Join tomorrow for a continuation of the "What is a Library if the Building is Closed?" series from Gigabit Libraries. This round focuses on Libraries in Recovery. On Friday, September 18, at 11am Eastern you can hear from an all-star panel with internet "co-father", Vint Cerf; IMLS Director, Crosby Kemper; and University of South Carolina's David Lankes to help us begin longer term thinking and planning for libraries in months and even years ahead. Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/in-conversation-with-vint-crosby-david-tickets-... When might we expect to get "back to normal?" Recent Scientific American article<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bad-news-about-the-pandemic-were-not-getting-back-to-normal-any-time-soon/> predicts that, "it might be not until 2023-2024 when we get a sufficiently safe and effective vaccine." More predictable is the need to prepare for waves of restrictions and loosenings for the long haul. How to plan for that kind of operating environment? Well, the libraries are open. It's just the buildings that are mostly closed. But what does that mean going forward and for how long? Tomorrow's powerhouse panel with Vint, Crosby & David will help us anticipate what might be ahead for libraries as we kick off Round Three in the series as: Libraries in Recovery. What form will library services, if not library spaces, take in the years ahead? While also taking into account an array of potential if not probable disruptions like increasingly severe and more frequent extreme weather events due to climate change. What new skills will be expected of librarians themselves? Greater ICT expertise seems one safe bet. Our current era of digital transformation was already rapidly accelerating before the virus struck. Now the pandemic has put that phenomenon into overdrive. What will that mean for whatever the "next normal" may look like? The shift from libraries as a 3rd place to becoming more aset of virtual services has taken hold. Designing new dedicated special function library spaces has been driving library design for over a decade. Now what? What impact on a now intolerable digital divide? "Public libraries will always adapt to and reflect the communities they serve," -Marian Morgan-Bindon, city librarian for Gold Coast, Australia. In context of our theme "What's a Library if the Building is Closed?", how might libraries rethink services and roles in: internet access, digital services, physical materials and social infrastructure in the longer term? Before the virus, ~80,000,000 people in the US accessed the internet at a library. But they all had to go to a library. Now what? How can a library deliver services to its community without a safe or reliably open building? Can they turn inside out? Find ways to deliver existing and even new services out across their communities? Which services and how? Join us as we take up these questions and more over this next round of sessions. Starting tomorrow. Please share! Tune in and help out! Send your questions in advance! To: info@giglibraries.net<mailto:info@giglibraries.net> Use Subject line: "Question for... Vint, Crosby, David or All" Shannon White Library of Michigan, 702 W. Kalamazoo, Lansing, MI 48909 Whites29@michigan.gov<mailto:Whites29@michigan.gov> 517-335-1507 | www.mi.gov/libraryofmichigan<http://www.mi.gov/libraryofmichigan>