loader from loading.io

Episode 38: The world's top librarian at the greatest library

Check It Out!

Release Date: 09/06/2019

Episode 63: Podcast creator Jason Becker will change your mind about umpires show art Episode 63: Podcast creator Jason Becker will change your mind about umpires

Check It Out!

Let’s meet the baseball nut who sticks up for the guys behind the plate that every baseball fan loves to hate.  Yes, we’re talking about umpires.  In this episode of the Check It Out! podcast, host Ken Harvey talks to his friend Jason Becker, creator of the .  “In my book, he’s a genius, and he’s producing a fascinating podcast for the officials behind America’s favorite round-ball sport. That’s baseball, and those are umpires,” Harvey said in introducing Becker. “Fans and players often...

info_outline
Episode 62: Professor's academic research on racial strife leads to his first novel show art Episode 62: Professor's academic research on racial strife leads to his first novel

Check It Out!

In Episode 62 of Sno-Isle Libraries Check It Out podcast, co-hosts Ken Harvey and Tricia Lee talk to local author Stewart Tolnay and learn how he has used his study of American racial history to create interesting fiction and nonfiction.  Tolnay is a Ph.D. professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Washington. His first fiction novel, “,” features a Black Vietnam War veteran, his white girlfriend and the struggles they face as an interracial couple in Everett in 1969.  Tolnay is also the author or co-author of...

info_outline
Episode 61: Peek inside the childlike mind of Chris Ballew and meet Caspar Babypants show art Episode 61: Peek inside the childlike mind of Chris Ballew and meet Caspar Babypants

Check It Out!

Part 1: You Don’t Wanna Be a Rock-and-Roll Star  Chris Ballew lived the rock-and-roll life.  As frontman for the late, great Presidents of the United States of America, he wrote infectious, goofy, catchy hits about “Peaches” and a “Dune Buggy” when heavy grunge dominated Seattle’s FM radio waves. He toured all over the world. He played to packed arenas and stadiums. He even won a Grammy award.  But that’s the old Chris Ballew.  Today,...

info_outline
Episode 60: Thanks to the internet and copious amounts of data, the future is now show art Episode 60: Thanks to the internet and copious amounts of data, the future is now

Check It Out!

Rodney Clark helps deliver the future.  As the vice president of the Worldwide Internet of Things and Mixed Reality Team, Clark and his crew work with more than 8,000 partners and clients to connect billions of everyday devices to the cloud.  Sensors on stop lights, cash registers, automobiles, home appliances, exercise monitors, video doorbells. They all generate information and data that allows organizations to take action on that data and insights.  “It’s a wave, it’s a reality,” Clark said.  It’s no longer “the future.”  “The job that I have and...

info_outline
Episode 59: If coronavirus has you worried, this good doctor reminds you you're not alone show art Episode 59: If coronavirus has you worried, this good doctor reminds you you're not alone

Check It Out!

If you’re anxious about the global coronavirus pandemic and COVID-19, you’re not alone.   In this episode of Sno-Isle Libraries , you’ll hear how a globe-trotting disaster-relief doctor loses sleep about the deadly virus that has upended our sense of “normal.”  is a clinical assistant professor at Washington State University’s Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine after spending 33 years at the University of Washington School of Medicine in a similar role. In 1994, he and his wife, Debbie, founded CMRT, the nation’s first state-affiliated medical disaster response...

info_outline
Episode 58: Claudia Samano-Losada loves libraries as much as she loves her communities show art Episode 58: Claudia Samano-Losada loves libraries as much as she loves her communities

Check It Out!

Claudia Samano Losado has many talents.  Early-childhood educator. World traveler. Life coach. Recreation-center owner. Dance-movement instructor.  But maybe most importantly, Losado is a fervent Oak Harbor Library supporter.  “I think I’m very passionate about a lot of things, and one of my passions is to share with others and to take and give in the same way,” said Losado, a member of the library’s board. “Since I have had so much from the library I’ve wanted to give back to, and this is a very good way to give back, but not just that, to know more about the...

info_outline
Episode 57: For food critic Nancy Leson, deadlines got in the way of a good time show art Episode 57: For food critic Nancy Leson, deadlines got in the way of a good time

Check It Out!

Chapter 1: Meet the writer who’s not fond of writing  Nancy Leson loves books, she loves libraries, she loves to talk and she loves food.  That makes the Edmonds resident an ideal guest for Sno-Isle Libraries .  Libraries figured large in Leson’s childhood in Philadelphia. Her family had little disposable income, so off to the library they went to borrow books and glean information from encyclopedias. These days, Leson says, the Friends of the Edmonds Library book sale is her favorite book event every year.  Books and learning followed Leson into adulthood.  ...

info_outline
Episode 56: A Rich Frishman picture isn't just a thousand words. It's a story unto itself. show art Episode 56: A Rich Frishman picture isn't just a thousand words. It's a story unto itself.

Check It Out!

If a picture is worth a thousand words, some of photographs could be novels.  Frishman was a news photographer for The Daily Herald in Everett and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize before he left to pursue freelance work.  He knows how to tell a story with a photograph, and he still sees and tells the stories of America through his camera lens.  Frishman has criss-crossed the country to chronicle its beauty and everyday life in his collections, and , and the guarded secrets in   The difference between Frishman and the rest of us who think we take good pictures is how...

info_outline
Episode 55: Sometimes, a guest's gift can be hard for hosts to swallow show art Episode 55: Sometimes, a guest's gift can be hard for hosts to swallow

Check It Out!

admits he was a bookworm as a child. Is that why the prolific author loves insects, and loves to eat them? Sno-Isle Libraries hosts Ken Harvey, Jim Hills and Jessica Russell sat down with Gordon and chewed the fat about his reputation as “the bug chef.” And they graciously accepted the guest’s gifts, as polite hosts do. Yes. Harvey, Hills and Russell ate bugs. The Seattle-based author of “” and 19 other titles covering , and has appeared on many TV shows and headlined national festivals. When Gordon visited Sno-Isle Libraries and laid out plates of edible bugs, the hosts were...

info_outline
Episode 54: From Episode 54: From "J.P. Patches" to elusive gorillas, this Edmonds pair has seen plenty

Check It Out!

If you’re old enough to remember when Seattle television was limited to a handful of broadcast channels and you remember J.P. Patches, you’ve seen the work of Sharon Howard and Mike Rosen. Howard got her start in broadcast TV in 1977 with KIRO-TV as a floor director for newscasts and “.” It was performed and broadcast live, six mornings a week. Without any rehearsal to speak of. “Well, everybody thinks that we had a script and it was planned, but our plans were to meet in the cafeteria 15 minutes before the show,” Howard said. “And we just played it by ear. Somebody would say,...

info_outline
 
More Episodes

Carla Hayden, Ph.D, says the Library of Congress is the biggest - the greatest - library in the world.

Hayden should know, she’s the Librarian of Congress.

And that would make her the world’s top librarian.

Hayden visited the Marysville Library on Aug. 1, 2019, along with Congressman Rick Larsen, and then recently joined podcast co-hosts Ken Harvey and Jim Hills for a conversation by phone from her office in Washington, D.C.

“I really enjoyed my time at the Marysville Library with Congressman Larsen,” Hayden says.

While there, Hayden took a turn at reading a book to a group of nearly 100 children. Hayden began her career as a children’s librarian in Chicago. Larsen followed her, reading another book to the children and impressed Hayden with his skills. “He’s very good," she says.

Hayden touched on the evolving roles of public libraries. Before being appointed to her role at the Library of Congress, Hayden spent 23 years at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, the nation’s first library system.

Hayden helped “The Pratt” explore new ways to serve the city’s residents, even bringing pop-up libraries to neighborhood laundromats.

“Convening is a good word to think about libraries and their meaning to the community,” she says.

In many ways, Hayden says her leadership at the Library of Congress mirrors the work she has done in Baltimore and Chicago.

“The vision was to let everyone know the Library of Congress is for them,” Hayden says. “That would include a student in a remote area, as well as teacher who needs a lesson plan on Thomas Jefferson, and people interested in things like baseball; we have the world’s largest collection of baseball cards as well as the world’s largest collection of bibles.”

Carla Hayden is the 14th Librarian of Congress and nominated to the position by President Barack Obama. Hayden is the first woman and the first African American to lead the national library. She is also the first professional librarian appointed to the post in more than 60 years.

Prior to her appointment, she was CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore. Hayden was deputy commissioner and chief librarian of the Chicago Public Library from 1991 to 1993. She was an assistant professor for Library and Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh from 1987 to 1991. Hayden was library services coordinator for the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago from 1982 to 1987. She began her career with the Chicago Public Library as the young adult services coordinator from 1979 to 1982 and as a library associate and children’s librarian from 1973 to 1979.

Hayden was president of the American Library Association from 2003-04. In 1995, she was the first African American to receive Library Journal’s Librarian of the Year Award in recognition of her outreach services at the Pratt Library, which included an after-school center for Baltimore teens offering homework assistance and college and career counseling.

Hayden received a B.A. from Roosevelt University and an master’s degree and Ph.D. from the Graduate Library School of the University of Chicago.

Episode length: 43:16