Transcription: Renegade Librarian Jessamyn West On Information, Access And Democracy
This is a transcription of an interview that I did with Jane Lindholm for Vermont Edition. You can listen to the show on VPRs website but they do not do transcripts, so I made one with links and stuff!
Jane Lindholm: This is Vermont Edition. I’m Jane Lindholm. Not every librarian has her own Wikipedia page, let alone one with actual subcategories. But Jessamyn West is probably not your typical librarian. Or maybe she’s just the ur-librarian, and she’s just better known than many others in her profession who keep a lower profile. But it shouldn’t be surprising that her online presence is robust. She created Librarian.net, one of the earliest and most influential librarian blogs, in the early days of blogging in general. She works for the Open Library project, which allows people to borrow free e-books. The blog Boing Boing has called her “an internet folk hero.” And yesterday she was awarded the Vermont Library Association’s Library Advocate of the Year award, in part because of her work in getting a new nominee to be the Librarian of Congress. Jessamyn West lives in Randolph and she’s joining us now. Thank you so much for being here with us.
Jessamyn West: Thanks for having me.
JL: So you’re a librarian without a library, in the sense that you don’t have a bricks and mortar library that you work at 40 hours a week. So what do you do?
JW: Well, like you said, there’s a lot of different ways to be a librarian. Sometimes you work in a library, and maybe you do or do not have a library degree. Sometimes you have a library degree and you do information professional work, not within a building. For me, I have a combination of jobs, like many people in Vermont. I work for the Internet Archive’s Open Library project, I work at the Randolph Technical Career Center a couple hours a week doing computer drop-in time and adult education classes. Got a computer question, I’m the computer lady. I do some writing for Computers in Libraries magazine, which is an adorably named magazine, talking about technology topics. And I do some public speaking, going to library conferences and talking about topics like the digital divide or social media for libraries, that kind of thing.
JL: How does one become a celebrity librarian. I mean, you certainly are.
JW: You know, the job itself, I like to think about it like — many professions have people that talk about the profession and people that do the work. Librarianship obviously I believe needs both more than ever. I think one of the reasons we had a longstanding image problem was because we just kind of did our work and it didn’t matter what people said about us, we knew we were good and doing good works.
But, as media gets more 24/7, as social media becomes more of how people know about things, we’ve had to have a response to that. As somebody who’s tech-friendly and library-friendly it just seemed like an unfilled niche to go chit-chatting about, “Hey libraries are actually kind of terrific.” And the more you talk about that, people pick that up, especially using technology like social media, and people know you sort of despite yourself. And also, because I don’t work 40 hours a week, I have time to bang the drum, so to speak, and tell the stories of the people who are working 40 hours a week who don’t have that time.
JL: Well, then tell part of the story about why libraries are so important and so relevant. Because one of the things that we hear is that it’s the digital age, you can get access to information anywhere, on your phone, you don’t need a library and you don’t need a librarian in the way that you might have a generation or two generations ago. But, so what makes libraries not only important but part of those digital changes and the technological changes, not sort of here in spite of them?
JW: Well, it’s a whole bunch of different things, but for me and certainly where I work in Vermont, one of the biggest things is saying everything’s on the internet is great if you know how to use the internet. People who say it’s all on Google probably haven’t spent a lot of time watching people try to find what they want on Google. It’s challenging. There’s a lot of syntax to know, you’ve got know how to use a mouse, you’ve got to understand clicking, what’s a tab, what happens when I do this that and the other, and there really isn’t a social institution dedicated to helping you figure it out. And then, that’s just for digitally divided folks, but for average folks who know how to use a computer, they still need to know how to be discerning about the information they get.
Lots of information on the internet is trying to push you in a very specific direction. I mean, Google’s the largest ad agency in the world. That’s actually where their money comes from. No big deal, but it’s useful to know that when you’re wondering why you’re getting that result on the top. A lot of people don’t understand that thing is an ad.
And if we’re a democracy, the important thing about a democracy is that you get to inform yourself the way you want to and learn the things for you to make the decisions that affect your life, not someone else telling you how to do that. And so libraries are neutral in this really interesting way. And not neutral in this other interesting way, in that they really want to help you be you, not you be what somebody else wants you to be.
JL: Do they have access to things that I can’t get just by Googling?
JW: Yeah, and one of — we call these “information silos” and we fight to knock them down in the library world, but you can get access to history books, as an example. One of the examples I use a lot is, try to find an obituary for somebody who died in the late seventies, early eighties… It’s really hard. It may be locked up in a newspaper archive and the newspaper maybe would like you to pay a couple bucks for it. Again, no big deal. That’s their business. But the library can help you find that. Consumer Reports, for example. My public library subscribes to Consumer Reports. If you want to figure out how to buy a vacuum cleaner, you can come there and get access to that thing that you otherwise not only have to buy, but buy something that was published eight months ago and it’s confusing and challenging. But the library just has it. And the person who works at the library is the person who can tell you how to get it and that’s why it’s sort of people plus data, not one or the other.
JL: Or for me it’s been trying to find information about, for example, diseases or medical issues, when you want to go straight to the studies, not to the filter of some doctor who works for such and such website….
JW: Well, or even a website like WebMD who gets a lot of money from Pfizer (ed note: whoops, sorry it was Eli Lilly). Again, not a big deal, but the average person who types in hypoglycemia is going to find results from places that sell you hypoglycemia medicine. Once you know that you can make discerning choices. Maybe you need hypoglycemia medicine and that solves a problem for you. But you should be able to know, you know, the National Institute of Health and PubMed are going to give you one set of results, especially original research, which for people who really want to get to the source is important, and WebMD is going to give you a different kind of thing. The Mayo Clinic website is going to help you do this that and the other, and the forums are going to help you go hide under your bed because you’re sure whatever you have is going to kill you. And being able to make those decisions is things a lot of people could use help with.
JL: We’re talking about the value of libraries in the digital age with Jessamyn West, and we’re learning more about why she says if you care about democracy you should care about libraries. If you have a question for her you can call 1-800-639-2211, or you can post a note on the Vermont Edition Facebook page. Let’s go to Anthony, calling in from Montpelier. Hi Anthony, go right ahead.
Caller: Hi, I think it’s a fantastic topic and I’m calling to lament the closure of the physical space that used to be the Vermont Law Library in Montpelier Vermont. It was a great library that had very helpful librarians and in this age where there are so many people having to interface with the criminal and civil justice system without attorneys it was a great resource for them, and even for people who are working with smaller law firms that don’t have the money to subscribe to the proprietary databases where a lot of legal information is kept these days, it was just a tremendous resource to keep access to justice barriers lower and so I think it’s great you’re focusing on this and I can’t say enough about how useful actual physical libraries can be and the internet is just not a good substitute.
JL: Anthony thanks for your call, I appreciate it. Jessamyn, what about this fact that we do see libraries closing for lack of support and funding?
JW: Well, and Anthony raises a really good point, which is that one of the other things library offer is people who need information for, you know, life changing issues. Like, I have a legal issue and maybe I can’t afford a lawyer and the state law library in Montpelier used to be a place that you could go to get access to tools and resources that you wouldn’t have otherwise. There have been terrible, terrible funding cuts to the state department of libraries. Just awful. We’re one of the few states in — one of eight states in the country that doesn’t have state-level funding that goes down to our public libraries. And so the state has been getting more and more budget cuts and they actually had to kind of — it’s sort of complicated, but the Vermont Law School is where people basically can go to get access to legal information and legal help. But that’s in South Royalton, that’s not in Montpelier, there’s no public transportation there, there’s not the same crew of people to help you.
I believe it’s a short-sighted decision because what it is is it’s impacting negatively the very same people that those libraries are designed to help in the first place. And they don’t do it — again, they don’t do it on purpose, money is real and you have to make the decision you make, but it is really challenging to decentralize those. And every time you put something on the internet, you’re basically keeping it away from somebody for whom the internet is not real yet.
JL: Which is so interesting, because you also, I know you’re an advocate for open source stuff and open source resources, and this idea that the internet isn’t even always open even to people who have access to the internet, and so if you’re putting things on the internet in other ways you are giving people more access to things that they might not otherwise have been able to find if, for example, they were only in that law library.
JW: Well it’s tricky. You have to do both, and for a lot of people they hear “both” and they’re like, “Grrrrr, more expensive!” I’m a person who bought my healthcare on the exchange, and the Vermont healthcare website where you bought healthcare was challenging to use. Not an awesome website, there were lots of problems, but the people on the phone were amazing. They had the patience of saints, they were incredibly kind, and, you know, we only had 40,000 people signing up. It’s almost hard to — I mean, I understand the economies of scale, which is why you would want to create these tools, but in many cases the human touch to help people figure things out — a lot of what they were just doing was figuring out the website for people who really couldn’t understand it because it wasn’t very intuitive.
And so any good plan to digitize information and make it more available has to have a human element to help the people for whom maybe your stuff doesn’t work. There’s no such thing as an absolutely intuitive interface, which is sort of my message to people who have a hard time with technology. It’s not you if it’s hard to use. Somebody probably built it a little wrong, or maybe you’re not their target demo, and it’s useful to understand that as you struggle with technology, that there probably is a way you could learn to use it better and there’s a person who could help you.
JL: We got a note from Owen and Margaret, who say, “We’re new to Vermont, moving here just under two years ago. We love our new lives here but we’ve been disappointed in the libraries. We live in a very small town, we love the small library here, but its resources are limited for obvious reasons. There’s an interlibrary loan, but interlibrary loan is also a burden for the library. We wonder why Vermont doesn’t follow a model found in other states, a state library card, which means that a citizen of the state can use any library. One other suggestion: we moved from Iowa, where if we’d presented documentation that we were Iowa residents at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, we were given a library card with borrowing privileges. Why can’t we do the same at UVM? All state residents should be able to use this library.
JW: Well, it’s tricky. You can’t do it at the University of Vermont, but you can do it at the Community College of Vermont system. So I live in Vermont, we have Vermont Technical College, which has a really fantastic library up on the hill in Randolph Center, and it’s open late at night, it’s got lots of technology, it’s got free wifi, it’s got a great lending library, and anybody who’s a state resident can get access to that. And that’s true for the entire community college system. UVM doesn’t do it because, grrr, resources, and I do have to say Iowa has one of the better state library systems in the country, so, again, we have a hard time with funding and there have been priorities and choices.
The Vermont Library Association and the Green Mountain Library Consortium are actually really trying and working toward a state card. Chittenden County now has a county-wide card that you can use at multiple libraries. But it may be that there’s a small town near you that you can get a library card at for free — some libraries have cards for free, some do not — that may fill in some of the gaps in your current library system.
JL: We also have a note from Tom who says, “The Burlington school district is planning on cutting library and media services by 50% next year. What effect will this have on students’ literary skills, especially for English Language Learners?”
JW: Well, one of the things we’ve found, and there’s data to support it, is that students do better in schools with school library media specialists or librarians. And places make decisions because they feel like, well, we can’t cut math because, well, you need that for the test, and you can’t cut English because you need that for the test. However, I do feel like for literacy, both English fluency and computer literacy, libraries are really one of the places that people can get unstructured access that enables them to structure their learning in the way that’s necessary for them. And getting some of those computer literacy skills.
And the big deal is for a lot of those — again, digitally divided kids — that’s where they do their homework. Because maybe they don’t have a computer at home or they maybe don’t have internet at home, and any cuts that you make to that system are really negatively impacting the people who are already having a hard time. So I think that’s very frustrating and I keep telling people talk to their school boards, that that’s not where these things should be happening. Again, I sympathize with the people who have to make those choices. But I think it’s a short-sighted one.
JL: If you could recreate or sort of wipe our brains and recreate a definition of what a library is or what a librarian is, how would you define it? Because I mean so many of us have these, either images from our childhoods about a library or a librarian or, you know, a definition that’s sort of been handed across generations that’s different in some ways from what libraries are today. How would you create the definition, and what’s a library?
JW: Well, the big change is the “libraries are for books” thing. I think most of us have seen that changing in our lifetime. That a library is community space, it’s owned by the community in addition to being for the community. I think the big shift we’re seeing now is the geographic focus of libraries is broadening. That in some ways, the way you have a farmer’s market and can get local food, your library hasn’t always been for local books, but as more information become available globally — the internet, giant databases that anybody can have — libraries are almost refocusing on helping the community.
I think of them as a place where the community gets to show itself to itself, or look at itself, and the librarians are not just the people who are being the information gatekeepers, as we used to say, being like, “Well don’t really touch that book because it’s fancy and you’re not”, but instead, “Hey, what do you need, what information needs do you need to solve? Here’s some resources already set up, and here’s a person who can help you figure out what other resources you may need.”
We’re seeing libraries nationwide branching out into all sort of things. Book delivery via bicycle, or the makerspace movement, which people have mixed feelings about but it has really brought a different type of person into the library. Or English as a Second Language, which is huge as America becomes significantly more diverse both with language diversity and with people from other countries.
The best libraries are meeting the communities where they are and helping them grow in ways that are effective, efficient, and make them happy, and basically using the community’s own money to help the communities be better. The librarians are the people who facilitate and steward those interactions in order to ensure that they happen, and ensure that they can continue to happen,
which is the real key in the battlefield that we see nowadays.
JL: We’ve even seen libraries play a role recently in the last year or two as cities found themselves in the midst of protests, at Ferguson, Baltimore, after police killings and some protests that have erupted there, we really saw libraries be a place where people were holding classes when school was canceled. Or even reporters were going for the free wifi because there were a lot of places where internet was being shut down and places were being closed. And the libraries were these sort of open resources for people in a way that I guess shouldn’t be surprising, but that in some ways was, for people that — okay, here’s this resource, it’s still a community resources, and it’s still open in the midst of all this.
JW: Right, we may not have our power on but we can have bicycles that charge your phones. I mean, librarians really rose to meet that challenge in ways that were impressive. Our speaker at the Vermont Library Conference last year was Scottie Bonner from Ferguson, and he really talked about — it’s just what we do. We saw a problem, we saw a need, and we met it head-on. And handled it because it’s our job. Not because we’re trying to be showboats. Not because it brings us money, although it happened to for the Ferguson Library, but because this is our community and our community is hurting, and we have resources, and trust that people have instilled in us that we can now turn around and it’s our time to shine. So Ferguson did some wonderful things with classes.
The Queens Borough Public Library, after Hurricane Sandy, our keynote speaker Rebekkah Smith Aldrich did a thing about sustainability in libraries. They were on the beach doing story time for traumatized kids before the Red Cross got there. And, it’s just — it’s a great photo op, but whatever! — it’s also just a really cool thing to be doing.
Those people have jobs. Part of their job is helping the community in whatever way they’re needed. And what they needed after Hurricane Sandy, especially in sort of coastal regions, was healing. And they needed to come together, and the kids needed something to do, and they needed to charge their phones, and they needed that kind of thing. And in Baltimore, they needed the library to say, hey, we’re open for you, and we’re open for everybody. Because that’s actually the community.
It’s easy to be like, “W”ell those people aren’t our people, they’re not my people, well, these people aren’t our people, they’re not my people, and for people to grump grump grump…” but one of the things I love about the library is they’re like, “This is the geographic designation and everyone in this umbrella belong to us and we belong to them. Work it out.” And we’re seeing libraries being really effective at that and it’s really gratifying to me.
JL: We’re talking again today with Jessamyn West. She’s a librarian, a writer, a technologist, she writes about libraries. Has a role in the national library discussion as well. She’s been really involved in getting a new nominee for the librarian of congress. We’ll talk about that, we’ll talk about more questions you have. You can call 1-800-639-2211. You can post a note on the Vermont Edition page at vpr.net, or you can tweet us @Vermont Edition.
JL: Welcome back to Vermont Edition, I’m Jane Lindholm. Today we’re talking with librarian and library ambassador Jessamyn West. In library circles, she’s a rockstar. And she had a big hand in helping to choose the nominee to be the next Librarian of Congress, in Washington. Something the Vermont Library Association recognized her for with a big award. We’re looking at why and how libraries matter in this day and age. We’d love your input or your questions for Jessamyn West. You can write to Vermont Edition at vpr.net, you can tweet us @VermontEdition, or call. And we got a note from Jeffrey in Grand Isle who says, “Jessamyn, a case in point. I’m working from home here in Vermont on a PhD on Freud. My school is in Europe. I simply need access to Freud’s work in German, which UVM has but I’m not allowed access. Can you make any suggestions? Thanks.”
JW: This is one of those really tricky questions, right. That information is probably on the internet and yet you don’t necessarily know where it is. My suggestion is to see if your library, first off, as the most legit way can go get it, but also googling a little bit about how people find documents on the internet when they can’t get access to them through their own libraries. Super tricky, I understand, but it’s definitely a thing that, if not your librarian then other librarians would know how to do.
JL: Or maybe you could get a grant and go to Germany. That’s what I’d be working for. Bruce, calling in from Essex. Hi Bruce, go ahead.
Caller: Hi Jane, and Jessamyn. I’m on the state library board and I just want to say congratulations on your award, and also say thank you for your inspirational attitude about libraries. There are a lot of stories over Vermont that people don’t often hear, and this is an example of a good one to hear, and I really appreciate it. And for the listeners, we don’t have much of a state library system. It’s local control, bottoms-up libraries. But in the light of the budget cuts we saw in the state department of libraries we’re trying to figure out a way forward, and Jessamyn, please weigh in in the future if you want and give us some ideas. But we want to maintain with the reduced staff we have I think we have a real, I think, service to public libraries. So thanks, and congratulations again.
JW: Thank you very much.
JL: Jessamyn, the award you won from the Vermont Library Association was Library Advocate of the Year, which is not given out every year, though as far as I can see it’s sort of a given out when a case merits it. So, by your understanding, what do you think got you that accolade?
JW: Well, I think the big deal — usually it’s an award given to sort of government people, and this year or in the last year I’ve been really active — I mean, I’m really into civics, in general. I mean, librarians are in general, but I really really am. I’m a Justice of the Peace in my town, I marry people, I sit on the board of civil authority, I do all that kind of stuff. But I’ve also gotten involved on a national level because the Librarian of Congress finally retired after 28 years, which was a huge deal in the library world. It’s one of those Halley’s Comet type of things, not quite so much. But that offered an opportunity for people who consider themselves library advocates and maybe library advocates to spend a bit of time agitating to try and get somebody in that role who would do the things that — I say we, but like, librarians want. I mean obviously that person does a lot of different things, but running the biggest library in the world, my feeling was that person should be a librarian.
So I took my role as general internet loudmouth and started talking to people about, what would you like? What do you think is important? What do we need? A lot of people felt that the Library of Congress had gotten maybe a little stagnant over the last while. How do we shake that up? Many of us know people who work there who say morale’s been bad. And so spending a lot of time having community conversations, making a little website, agitating with the right people, having some important phone calls, and continuing the conversation on and on and on until Carla Hayden got nominated a couple months ago.
I mean, it was so ridiculous — like we were all live tweeting her nomination hearing like a bunch of goofy fan girls and boys, but it’s a huge deal in our profession, and it’s probably the most important job we’re going to see anybody get in maybe our lifetimes, although now the term limit’s ten years so maybe it’ll happen again ten years from now, but I think that was the big thing for this award, being involved at a national level. Vermont’s very local, and very into local, and it’s one of the reasons I live here. But there are things happening at the national stage that we need to, I think, be very involved in. And so I just kind of jumped in with both feet and I think that’s where that came from.
JL: And what’s so great about Carla Hayden?
JW: She’s amazing! She — I mean, you were talking about Baltimore, right? When the Baltimore riots happened, she was right out in front sticking a “we’re open for business” sign on the front door of the public library.
https://twitter.com/prattlibrary/status/593056895482646528
And way back in the day when I was kind of a baby librarian in the early 2000s, she took John Ashcroft to task, because he was being a little grumpy about the Patriot Act, and being like, grrrr, librarians, they’re just being, acting, they’re in hysterics about the USA PATRIOT Act, we’re not coming after your records, nobody cares about you. And she was like, actually, that’s not kind, and I think you and I should chit chat about what’s going on because we heard what you said to the National Restaurant Association and it wasn’t cool. And they had a really nice conversation and that actually was the beginning of some of the reforms to the USA PATRIOT Act about the involved gag orders, so you couldn’t tell people when the FBI had come in and shaken up your library.
And I think it was a combination of things, both sort of a level of class and decorum on her part being like, “No, actually, librarians are actually important. And you should treat us with some respect, actually.” And just what it did for the tiny libraries, who were afraid. You know, the FBI comes to your library, it’s scary. Even if you agree with every single thing they’re doing, it’s still a scary thing, and to have them be like, ‘”You can’t talk to anybody about this besides your lawyer…” — scary. And maybe overreaching and not necessary, and so she, when she was president of the American Library Association, you know, stood up, called a meeting, handled it.
And she’s done a lot of, she’s just generally been a sort of good egg in library circles. She helped the Baltimore Library System get a lot more savvy with technology, ebooks and wifi and that kind of stuff, and personally she’s just a nice warm friendly person. Which is, you know, a huge deal. Not — Billington wasn’t warm and fuzzy, the previous Librarian of Congress, and you kind of got the feeling he was too fancy for you. And you kind of get the feeling Dr. Hayden — could run a library for everybody in the country, not just her special people.
JL: You know, you mentioned that she was active in sort of pushing back on some of the sort of things that were in the USA PATRIOT Act, and you’ve been pretty active in that too, particularly in relation to the provision that allowed the FBI to search library records without a warrant and said libraries can’t tell the public, or the people whose records may have been searched, that they’ve been searched. And you printed out or created these signs, and distributed them, that say things that a library could actually say. Things like, “the FBI has not been here” and then underneath at the bottom of the sign it says “watch very closely for the removal of this sign.”
JW: Yeah, those are — I mean, they have sort of a term now that I didn’t even know at the time. They’re called a “warrant canary.” So you can say nobody’s been here and then you can take down the sign that says nobody’s been here, and that exists in a quasi-legal grey area, where you’re not saying they’ve been here but you’re not saying they still haven’t been there. So it’s not — it’s a little bit more of theater than I think it’s effective in a specific thing, but we’re seeing more and more big corporations. You know, Google has a page that says “this is how many national security letters we’ve been served”, because it’s not a search warrant where you have to go through a judge and people can see it. It’s a national security letter, which is weird and quasi-secret, and whatnot.
I think a lot of people felt weird about that, especially in the library world, where a lot of like — our stuff is public. Our meetings are public. Our spaces are public. We are yours. And so having to keep this level of secrecy was sort of not cool. And so the warrant canary idea is a broader idea, and I just sort of brought it to bear on what I conceived of as this particular not-awesome part — which actually isn’t part of the USA PATRIOT Act anymore. There was a lawsuit, the Library Connection in Connecticut, they sued, they won, very exciting. I’d like to think me and my stuff was a very small part of that.
JL: And I think the Vermont Library Association actually handed those signs out to the libraries around the state.
JW: Yeah, the intellectual freedom committee sent copies to every library in the state.
JL: We got a tweet from Bill Villhouse[?], who says, “Jessamyn has been a library rockstar since way back in the Metafilter days. Thanks for sharing all your knowledge.” And we got a tweet from Rick Scully who says, “Jessamyn is teh awesome, seriously. Make sure you talk about moss, please.” And you say on your webpage bio that one of the things you’re into is moss, so you’re going to have to tell us about it.
JW: Everybody needs an offline hobby.
JL: And yours is moss.
JW: And mine is going out into the woods and collecting moss and building little moss terrariums in my house. So that me, who travels a lot and doesn’t have any pets or children, still has something I can nurture and take care of in my home.
JL: So it’s something you’re laughing about now with what looks like sort of a wry laugh, maybe a little embarrassment. But clearly not embarrassing because you put it out there as something you’re really into.
JW: No, yeah. It’s a thing I care about but it’s also useful to be able to be that XYZ person, so I’m like that librarian, that lady who likes moss, that person who’s in Randolph, the computer lady, etc., etc. Yeah. One of my things.
JL: What else is next for you in terms of pushing libraries into the future and pushing the importance of libraries moving forward.
JW: Well, I’m sort of broadening my reach a little bit. I’m teaching an online class with the University of Hawaii’s library school graduate program starting next week, and we’re doing tools for community advocacy. So really what I would like is for there to be an awful lot more people doing the kinds of things that I’m doing, but a lot of people need the toolkit and they need to understand what that’s made of and that it’s a thing that they can do. That they haven’t always been out in front of issues like that in the library world but I think we can be, and so spreading the word, teaching that, in addition to teaching my HTML class at VTC, is sort of what I’m doing next. More educating and talking to more people about more things.
JL: Jessamyn West is an influential librarian, writer, and technologist. She lives in Randolph and does all the other things that I just mentioned in addition to collecting moss, which — I want to see the terrarium so I’m going to go online and -
JW: Mossarium.com
JL: All right, mossarium.com. Jessamyn thanks very much for talking to us.
JW: Thanks a lot.
JL: Coming up, the state Republican Convention is this weekend….
