>> Nanette Gibbs: Good afternoon and thank you for coming to this presentation today. I realize it's at the end of the day, but sometimes we save the best for last. Little bit down. Good. My name is Nanette Gibbs, and I'm a Business Reference Librarian at the Library of Congress. And, you might say, "Do I have the right presentation?" You do. I happen to write on business applications of technology. I write about artificial intelligence. I write about autonomous trucking, and I write about drones. And, every once in a while, I get to do something else, and that's popular science. So, the slide that you see right now is our reading room. This is the Adams Building. It's the building behind the Jefferson Building. This building was built in the 1920s, actually the 1920s, opened in 1939 and has one of the most beautiful reading rooms that you could possibly imagine. Here, we have the Thomas Jefferson murals. On the other side of the building, we have the "Canterbury Tales". Please come and visit us in the Adams Building. We're up on the fifth floor, but I guarantee you you'll have a wonderful time there. So, what I do, again, I'm a Reference Librarian, but today's presentation is on popular science. And, there are tremendous connections, now, between business and science. It's all over the place. There's innovation. There are companies. All sorts of things like that. So, I'm looking at that all the time. But, the first slide you're going to see is of my friend the octopus. And, he's right up here on stage, and he stays rather close to me all the time. And, I decided one day, gee, I'd like to see what the Library of Congress has on the octopus. Also, there were a couple of books that came out at the time on the octopus. But, then people started giving me octopus presents, like mousepads, like copies of the New York Times articles on the octopus, a coaster, another article from the Washington Post, a poster, little glass octopus, and then, I decided to take the time to write something about the octopus. There were two books that came out during one summer, and one was Godfrey-Smith's "Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness" and also Sy Montgomery's "The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness". Now, as I began reading, I found out that the octopus is the most intelligent of all invertebrates, and the fact is, the octopus can get to know you. It can get to like you, or it can dislike you. For if he shoots out some blue ink, you'll know that he does not like you. He can actually invite you to walk on the ocean floor with him by extending one of his arms. He has three hearts. He has a beak. He can bite you, okay? He's known to escape in labs where he can actually push off the top of a tank and walk around the lab and then also go down the drainage holes. He's really quite intelligent. They can walk and run and can propel themselves at speeds of up to 25 miles an hour. Rapid camouflage and ink is used to harm its enemies. It can taste and it can grab, and they have been observed returning your gaze. And, they invite you to explore the ocean floor. Yes, they can get to know you, but what happens when you write something like this and it gets up on a blog post at the Library of Congress, other people do read this. One day, knocking at my door, Naval Intelligence. Why would they be interested in the octopus? Well, they don't exactly tell you, but they ask you, "What do you know about the octopus?" And, you sit in your chair, and they stand right at the door, you know, and that kind of thing. So, it's really interesting. But, you know, this is biomimicry. What can we learn from animals, and how can they help us with solutions to everyday problems? And, as you look into the subject of biomimicry, you would find out that the Japanese bullet train, for example, is modeled after the kingfisher. You know, if you look at the front of that train, you would see, wow, that is the beak of a kingfisher. So, we can learn, again, so much. Popular science is it? I don't know. The next thing I'm going to show you if we go on, and that's, actually that was a really great picture gift to me. I happened to be at the hairdresser and noticed this picture up on the wall. Of course, at that time, I was looking anything octopus. And, I said, "Where did you get that?" And, she said, "My brother-in-law is a photographer, an underwater photographer." And, I said, "Can you ask him if I can use that picture?" and he said yes. And, that's in my blog post, which is entitled, actually, it's an everyday mystery series entitled "Can an Octopus Get to Know You?" Oh, I forgot to mention, I even went down to the southwest waterfront, and I asked someone to hold up an octopus for me. And, that's when I was really able to examine those suckers on the octopus. And, from that, do you know that we have a patent that was filed to make suction cups. Again, another interesting contribution of our friend the octopus. So, again, the books I had were inspiration for me. "The Soul of the Octopus" and also Godfrey-Smit's books "Other Minds". And then, that's just a representation of a small number of books we have at the Library of Congress on octopuses. That's the everyday mystery series we have, and I encourage you, young and old. To look at this series, we have 99 of them posted on our site for science and technology. That's a wonderful way to start the day. Just click on that, and you'll find out why do you yawn. You know, things like that, and they're lots of fun. They're great with kids because it could be motivator every day to get them to read, or you can read with them. Use everything that we have from our webpages, and it can greatly enhance your lives, you can guarantee you. Well, the next thing I came across, I'm easily distracted, was the disco ball. Anyone growing up in the '70s remember a certain John Travolta and a disco room? And, I said, "I bet this thing has a patent." And, again, one of the wonderful things at the library, you can kind of always have that feeling that you're going to ask why, what, where, and you know it's in your building someplace. And, that's what you do. You take the elevator to the stacks, and you start looking. And, at one point, it's really interesting, they were called Myriad Reflectors. And, they date back to the early 1900s. And, they used to be used on stages in bars in England to just illuminate the, you know, make a different affect, as we all know them to do because they can deflect light. And, that was fascinating when I found this. There's the patent for it. So, we often don't think of things such as standards and patents that govern our daily lives and ensure our safety. After all, that ball has to go around, and there better be some standards and safety for it. We even had a celebration at the Library of Congress a few years back for disco. Gloria Gaynor came and sang. And, the woman to the far right of the slide is the best disco ball maker in the world, and I got to meet her. But, I called her first, and she said to me, "I don't know why the Library of Congress wants to meet me." And, I said, "You're really important." And, she said, "But, you're also much smarter than me." And, I said, "No," I said, "You're really important. You really need to come to the Library, and we need to hear about how you make disco balls." And, in fact, she made that beautiful one for us for that celebration, but it was never hung that night. Instead, we had to use an emergency ball that would actually turn around a little bit easier. But, what a wonderful individual, and when she's putting these mirrors on these balls, she's standing on a ladder. So, she's over 70 years old now, and she's still our best disco ball maker in the United States, and likely the world. ^M00:10:02 The next thing we're going to show you, and that was the celebration. It was called Bibliodiscotheque by the way. Imagine that. The Library of Congress, sure. It was quite a night. I'll never forget it. There's dancing in the Great Hall, and there were all sorts of special effects. And, a wonderful celebration. The next thing. I was asked to be on a committee for the Baseball Americana Celebration that just closed this year in June. And, we all sat around and tried to figure out how we would be able to contribute division by division for this exhibit. And, I sat there, and I was like, "Ummm," you know, "I know what's in my building on baseballs." So, you can see the baseballs, and after we're finished today, you're welcome to come up and look at them. But, if we advance the next slide, there it is. I decided to go to a local hardware store with my Major League baseball and ask them to do something I always wanted to do is to cut a baseball in half. You see, science is very important to me. Ever since I was a little kid, I've been making things, and I've been fixing things, and I look at things, and I like to know the way they work. So, what you see there is what happens when a somewhat imprecise cut is made of a baseball. Please don't do this at home. I'll tell you the hardware store you need to go to. I can't do it as an endorsement but come up here afterwards. So, in fact, the first cut did explode. There's a tremendous amount of compressibility that goes into baseballs, but then, I also looked into what are called the ASTM standards for baseballs, and trust me, baseball players want to make sure their, these balls are right. And, they have an inner core followed by two rounds of rubber, and then you have this wall binding that's in there. And, they get it all in there somehow, and to this day, all Major League baseballs are handsewn, okay? These guys won't tolerate anything but a handsewn baseball. They also have a shield in them for humidity issues, and it makes the baseball one of the most perfect things, I think, to present to anybody to just, you know, spark your imagination or, most importantly, a child. We take things for granted, and not realizing that things have a standard. That very chair you're sitting on have standards. The lights in this room have standards, and at the Adams Building, we have over probably 60,000 standards that you can look at. And, they really can transform your thinking about how we get where we do, how we innovate, and how things come out the right way in terms of safety. Just an interesting thing. The other balls I have on display, one is a softball. I've been hit with a softball, and it looks quite innocent here. It's just cork, but it really hurts. You know? And, we do know the dangers involved with baseballs and being hit by those as well. Next one. So, a few more things that we see. I couldn't stop, but I said, "What about a baseball bat? What about a baseball glove? What about the catcher's shield there?" And, this is the one I love. I hope you can see really good that. That's the catcher there. Imagine in the early days they wore these big boxes around them, and baseball, I don't know how many of you know this or realize this, but it actually is a fairly dangerous game. The most serious injuries being eye injuries. All Major League baseball teams actually have an ophthalmologist at every game in the event there's an eye injury. So, as we know, that can be just a devastating, devastating injury. So, I wrote a piece on baseballs entitled "Baseballs, the Heart of the Matter", and we have a wonderful collection of photographs at the Library of Congress from our prints and photographs. All you have to do is type in "baseballs", and here are the guys testing the baseballs and their compressibility. And, you notice they do that with suits on, you know. I don't think we have that anymore. Next one. That's a real good close up of it. Now, take for a moment and take a look at that owl that you've probably been seeing. And, I'm not going to have a trick question at the end and say, "How many owls did you see by the time I'm finished?" But, we have a lot of owls in the Adams Reading Room. They're beautiful. They were done, again, when the building, for the building's opening in 1939. They were all done out of aluminum. I don't think we would see that today. So, these are the ASTM standards that I referred to. Very, very important. They're all the American Standards for Testing Materials, and again, baseballs as well as many other things actually fall under that. There they are. Okay. So, there's that one on the left, and it appears again, and you can just see and appreciate all those fibers that go in there. And, the one that came out perfectly was on the right. I really hit the big time that day when I walked into that hardware store. You know, there are a few of them left, you know, that can actually solve the problems in your home. You might have an old fixture or something like that, and unlike Home Depot or the others. Oops, I shouldn't have mentioned that. [chuckles]. They just don't have that. And, I so appreciated them taking the time to become part of our presentation to be able to do that for us. So, there are blog posts, as I said, on the baseball, and the next one. The next one I'm coming to is the American Flag. We found out in our collections as a result of a question about the American Flag. Are there standards for the American Flag? Now, you may immediately think of, well, you can't fly it at certain, you can't fly it when, you know, it's dark out and things like that. But, there are actual guidelines, very specific guidelines about how they're made. And, some of this is actually governed by the same set of standards that govern baseballs. And, these are some of the standards, and fabric, of course. That's another standard that goes into it. But, one of the things I learned from this was that if you have a flag that's solely being displayed inside, it has to be embroidered. Okay? So, of course, this flag here is something that's just, you know, convenience sake, and people can hold it and wave it and what have you. And, it's a different standard, of course, but flags that are flown in official government buildings for the President, etc. all come up with really serious standards. So, there's also a national aerospace standard, and that one's done for the flagpoles. Can you imagine that? And, there's another one for the National Association of Architectural Metal Manufacturers specification for design of metal flagpoles. Okay. So, again, we think of all of these specifications, maybe. Could be an annoyance to you, but again, if you see that and you look at these documents, it can actually make for a safer world. And, other countries actually follow our standards. I often think people say, you know, I don't know what I'm going to write my paper on. This is a common thing with students. Where do I begin? And, I say begin at the Library of Congress. Maybe you can't come in, but we certainly have enough materials on the web that are absolutely incredible, whether it's a film, whether it's a photograph. Our Manuscript Division has incredible resources. Of course, where I work, we have some of the most expensive business databases you're ever going to find. Yes, we do have guidelines. Some of them can only be accessed on site, but we're there to help you. And, we have tools that even if it's only, you have a chance for a brief visit. You can actually maximize it with some of the tools that we have. Book to net machines and things of that nature. I'll end by saying the Library of Congress this year has embraced a new theme, and it says "Engage, Inspire, and Inform". And, recently, I was thinking about this because, you know, we all have to memorize it. And, I said, I don't know whether that's right. I really think it's you by coming into the Library of Congress, you who write to us, you who call us engage, inspire, and inform us. Because if we didn't get some of your questions, and this might be hard for you to understand. We really wouldn't know what we have. Remember, we get things, we catalog them, we get them on the shelves. ^M00:19:58 And, until you come to us with the question, we're not going to know just what we have. It's impossible. It's 165 million items plus, and we invite you to come in and engage with us. Inspire us and inform us with what you know so far about a topic. Because I can tell you what I do. It becomes part of me, and I'll remember you. And, I will write to you. I will answer your questions, and I'll just keep reading for you. And, I so enjoy that aspect of my job from the bottom of my heart. So, please, come to us, engage us, inspire us, and inform us. And, we'll only make the place better. So, if you have any questions. Question? Good. ^M00:21:01 ^M00:21:08 >> Thank you for this. This is supposed to be about science, and I'm so curious to hear about the Library of Congress's standards. Because I think of NIST, the National Institutes of Standards and Technology. >> Nanette Gibbs: Right. >> And, rather than folks all coming to the Library of Congress, either online or in person, could you distinguish what the Library of Congress provides in terms of standards and what NIST or other federal agencies might offer? >> Nanette Gibbs: Right. We do have all the hard copies of all of these. So, and other agencies would have that as well. The standards come under copyright because of the way they're published, but we consider the fair use principle in force at that point. So, you can use them that way. So. >> So, if someone's looking for information, should they always start with you even if they were propagated elsewhere? >> Nanette Gibbs: Exactly - you know, that is a very good question. Should they start with us? Of course, I love [inaudible]. I would say yes because we can actually map out your whole rationale for your research and what have you. Just show you, we have tremendous amount of directories that we can link you with, and we often find people confuse us, for example, with the National Archives. And, we can show you where the distinctions are there. So, I'm always very happy to show you which direction we think that would be the best way. And, also, I need to tell you that some federal libraries actually have closed, and they're actually coming to us now. So, that could really hamper somebody's research if you didn't know that. And, we are in receipt of other libraries' collections as well. So, it's an excellent question. >> Thank you. >> Nanette Gibbs: Yeah. Anybody else? Please. >> Oh, hello. >> Nanette Gibbs: Yes. Oh, hello over there. Yes. >> Thank you for the talk. >> Nanette Gibbs: You're welcome. >> I have a question about, I guess, access to scientific or engineering research articles, primarily like journals. Can they be accessed off site through a portal of some sort, or is it all on site? >> Nanette Gibbs: Excellent question. Can you access everything, you know, through a portal? And, the answer is no. Okay. And, what you want to do is look at our eResources page, and you'll see where we have it designated all free materials, all free access, and that's off to the right on that page. I wish I could have brought it up here for you, but just go on that eResources page. So, that is about, as I understand it, right now, maybe 700 free access to journals. The others are on site, and the reason for that is that we pay a lot of money for these, and so, the contractual agreements, although I'm not in on that, but it's been simply explained to me this way. That they, the providers say that you have to be on site to use them. You can, most of them have options where you can email, okay, or get pdfs and things of that nature. Also, if it's the most recent article, we have book to net machines that are all free, and also, our photocopy machines are scanners, which means then, you can email them to yourselves. Okay, sometimes, you know, you have to put a package together. How am I going to get this all done? But, again, like with the other question, I think we can get you going in the right direction and get what you need. Also, I would advise, if you are looking for a journal article, say, that's older, give us a call. And, you know, it's, we just get out of wherever we are, and we go look for it for you, okay? >> Now, should I assume that you guys should have access to say, at least, like, 99% of all journals if I'm? >> Nanette Gibbs: Wow, he's getting me with the numbers, yeah. >> Like, if I run into a problem like I have to. >> Nanette Gibbs: Yeah, we'll get it for you. I mean, we have enough access in terms of saying where is it in the world, where is it in the United States, of course, and fortunately, there are wonderful other links that we can get things. I mean, I've had people call me and say, "I can't get this anywhere." And, you know, from the convenience of my office, I can just look that up, really, pretty quickly. So, don't ever give up. Remember, if one of the best people who trained me at the Library 43 years ago said to me, "Remember if somebody walks in here and asks the question, the answer is here." >> Okay. All right. Thank you. >> Nanette Gibbs: Okay. It's true. I've had this happen numerous times. I've had, I had a gentleman come who was doing his doctoral, you know, thesis, and he came all the way from Scotland. And, it was an economic report from Nigeria, and he went all over the world. He listed all the libraries he had been to, and he came in. He said, "I don't think I'm going to find this here." I love that. I don't think I'm going to find this here. And, I just went downstairs, and I got it. You should have seen his face. Should have seen his face. You just never know. We have moved things off site, and actually, that allows us for greater retrieval because all of this is barcoded and specifically put in boxes over in Fort Meade, and our retrieval rate on items requested is at 100%. So, you know, do libraries misshelve things and what have you? This, of course, happens, but in our remote locations, it doesn't happen, okay. Journal articles, by the way, incredibly important in science. And, as well as in business. So, we can gain access for you, and please. You just come in. But, we need another question, please. I may have finished too soon. Yes. >> This is the just an addition from my own experience in life sciences. I know that whenever you find an article on the internet and your institution is not subscribed to that journal, they ask you for the little price of $40 or so, so that you can download the pdf. More often than not, did they just accept the credentials from my library card. So, I saved an awful lot of money for that. >> Nanette Gibbs: Yes. What she's referring to is you get all excited and you can find this article, and then this little, you know, banner comes across you need to pay for it. And, it can be very frustrating. No, we can get that for you. That's not a problem. Okay. So, please, everyone gets frustrated at some point in their research. Now, why can't I find something. It's got to be there. I find this particularly true in proceedings where I'm looking at, you know, I want this paper I'm working on right now on autonomous trucking. You know, we have a statement in library work called a blind reference, and it means it doesn't go anywhere. It's very frustrating. So, no, we, there are a number of errors that occur when people are referring to articles and things like that, and you know, that's 43 years I've watched it all, and I've seen it all. And, I usually can put it together somehow where the error might be. So, that's why it's important to always approach a reference librarian for that kind of help. We don't give up. I never give up. You know, a book doesn't just go missing. It's got to be someplace. An article just doesn't go missing. It has to be someplace. But, what's happening in this electronic world, I think, you know, links expire. All sorts of things start to happen, and I do have some serious concerns about good stuff going missing at some point. It can happen. Any other questions? So, if you would like to believe more in "Can the Octopus Get to Know You?" that's absolutely true. It can. Can the disco ball be a mirror ball at the same time? How many people here ever thought of it as a mirror ball? Anybody? Okay. It has little mirrors on it. Matter of fact, on this one, we lost one of the little mirrors, but I have to say after this work, I can't look at an octopus the same way. As a matter of fact, I've asked for funding to go to a lab in Brooklyn that has a whole bunch of these, but I've been turned down. So, I have to go there on my own time. But, just fascinating, you know. They can actually unscrew the lids on jars. Can you imagine that? I mean, they're pretty smart. They really are. Anyone here know the other animal that's very good at facial recognition? Sheep. Oh, wow. Sheep can really get to know you. And, one of the things you can try, this is pretty interesting. ^M00:29:59 The New Yorker Magazine ran an article on the intelligence and facial recognition capabilities of sheep. In the printed edition of the New Yorker, at the end of the article, this link isn't there. But, if you go online and you go New Yorker, sheep, facial recognition. There is a link there, and you can go to Scotland Yard and take their facial recognition test. Am I going off topic, but this is really interesting. So, I figured, okay, I'll take this. I mean, I'm really interested in this. You know, octopuses can get to know you. Sheep can get to know you. And so, the test starts off pretty nice, you know, faces. All right. We can all remember a face, right? And then, at the very end, it gets down to corner of the eye, and you feel like you're going to lose your mind because the test is an hour. But, at the beginning, they tell you if you do really well, we'll keep a record of your score. Well, you know, really motivation, you know. Try it some time. Everyone I've told to try it, they've come back to me and said, "How did you do that to me?" But, if you score 85%, they put you in the list of people. So, what is facial recognition important for and why are we looking at that. Why did we discover the octopus doing that, and why did we discover, and why are we looking at these, and why are sheep? Because in crowd control situations where we're worried about rogue individuals, we need to have people there who can spot them. Do we have these facial recognition technologies out there, and we're all reading about this. You know, they know who we are. But, we still need people to look at people. And, whether we're going to recognize somebody from a corner of their eye or something, we need that skill. We absolutely do need that skill to ensure safety for everyone. And so, just as we have these ASTM standards, we can have people who can exercise standards, too, standards for safety. You know, if you see something, say something. But, please take that test tonight. [laughs] It's an hour long, and I, if you ever see me again or come over to the Adams Building, you know, I'll give you a Moon Pie or something. I keep those in my office. That's lots of fun. Any other questions? But, please, I hope to see you all someday. I'm out on the reference desk almost every day. We're open in the evenings, the Library of Congress, both buildings. And, all the Madison Building, too, until 9:30 at night Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. We open up all day Saturdays, and this year particularly dedicated and my intern from this summer who's sitting here advancing the slides. Zach, stand up. He has to go back to college tomorrow. I'm particularly dedicated to students writing papers and really good papers. And, coming to the Library of Congress to do their work, and Zach wrote a brilliant paper this summer on how to do your extended essay for the International Baccalaureate program in two weeks. Imagine that. Anybody who has to do a paper has to look at his diagrams and what have you on how to do a paper in two weeks. So, if you're a parent of a student, please come and take a look at this. We hope to get it posted online pretty soon, and it's absolutely magical to think that somebody came to us this summer, and we gave him this task, of course, to really show people how they could use, particularly younger people, how they could use the Library of Congress to have such an enhanced experience. Even though it's a pretty difficult assignment for these students in their senior year, how they could really get a good start by coming to the Library of Congress. After all, we can tell them what books to look at, you know, and which direction to take with their subject. We have language specialists and subject specialists all the time ready to help anybody about anything. The last thing I'll mention, I can keep talking about how wonderful it is where I am. But, we have the largest cookbook collection in the world. So, if you're looking for a recipe, okay, or looking to enhance, you know, a rather dull cooking life, come to us, and we have certainly all the books there. And, we also have two, two culinary specialists on board at any time. And, one of the most interesting questions I ever had was a Congressman had received a wonderful gift of a boar's head, and did we have a recipe for Brunswick Stew using a boar's head? Well, that was the days before, you know, internet and everything else or electronic databases to be able to get at this stuff. So, we were all deployed to this building looking through every single book, every, and we only came up with a recipe for squirrels in Brunswick Stew. So, I always mark that as my only failure in all my years. And, I didn't find the one with the boar's head. So, thank you for coming. Come and engage, inspire, and inform us, and we'll help you along the way. Thank you very much. ^M00:35:33 [ Applause ]