Adventure Begins at Your Library: Explore New Mexico Tribal Libraries and Youth Programming
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[00:00:00] Teresa Naranjo: A couple weeks ago we had a class and one of the kids asked me, “Are you a book person?” And when she asked me that, it really caught me off guard because coming from somebody so little to think that way in terms of like, do you like books and that kind of thing, it just lit up my day. Probably the most rewarding part of it is just being able to share the enjoyment of reading and kind of teaching what you know about how to enjoy books and literature and how much it adds to our lives. That’s what really gets me excited.
[00:00:39] Emily Withnall: ¡Bienvenidos! This is Encounter Culture from the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs. I’m your host and editor of El Palacio magazine, Emily Withnall.
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[00:00:55] Emily: As a kid, I spent a lot of time at Carnegie Park in Las Vegas. I lived just a couple of blocks away and would write plays and round up the other neighborhood kids to perform in them. I played kickball there and capture the flag and when I learned to rollerblade in middle school, I spent countless hours teaching myself to jump off the library steps. But for as much time as I spent outside the library, I spent even more time inside. The main floor of Carnegie Library was dedicated to books for adults, which I didn’t work up the courage to look at until I was a teen. Instead, I descend the creaky carpeted stairs to the kids’ section in the basement.
[00:01:42] Sometimes I’d look through the chapter books to discover something randomly, or I’d leaf through the wooden card catalog to find a specific book title. After making my way through many Nancy Drew novels, I discovered Trixie Belden at Carnegie Library and devoured every book in the series. While I had enjoyed Nancy Drew, her red sports car and grownup clothes were hard for me to relate to. I loved Trixie because she was closer to my age. I liked imagining that if she could solve mysteries, I could too. The Carnegie Library basement was cool during the hot New Mexico summers, so I spent a lot of time there reading or looking through the vast collection of back issues of National Geographic.
I was captivated by the June 1985 cover, which featured a photo of an Afghan girl by Steve McCurry. I also spent a lot of time in the library during the summer because they ran a summer reading program. I remember reading a book or two a day sometimes and returning to the library a week later with my book log filled with more titles than I had set for my reading goal.
[00:03:06] I loved seeing the librarian’s face when I showed her my reading log. I didn’t know it at the time, but the summer reading program was coordinated through the New Mexico State Library. Later I brought my own kids to the basement of the library. We settled on the floor with the other parents and kids during story time to listen to the librarian read The Rainbow Fish out loud, using dramatic and funny voices.
Afterwards, we’d explore the puzzles and flip through cardboard books with textured animals in them, rubbing our fingers along the scaly chameleons and fuzzy bears. I was fortunate that as a young child, my parents read to me, and when I had my own kids, I wanted to ensure that they also developed a love of reading.
[00:03:58] Carnegie Library in Las Vegas played a huge role in that. New Mexico unfortunately ranks at the bottom of literacy rates in the U.S. But the good news is that through programs like Summer Reading and tribal libraries, librarians are working to ensure that books get into more kids’ hands. In this episode, I speak with Cassandra Osterloh, the Tribal Libraries Program Coordinator with the New Mexico State Library, as well as Teresa Naranjo, director of Santa Clara Pueblo Community Library, and Kelly McCabe, Youth Services Coordinator with the New Mexico State Library.
Please join us to learn more about the programs and services New Mexico’s libraries provide to you.
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[00:04:52] Emily: Welcome to Encounter Culture. I’m so excited to have you both here. I love libraries and librarians and Cassandra, do you wanna start us off?
[00:04:59] Cassandra Osterloh: I’m Cassandra Osterloh. I am the Tribal Libraries program coordinator at the New Mexico State Library.
The main purpose of my role is to coordinate with all of the tribal public libraries in the state Act as a sort of liaison between the state and the tribal public libraries, as well as their administrations and governments, as well as be kind of that outreach person I. Who can help with any type of training, any type of just day-to-day work and assistance that’s needed.
You know, anything and everything library related, I’m there to answer those questions and to assist, whether it’s getting down and dirty on the floor, cleaning, and helping move books to figuring out how to best work with their library boards and everything in between.
Emily: Teresa, how about you?
[00:05:45] Teresa: I’m Teresa Naranjo, I am librarian at Santa Clara Pueblo Community Library. I’ve been there for a number of years, probably about getting close to thirty-four years there.
[00:05:59] Emily: Are there other people on your staff?
[00:06:00] Teresa: My library staff at Santa Clara is myself and uh, library program coordinator. His name is Charles Suazo. And that’s our staff.
[00:06:11] Emily: And how big is the Santa Clara community?
[00:06:14] Teresa: It’s around three thousand.
[00:06:17] Emily: Okay. So you have a lot to do then to serve that many people?
[00:06:21] Teresa: We do. We really do. We’re finding out every day how much there is to do.
[00:06:26] Emily: And how many tribal libraries are there?
[00:06:28] Cassandra: We have twenty-one tribal public libraries in the state. There are the nineteen Pueblos and the two Apache nations. Navajo Nation has a couple of chapter community libraries that are currently being developed.
[00:06:41] [piano music with jazz beat]
[00:06:42] Emily: Libraries have never been just one thing. And in remote areas of New Mexico, they provide much needed services like internet access, computers and printers. Libraries are places of education for kids and adults alike, and they often serve as gathering places for the entire community.
[00:07:05] Teresa: The Santa Clara Library, uh, is kind of an old building. The building there was a HeadStart in tribal offices before it became the library. The building’s kind of small and it’s kind of outdated, but I think we’ve worked really hard, like with a combination of a lot of different funding sources to improve the looks of the building and make it a space for the community to enjoy, to be able to come in and know that it’s quiet, it’s a quiet reading space, and just to be able to enjoy the resources.
And just having that really welcoming environment for all ages. We tell the community whenever we’re doing, um, meetings or classes with them, you know, “this is your space.” This is your place to come and learn or come and read or come and enjoy sitting around and talking with your friends or spending time here or even just talking with us about things in your job or everything like that, because all those kinds of things relate to information needs.
[00:08:06] Emily: What are some of the things you do in the library besides for people just coming in and checking out books?
[00:08:12] Teresa: Today I put out a cart of free materials, so we’ve been weeding a lot of our old books and magazines. That’s something I really enjoy doing because I enjoy people walking up and browsing through things and getting excited about what they find, and so things always find a home after we think we’re done with them.
Yesterday we had a group from Taos Pueblo called Aspen Song Kids, and they have a new book out, Sacred Spiral. And so, the kids are the authors of the book. They have had their art in there, and then they had like little stories about daily life at their Pueblo. And so, they were able to share their stories with our other kids and talk about how they put their stories together, what inspires them, and kind of like inspiring each other to become authors in a way because there’s not a lot of materials about Santa Clara Pueblo or the other Pueblos that are out published for kids. So, we always try to tell our kids, you can become a writer, you can become an illustrator, and do those kind of things for your community.
[00:09:21] Emily: That’s wonderful. Yeah.
[00:09:23] Teresa: The other thing that I wanted to mention that we do quite often is collecting old photographs from the community or people who wanna donate, so we add to our archive pretty often. You know, we have a really good community archive with old photos and we have a lot of old interviews of people in our native language and um, we have a lot of old newsletters. Archive is really important too.
[00:09:47] Emily: Interesting. Do you have any writers or artists that make use of that for projects?
[00:09:52] Teresa: Actually, we do. We have many people coming in to look at pictures of the way the village used to be, the Pueblo used to be the Pueblo homes because they’re interested in kind of renovating their homes or even building up again from, you know, their homes fell apart, so they wanna get an idea of how it used to be, how it used to look. So that’s something you find in the old photographs of course, and um a lot of our kids are doing a lot of research on tribal leaders. So, we have old photographs of past governors and we have little biographies of them, and of course those things are not easily found in other collections, so we have pretty original archival records there for our community.
[00:10:36] Emily: Wow. Wow. I’m curious if there are specific types of books or other resources that people are really seeking out all the time.
[00:10:46] Cassandra: It really depends on the community, right? And what their needs are, what’s going on, what’s available. As Teresa mentioned, there are not many books written about many of our Pueblos, tribes, and nations in the state.
So oftentimes they’re looking for materials more in an archival way. So, if the library has that, it’s great and it’s a great resource. A lot of the libraries are becoming more of that depository for their communities because they just don’t have anywhere else to go. There are some that have archives or museums already set up, but many don’t, so the libraries are becoming that place as well, and having the librarians now become archivists on top of that, but at least from what I know, high demand books, types of books, I think it’s just, ya know, especially like for kids, it’s what interests them, right? And what interests me is different from what interests you, and that sometimes makes it a challenge for the librarian to keep things current and exciting.
[00:11:45] Teresa: Recently, I’ve had a lot of college students coming in for things that have to do with their certifications, books that are out of print that they can’t find, so I would print off links that I find. I had, um, to pronounce some journal articles for a young lady who’s getting her degree as a nurse practitioner. And so, I have another student who’s in elementary education, so she’s been working on learning about children’s literature. Yeah, and to add to that, I think for our kids, there’s really a anime kind of movement now.
[00:12:22] [Quiet music begins under interview]
[00:12:21] Teresa: So, some of the titles that they’re looking at are Dragon Slayer and Pokemon, Five Nights at Freddy’s. I found out it’s kind of like a current Goosebumps kind of series. Oh, they like the search types of things like Where’s Waldo? so I’ve been buying a lot of materials like that. They really are readers. They’re really avid readers, so they have like requests for different kinds of kids’ books and stuff.
That’s always interesting in keeping us on our toes to get to find the latest materials and series for them. And it’s always fun to maybe when you’re cataloging, you sit there and then you open it and then you’re starting to look at it and then you kind of get sidetracked you as a reader, you know, it’s a lot of fun that way.
[00:13:10] Emily: Are any of the tribal libraries working on adding books to their collections that are in their native languages?
[00:13:17] Cassandra: Only where those are available. Okay. Since the majority of the tribal languages in our state are non-written or are not even allowed to be captured in any other way, there are very few items. So really about the only thing available is our books that are, have been translated into Navajo.
[00:13:35] Teresa: In our library and our Pueblo community library we’ve had over the years a lot of language materials that were developed by language teachers that are original creations that have our language in our specific dialect of, um, Tewa. They’re very one-of-a-kind materials and so we’ve added those to our archival collection. We don’t have anything out in the main collection, but we do have special collections that have many, many language materials, which will help our language teaching staff, which have helped our language teaching staff to have, you know, resources to work with. And one of the things that I can mention about that is that they worked on, um, calendar quite a few years back, and so now at the beginning of the year, they were looking at the months of the year and all the different things that a calendar can teach in a native language, so, and those all had original art work that the kids produced to go with the months of the year. So those are the kind of language materials that we hold very dear in our library that we are working to scan them and to have them saved. So, those are the kind of things that are, are so valuable to our community, our tribal library.
[00:14:51] [Gentle piano music]
[00:15:05] Emily: I love librarians because I always feel like librarians are magicians, like you can find anything at any time. And it sounds a little bit like Cassandra, you’re the librarian’s librarian, maybe like the ultimate magician, so…
(laughter)
[00:15:22] Teresa: Cassandra is such a great resource for us as tribal librarians. She just has a lot of knowledge in many different areas. I had a request for some journal articles, so I talked to Cassandra. I emailed her and we talked about access to J-Store, which is the digital library of journals. You have to subscribe to it, it’s academic and it’s kind of costly, but she gave me a lot of good information about that.
[00:15:49] Cassandra: Nice. Sometimes it’s challenging to get to all the tribal libraries or to be able to access them quickly or easily because we are a larger state, New Mexico, very rural. Part of my role is to help to be that connection between and among all the tribal librarians themselves, and all the tribal library staff because, you know, we are a pretty tight-knit community and group, but it’s hard to go and see Teresa or Teresa to get to go and see somebody at another library. So, if I can be that person that helps bring, oh guess what, so and so is doing this, they’re doing, you know, bringing those ideas to everyone, having those meetings. Zoom has been amazing for that, to be able to have that type of conversation among us. It’s really a good way to collaborate, not just between a particular library and the state library, but among all the tribal libraries.
[00:16:44] Emily: I’d love to hear a little bit about what brought you to library work and why this work is so important to you.
[00:16:50] Teresa: I could just give you a day in my life. A couple weeks ago we had a class in, and one of the kids asked me, “Are you a book person?”
And when she asked me that, it was, it really caught me off guard because coming from somebody so little to think that way in terms of like, “do you like books” and that kind of thing, it just lit up my day. Probably the most rewarding part of it is just being able to share the enjoyment of reading and kind of teaching what you know about how to enjoy books and literature and how much it adds to our lives.
I also just really enjoy, you know, working with the tribal librarians and Cassandra and just everybody in, in the library field, in the state of New Mexico because I think like our state is so ahead in so many ways in the world of library and library services. I just wanna also give an example that we were talking about bookmobiles the other day in one of our meetings and they’re wanting to paint the bookmobiles and um, I believe it was Mescalero that was working on that project with their community. And I was telling them I would love to have the bookmobile come visit our library parking lot and just have the kids come over and I said, you know, there’s nothing more interesting and kind of magical to a book person to see a mobile library.
There’s just so many different things that has to do with literature that just affects our lives. That’s what really gets me excited and especially when we all get together as tribal librarians and even public librarians. We all come together at conferences and things like that. It’s so interesting to learn what’s out there.
[00:18:33] Emily: Cassandra, how about you? What brought you to the library and why is it so important to you?
[00:18:38] Cassandra: I would say that community, whatever that community looks like, I just enjoy working with the communities. In this case, the past couple of years have been able to really get into the different tribal communities and work with not just the librarians and library staff, but the rest of their communities and learn about all the amazing things that are happening and being able to share that with others and like Teresa was saying, New Mexico is at the top for libraries, especially tribal libraries. People come to us to know what’s going on and what’s happening and what have we been doing, and why are we so amazing and so that’s exciting too, to be able to share everything and being able to work with people like Teresa on all of that excites me a lot. It’s something that makes me happy to be able to go to work and be able to have those conversations and having just those different groups coming together.
[00:19:35] Emily: Do you have a recent favorite book that you’ve read?
[00:19:39] Cassandra: So, I just finished reading A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, okay, and I really enjoyed it. Um, I was a little surprised by the ending and I had read the Lincoln Highway a few months ago, so, and I saw that and I started reading it and got. Really into it, so, all right, I’ll have to check that out.
[00:19:59] Teresa: Um, I’m reading Spare right now. [laughter] I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite, but at least I, you know, and what’s fun about it is it’s large print, so at my age I don’t have to like really worry about it too much. I just open it and start.
[00:20:18] Emily: Right. Getting some good British gossip. Alright.
[laughter]
[Library promo and light percussion]
[00:20:28] Emily: I’ve often thought of librarians as magicians. Beyond helping you find the book you’re seeking, it seems like they always know just where to look to find the answer to any question. The New Mexico State Library is so much more than a place filled with books—though it is that too. The library’s primary mission is to promote library services and access to information to all citizens of New Mexico.
And when we say all, that’s a tall order. Given the vast reaches of our geography, the state library provides reading materials and research services for the blind and print disabled for rural community members through books by mail and our ever-popular bookmobiles. They also support librarians across the state with items to add to their enchanted toolkit. From the tribal libraries program to summer reading programs for our youngest patrons, and of course, let’s not forget one of my favorite realms of magic, The New Mexico State Library Poetry Center, where you can learn about our state’s poet laureate, and discover even more New Mexico poetry. Explore the library’s research and digital resources. Get the bookmobile schedule or find your local library at library@nmstatelibrary.org.
[00:22:03] [music and culture pass promotion]
Did you know the New Mexico CulturePass is now available to purchase online? Culture Pass gives you access to each of the fifteen state museums and historic sites we feature on Encounter Culture. Reserve your CulturePass today at nmculture.org/visit/culturepass.
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[00:22:33] Emily: During every summer reading program, as a child, I logged more than a hundred books at Carnegie Library in Las Vegas. I discovered Edith Nesbitt’s books there and Eleanor Estes. But summer reading programs are just one of many youth programs offered at libraries around the state. Here to share more information on these programs is Kelly McCabe.
[00:22:55] Kelly McCabe: I’m Kelly McCabe. I’m the Youth Services Coordinator for the New Mexico State Library, and in that role, I oversee the Summer Reading Program, but we also work with public library staff throughout the state on all of their programming that’s targeted towards children and youth, whether it’s during the school year or during the summer, helping them with professional development with resources, making sure that they have access to what they need to best serve their communities.
There are just under a hundred library systems in New Mexico. There’s about one hundred and thirty library locations throughout New Mexico.
[00:23:44] Emily: That’s a lot of libraries.
[00:23:45] Kelly: New Mexico is a member state of the collaborative Summer Reading Program, which is a national nonprofit made up of library staff that create summer reading themes and slogans and programs for libraries to use across the country. So, last summer, we know that there were over 2,200 summer library programs with over 65,000 participants across the state.
[00:24:13] Emily: Wow. And what is the goal for these summer reading programs across the state?
[00:24:19] Kelly: We just had a workshop on Wednesday with library staff, and that was my question to them. Why does your library have a summer reading program? But I think it’s important for them to think every year. What is their short-term goal and their long-term goal? And the short-term goal might be, we wanna register seventy-five participants for our summer reading program, or we wanna get ten new library card applications from these programs, but the long-term goal of that is to create opportunities for patrons to investigate new ideas and new interests, to help families with logistical issues, right?
Creating an opportunity for families to have a physical place for their child to be. Understanding that maybe if many of their families have one vehicle that they share between them, and that it’s primarily used, say for employment purposes to get to and from work, organizing library activities so that a family isn’t expected to say, bring their preschooler to the library on Monday and then their school- age child to the library on Wednesday. Consolidate those programs so that a family can make a single visit.
[00:25:30] Emily: As you’re talking, I’m realizing like maybe programming has changed. It probably has changed quite a lot since I was a child.
[00:25:38] Kelly: So, there’s that tracking of reading and some libraries use minutes read, some libraries use, how many books have you read? And there’s incentive and prize systems, but most of the libraries are also offering programming as well. Visits from performers and presenters, a petting zoo or the Explora science educators or traveling storytellers. Some libraries really incorporate their summer reading into almost a day camp, where patrons are there for like a large part of the day doing various activities at the library—crafts. A lot of libraries serve as summer food distribution locations, so they’re also offering the patrons breakfast and lunch in addition to just being there for activities. So, libraries are involved in a lot of other activities that might not just spring to mind. We think a lot about summer reading and the summer slide and helping educational goals, and it definitely helps support that. But it also supports physical needs, social needs, mental health needs of those families as well. And when I travel around the state visiting other libraries, that’s what I hear from their library directors.
[00:26:57] Essentially, when a parent or a caregiver brings a child to say, to story time, the person conducting the story time isn’t just reading a book. They’re modeling behaviors that a caregiver can use with their child in terms of pointing out pictures, in terms of asking the child to predict what they think is gonna happen, just encouraging rhyming and singing and talking and playing, that increases a child’s readiness to be in kindergarten.
That’s something that we’ve started distributing to the libraries to help encourage that sort of deliberate pre-literacy modeling by library staff, but also things that a patron, a caregiver could bring home with them. Songs that they can sing, rhymes that they can do with their children, examples of books to read.
[00:27:43] The State Library also offers a lot of educational resources for school children and for older high school kids as well. Databases, tutoring, excellent resources that homeschool students can use. We have, uh, free services for GED coursework, for SAT prep, for ACT prep, preparation for AP tests. Um, the most important thing is just asking the teens what they want.
So, a lot of our libraries have teen advisory boards, TABs they’re called. Octavia Fellin Library in Gallup has been setting one up where they do just get a collection of teen patrons and they just ask them, “What is it that you want from us?” And letting them guide the programming, letting the library staff be facilitators instead of creating the programming themselves. That’s the best way to get teens involved, allowing them to be teachers. There’s a lot of libraries doing programming where teens are teaching seniors how to use technology. We are currently doing a project at the State Library called Transforming Teen Services, and this was a national movement that the Young Adult Library Services Association started a few years ago and New Mexico sort of got in right at the end, and myself and Brynn Cole, who is the Youth Services Director at Rio Rancho Public Libraries, went to a national training about teen services, and now we’re bringing that training back to New Mexico. We have an online cohort of fifteen youth librarians from across the state, really digging into what’s happening in a teen’s brain, what is appropriate types of programming, what’s appropriate behavior for them to have, feeling comfortable working with them, using connected learning, so taking their interests and connecting it to real opportunities in the world.
[00:29:39] So, we’re excited about what could be happening in New Mexico, especially after the pandemic. We’ve just seen so many mental health issues with teens, especially because they were in that age group where the quarantine and being at home really impacted them at a really pivotal time, and we’re still figuring out exactly what the total ramifications of that are. But we’re excited about having these fifteen library staff members that go back to their home libraries and can talk to their staff and their wider communities to really give teens the focus that they need.
And that’s, I guess, the biggest message is that nothing about summer reading is the same at every library because every library is taking into account the needs of their community in planning what makes the best sense for their community. And that’s not just for some reason, that’s year-round. Libraries are always doing what’s best for their community, not necessarily just doing what another library twenty miles away is doing.
[00:30:45] [Gentle music bridge]
[00:30:50] Emily: So, do you have an early childhood memory of libraries that stands out to you?
[00:30:55] Kelly: I have a couple. I grew up in a small town in Florida and our city library was actually a portable building, so it was a very small space and I definitely have memories of going there to check out nonfiction research books for school projects, but I didn’t really use the library for my sole source of reading material.
We had an excellent school library. In my elementary school, Ms. Mack was our school librarian, and in about second grade, I became obsessed with reading all of the presidential biographies in our school library. And so, she just let me go through all the presidential biographies. Then eventually I was a library aide at my elementary school, which back in the eighties primarily meant that you got to push the film projector to your classroom and were considered to be experienced enough to run the film projector.
That was, wow. That was a pretty great, uh, library experience.
[00:32:01] Emily: Yeah, nice. That’s wonderful. I’m curious too, if you have any recent book that you have read that you really enjoyed?
[00:32:09] Kelly: Adult or young adult? Yeah.
Emily: Adult, yes.
Kelly: Oh yeah. Oh, my goodness. I do, I very much have a weakness for books about books. Okay, meaning if the book takes place in a bookstore or in a library, or if the librarian is a lead character, I will definitely read that book.
So, all of the bookstore themed books by Jenny Colgan, like Bookshop on the Corner, and Christmas at the Bookshop, which is not the right title of that book. Midnight at the Christmas Bookshop, I think is the most recent one. But I definitely have a weakness for that. Another great one is the reading list, which also delves into the impact books have on people’s lives, and how if you made a list of your most favorite books, that they would tell you something about that person and in a more complex way than you might imagine. You have to read a book at the right time in your life, I think is something I really believe. So, what is a favorite book to you today? Might not have been your favorite book ten years ago because you’re different. The world is different, so, books about bookstores and libraries. Yeah. Just very cliche, but yeah, well, I, but I guess it means I’m in the right profession.
[00:33:25] Emily: Right, right. Well, I am curious actually, since you mentioned YA, is there a YA title that you would recommend to young people?
[00:33:32] Kelly: I love the Truly Devious series by Maureen Johnson. I love mysteries. It’s a parallel timeline, mystery present day, and then going back and retelling a murder that happened in the 1930s. It’s a trilogy, so you do not find out the solution to the crime until the end of the third book. That was one of our youth services book club reads that we do for the state library and it’s definitely got me hooked on that series. I always commend it. It’s fantastic.
Emily: Nice.
[00:34:02] [Upbeat music with bells and drums]
[00:34:03] Kelly: So, every year there is a national theme. This coming summer is Adventure Begins at Your Library, and within that theme of adventure they actually create a program manual with different variations on a theme, so adventures in nature, adventures in imagination, adventures in the dark. Some libraries will do a sort of a mini theme per week that goes along with their overall theme. Some libraries like to just pick one theme. I will say, especially with New Mexico and our beautiful sites and outdoors and forests a lot of libraries that I’m talking to are definitely embracing the adventures in nature and camping and hiking and exploring the state of New Mexico.
It is also the 80th birthday of Smokey Bear, so New Mexico is also a partner of the national Smokey Bear reading challenge that the US Forest Service is putting on this year. It just works out beautifully that it fits so nicely with our summer reading theme. So, we’re definitely promoting a lot of outdoor activities, learning about our National Forest, learning how to be safe, and our national forest. The New Mexico connections to Smokey Bear are so important.
[00:35:23] Emily: Yes, yeah.
[00:35:24] Andrea Klunder: Can I jump in and just as a New Mexico outsider, what are the connections between New Mexico and Smokey Bear?
[00:35:30] Emily: That’s our producer, Andrea Klunder.
[00:35:32] Kelly: Well, Smokey, the original Smokey Bear cub was found in a fire in New Mexico, and it was the Taos Snowballs. Uh, the firefighters that actually found him and the Mescalero Apache firefighters were also involved in rescuing him and rehabilitating him before he was sent to Washington, D.C. to live in the zoo to serve as a spokesperson for forest safety. Of course, we have Smokey Bear National Park, so a lot of good New Mexico connections.
[00:36:05] Emily: I will be curious to see how the libraries in Las Vegas and Mora use or choose not to use Smokey Bear, just given the fires recently. I know there’s some complicated feelings about Smokey right now.
[00:36:21] Kelly: Well, and one of the advantages of having the New Mexico State Library behind us, right, is that we’re a functioning, real collecting library. We’re a federal depository. Our government documents librarian has a personal interest in Smokey Bear, and so she has pulled together an amazing research guide that library staff can use that talk about the history of Smokey Bear and some of the changes in messaging for Smokey Bear and how the Forest Service is using Smokey Bear today and those New Mexico connections, so it’s great that we have in-house staff to pull that sort of materials together for us.
[soft string music]
[00:36:59] Emily: Not only are librarians, magicians, they are educators, community organizers, and deep listeners. Librarians have their ears to the ground and listen to what their communities need, designing, programming and creating new opportunities for their patrons.So no two libraries offerings will be exactly the same, as librarians strive to meet their patrons needs, they have big dreams and ideas for other things they want to offer. Here are Theresa and Cassandra.
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[00:37:30] Emily: So, if you could do anything with your programs or with your library in Santa Clara in the next 10 to 15 years, what would you do?
[00:37:42] Teresa: Well, right now we’re right in the middle of planning for a new library renovation. Actually, it’s probably gonna end up being like a whole new library construction. We’ll still be in the same spot in our neighborhood, in our main street, but, um, we’re gonna be having different areas for classes and storytelling and materials and meetings and kitchen area. And we’re even having a couple, um, rooms that will have a fireplace, so it’ll be more kind of like to our cultural ways where we like to do storytelling in the wintertime, and we’ll have this backdrop of a nice, um, it’s not gonna be a real fireplace, but you know, it’ll have heat coming and it’ll be in a nice part of our library and we’ll have a sunroof that’s gonna have a skylight that’s gonna have the Santa Clara logo designed into it. And so, we’re really excited about how our new library is gonna look and about welcoming many more patrons. So, in the next ten years, hopefully, you know, we continue to gather more archival materials about our community from all different places that we’re able to kind of display, like in an archive room where people can have better access and can actually see things be laid out for them and actually be able to share more with each other about all of our history.
And also, having more kids and students come in into our larger space and you know, maybe do book signings there and have our kids now turn into authors themselves. Nice.
[00:39:20] Cassandra: My dream would be that the state library and the tribal libraries program would have more funding available to give to the libraries. Right now, we have a very small amount that we give every year. I think it would be amazing if we could really make that really strong and big, but I also would love to be able to see all of the libraries have more support from their local administration and oftentimes there’s very little given as far as not just funding, but support from local community administrations and governments. I would love to see that that changed, right? That everybody had the same strong support from the state, but also their local governments. I think also it’d be really cool to have a publishing group where we could do like kids books, at least to start, that were in, in native languages where we could do that, that we could then have those available, not just in the state, but nationally, internationally.
I’ve seen that coming from other parts of the U.S. and I think that would be really amazing if we were able to do that out of New Mexico, and I think having it through the tribal libraries program would be great.
Emily: I’d love to see that too.
[00:40:34] Teresa: I think there’s a lot to be said also as community libraries to be able to collaborate more with other departments and maybe work on a museum together so that we’re able to share our resources. And I totally agree that it is a dream to have some additional funding or to build on the funding that we have right now because really as our buildings grow, we, we really need more full-time staff, and so our informational needs are gonna continue to grow and our technology needs are gonna continue to grow to that.
I just want to say, I think. A dedicated IT person would be really, really excellent for our library because there’s so many people that come in that need access to, you know, all these resources that are online, like the veterans benefits, the FAFSA, you know, just so many things that are online now. You can’t go into an office without an appointment, so I think that’s really important to our communities and that would be a dream of mine for sure.
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[00:41:33] Emily: Excited to learn more? Head to your local library to find out what they are offering now and be sure to sign up for their newsletter. To learn more about the tribal library program and youth services, visit nmstatelibrary.org. Direct links to each of these pages can be found in the show notes. The 2024 summer reading program’s theme is Adventure Begins at Your library. How many books can you log this summer?
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[00:42:18] Emily: Encounter Culture is a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs.
Our producer is Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.
Season six is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder and Alex Riegler with additional editing by Monica Braine.
Our recording engineer is Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe.
Technical direction and post-production audio by Edwin R. Ruiz.
Our executive producer is Daniel Zillmann.
Thank you to New Mexico artist “El Brujo” D’Santi Nava for our theme music.
For a full transcript and show notes, visit podcast.nmculture.org or click the link in the episode description in your listening app.
I’m your host, Emily Withnall.
The New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs is your guide to the state’s entire family of museums, historic sites and cultural institutions. From native treasures to space exploration, world-class folk art, to ancient dinosaurs, our favorite way to fully explore is with the New Mexico CulturePass. To see everywhere Culture Pass is accepted and reserve yours today, visit newmexicoculture.org/visit/culturepass.
The New Mexico State Library delivers an array of services designed to meet you where you are. Explore everything they have to offer or ask a librarian at nmstatelibrary.org.
And if you love New Mexico, you’ll love El Palacio magazine. Subscribe at elpalacio.org.
Thank you for listening and if you learned something new, send this episode to a friend or share it on social media. We love celebrating the cultures of New Mexico together.
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