thank you for sharing that narrative and that perspective on libraries. You talk about different worlds, and I think the way libraries have so many different worlds contained within them, the materials and conversations link us beautifully with what humanities councils do. So I’m thrilled we could talk about this today and really encourage librarians to get involved with their local humanities councils and Centers for the Book. It’s been fantastic partnering with you. I am so excited about our Book Festival in the fall, and all the stories we are going to get to bring out with that. So thank you, and thank you for being here today. 23:04
Kase Johnstun:
Thank you so much. I could talk books all day. We could go for another three hours. It’s great. I really appreciate it.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
We could go for hours, but we won’t. We will let this be the end, but hopefully a beginning for many wonderful library/humanities council partnerships out there. I know our listeners are going to want to get involved after hearing this conversation. Thanks again, Kase.
Kase Johnstun:
Thank you so much.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
You’ve been listening to Library Leadership podcast. This is Adriane Herrick Juarez. For more episodes, tune in to Library Leadership Podcast.com, where you can now subscribe to get episodes delivered right to your email inbox. Our producer is Nathan Sinclair Vineyard. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.
We would like to thank the Park City Library for their dedicated support of this show. The opinions expressed on this show are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect the views of Library Leadership podcast or our sponsors.