Part 3 of The Library Channel’s special three-part video series from FORO 2007: The Transborder Library Forum held at Arizona State University.

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On February 23, 2007 Alberto Ríos, Regents’ Professor of English, Arizona State University, gave the closing keynote to FORO 2007. He asks, “In the next century, so hungry for answers and so fearful of ideas, how do we move forward? And more than that, how do we move forward together?”
Along with self-reflective anecdotes, Alberto sends out six hopeful challenges to librarians as caring and thinking people:
- Diversity: It is not a goal but a means by which we will arrive at something greater than we currently understand.
- Invisible Populations: We need solutions not laws
- Economics: We must move from a money economy to an idea economy.
- Dialogue: We need to move back to true conversation. Half of language is listening. Are libraries listening and do they know how to listen?
- Languages: With many languages come many answers. Languages are a richness and a solution, not a problem. Words are ideas, and ideas lead to vital and evolving solutions.
- Education: It never fails us. An educated person learns how to solve problems. We will pay for education, but it always pays us back.
“Every pencil is filled with a book. It’s my job to know that, to believe it, and to act on it.” – Alberto Ríos
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Alberto Ríos is the author of eight books and chapbooks of poetry, three collections of short stories, and a memoir. His memoir about growing up on the border, called Capirotada, was published by University of New Mexico Press in 1999. Ríos is the recipient of the Arizona Governor’s Arts Award, fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, the Walt Whitman Award, the Western States Book Award for Fiction, five Pushcart Prizes in both poetry and fiction, and inclusion in The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, as well as over 150 other national and international literary anthologies. His work is regularly taught and translated, and has been adapted to dance and both classical and popular music. Ríos is presently Regents’ Professor of English at Arizona State University.
For more information about the Transborder Library Forum please visit FORO 2007.
Introduction:
Fred McIlvain
Opening Statements:
University Librarian Sherrie Schmidt
Speaker:
Alberto Ríos
Regents’ Professor of English |
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Episode 44