Our favorite librarian advocate Meghan McCorkell of the Enoch Pratt Free Library tells Nestor about all of the cool, modern ways our local institution is serving our citizens and defending the rights of authors and the community to access books.
Meghan McCorkell of Enoch Prat…t being well read in Baltimore
Sat, Aug 17, 2024 3:20PM • 21:38
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
library, viv, people, books, pratt, enoch pratt, baltimore, maryland, luke, mark, good, wife, read, internet, ban, knew, oysters, give, city, program
SPEAKERS
Nestor Aparicio, Meaghan McCorkell
8
Nestor Aparicio 00:00
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T, Towson, Baltimore, Baltimore, positive. We are positively no longer in Baltimore or even my palatial studios at Towson. We’re in Ocean City in a fluorescently lit convention hall where it’s 58 degrees but it’s 82 on the beach. My wife’s having a good time. So brought to you by the Maryland lottery. The Gold Rush. Sevens doublers are here. They will be there at fate leaves next week when the cheatstros come into town, right down the street from where Megan McCorkle host all things at the Enoch Pratt library. She’s one of my favorite guests. I like following around on LinkedIn, and they’re doing good stuff, and these clowns trying to burn books in other states and stuff like that. You’re trying to, like, keep people educated and do it right. How are you? I’m good. How are you? How’s the post media thing working out for you at the library?
Meaghan McCorkell 00:44
Do you know it’s been, it’ll be eight years, feels like eight minutes.
Nestor Aparicio 00:48
It feels like you’re still on but I don’t watch local news as much. You know, my wife is more local news oriented than I’m much more of a Twitter you know? Well, I’m a reform journal. I’m a recovering journal. I
Meaghan McCorkell 00:59
8call myself a recovering journalist, too. I think people, I think people’s attitudes are changing, and the way people are consuming news is changing, and there’s a lot of adaptations happening across the market from that well, something
Nestor Aparicio 01:10
like the Enoch Pratt library for you to sort of come to life, to tell stories and be a part of it in a way that maybe wasn’t nearly as cool when I was a kid, to go to the library and what the internet now there’s, it’s its own card catalog. So having people come to library, there’s a lot of reasons, and you guys do a million things that they weren’t doing when I was a kid with a card to try to get people into the library. And I often get off of the off 83 when I come into the city, like I go to fadelies, I go by the library because I come down Maryland Avenue. So I’m all, I always wind up going by and I see the activity out in front. And I’m like, All right, I got to get you back on the show and find out what’s going on. Hadley Berry’s coming to town to go along with. You know who’s coming to town. Now, you always have celebrities we
Meaghan McCorkell 01:54
do and I do. Okay, who do you got? Eve is coming? So we have the rapper, actress, Grammy Award winning. She has a book. She has a memoir. So she’s coming in September. We have the Supreme Court Justice ketanji Brown Jackson is coming. She knows that Connie Chung, journalist Connie Chung, is coming. We have John Grisham coming when he’s in October. That’s
Nestor Aparicio 02:19
my wife’s favorite. Oh, well,
8Meaghan McCorkell 02:20
there you go. He’s
Nestor Aparicio 02:21
when I met her, I knew she was smart because when I went to her house, she had all the Grisham novels. Like you know a lot about people by knowing what they read exactly, we all like to look smart and put a bookcase behind us like we’ve read all the books. I wish I’d
Meaghan McCorkell 02:35
read all the books. I gotta take it out and see if it’s been cracked or not, or if they just put them up there. I
Nestor Aparicio 02:39
8told this story three weeks ago. I’ve had three different musicians on this year who’ve written books, and the books are there. I haven’t read them yet. And what I said when I go to the beach? No, I’m at the beach. I’m talking to you, so I’m not not reading, reading books on the beach. No, saying no, and I’m gonna write instead of read. So Well, I’m a writer. I do more creative than I do actually reading. But you’re there for people who want to read. What do people read these tell
Meaghan McCorkell 03:08
you, honestly, too, people always like audiobooks. People always say, Oh, that’s not reading it. Is reading audiobooks. Is reading like we count all of that. You’re still retaining that knowledge. So there’s a lot of traditional readers who say, Oh, audiobooks. Audiobooks are so popular right now. And a lot of, like, people don’t even know that your library, you can download ebooks. So I’m not a
Nestor Aparicio 03:30
Kindle guy, see, I like people on my computer all day doing this. Yeah, I’m on my computer all day doing this and this and that, and like, the last thing, like a book is like, it’s Binky. You know what? I mean, it’s printed. I feel it. I touch it.
Meaghan McCorkell 03:44
Yes, there’s a lot of like that, but I will tell you, ebook use is skyrocketing. It’s huge. And it’s, you know, if I’m going on a plane to San Francisco, like every book in the world with you, take whatever you want on your Kindle. But a lot of people spend a lot of money on Amazon or other downloading sources on these books, and they don’t have to, because they can get it with their library card, and we are the State Library of Maryland. So anyone in the state of Maryland can get a Pratt library card.
8Nestor Aparicio 04:07
Can I come and get, like, literally any book like it, or any con, I mean, you know, catch on the rye and Grace wrath and that kind of easy stuff, but if there’s something that I remember a book from whenever, can I come to you and say, is it in your system?
Meaghan McCorkell 04:21
If we don’t have it, we can find it for you. We are the State Library of Maryland, and so we actually will. We do interlibrary loans. So if you have a book that you want and it’s only in Prince George’s County and you live in Washington County, we are going to be the ones who go and get it from Prince George’s County. It goes through the Pratt library, we get it to Washington County. But also, if there’s a book that you want and it’s in Egypt, we will get it from Egypt, and we will get it flown here, and we will get it to you. So yes, in Egyptian or English, whatever one you want, really get it for you. So that’s part of our service as the State Library. We can find those resources for you and bring them in and. Again, it’s for free. We’re the State Library, so we are a lot of researchers come to us. So it’s really important for us to be able to obtain some of those more obscure things for them, maybe McCorkle is
Nestor Aparicio 05:10
our guest. She’s with the Enoch Pratt Free. Where’s it? Free? Live? Our middle name, gotta put the free in there. Not a lot of the best things in life are free. So you worked in journalism forever. I think we talked a little bit. That’s in fadelies when you visited, when I was doing couple Super Bowl, and you made this move to do this. What did you know about the library prior to and then, like, What drew you to that? And now you’re like, You’re Miss library, or you’re not miss Jay Z anymore, reporter lady, you’re the, you’re the you’re the library person. And I, I grew up loving libraries. I’m a writer, I’m a reader, I’m all of that. I knew my librarians and all my school you know where I went. I knew where my library was at North Point. I The Frank Zappa Enoch, that was my city library in Highland, down the street from there. So somebody told me recently they didn’t know that there was a Zappos statue. It’s
Meaghan McCorkell 06:02
8kind of hidden. You just have to know it’s there. So well,
Nestor Aparicio 06:05
I pimp it all the time because it’s Frank zap and Highland. So why wouldn’t you? But I would say if I took your job eight years I wouldn’t have known much about it, even as a journalist, even talking to you, what have you learned on the inside that you didn’t know eight years ago about what a modern library system would look like.
Meaghan McCorkell 06:24
Well, first of all, I think a lot of people in Baltimore don’t. Nestor Aparicio, the Pratt Library is a national jewel amongst libraries. When people get their masters in library science, they teach about the Pratt library. So Pratt has been innovating and doing more innovative programs for literally decades. Who is Enoch Pratt. Enoch Pratt was a businessman back in the 1800s who donated money to the city of Baltimore to create the library system. And it was a system, so he donated the money for, I think, the first five libraries.
Nestor Aparicio 06:56
Wow. I’ve heard his name all my life. I’m like it had to be a real person. Yes, I never asked that. I’m here to ask the dumb questions. Man, that’s what I’m here to do.
8Meaghan McCorkell 07:04
No, but the services that we offer the Pratt library are so interesting, and I think we do a lot of the work that then gets replicated across the country. So for instance, in innovators, yeah, in 2014 we launched lawyer in the library. So that was a partnership with Maryland legal aid. And so they come in and they provide free legal assistance to customers that need it. That was such a popular program in 2014 there would be lines all the way around the library of people and people calling us from different states. Need a lawyer,
Nestor Aparicio 07:33
can’t afford one, didn’t have the education necessary. But
Meaghan McCorkell 07:38
it was also like if I’m getting kicked out of my house because I wasn’t on time and rent and I don’t know how to fight that. We’re able to help if you have things on your record that could be expunged and you just don’t know how to go through that process. That’s the majority of what they do. That’s a program now,
Nestor Aparicio 07:55
8that’s its own education into itself, right? How would any of us know any of that? Unless we were in that circumstance. And I think we would all think, what would we do in that so who would we reach to if we didn’t have anybody to reach to, and
Meaghan McCorkell 08:06
if you don’t have the funds to do it? And so where do you find this free legal aid? And they can find it right in their community, at the Pratt library. Now, since 2014 that has been replicated lawyer in the library is available at every single county in the state of Maryland, and it has been replicated across the country. For us. We’ve also then after that, in 2017 we launched social worker in the library. We have peer peer navigators in the library. We’re launching digital navigators in the library. We have health care in the library. These are all programs where we are saying our four walls are a trusted institution. People need these services, and even if we tell them, Go ahead, go across the street, they’re right there. They don’t necessarily trust that institution across the street. So we’re saying, Where can we get our trusted partners and bring them within our four walls so that people can get the services that they need? I
Nestor Aparicio 08:57
remember about 20 years ago, people went online, and I started getting emails from listeners and fans doing all these years, and I would see the Baltimore County Library login, and you know that that was there, and I definitely had listeners to the course of years didn’t have a computer. You know, is this before cell phones? Or even the affordability for some people, it’s still not inexpensive to have technology, and we all think of it as being ubiquitous, but the notion that the library would be your computer space and your computer workshop, and so many people out of work don’t have money, there’s a place they can go to get online, To resume out, LinkedIn, out, get a job, all of that. I’m sure that that is a primary resource, above and beyond checking out a book or reading a little bit, but utilizing that service for email, for real life, right? Digital divide
Meaghan McCorkell 09:53
is massive. In Baltimore, it is a massive problem, and the Pratt library is one of. Number One providers of free internet internet service in the entire state of Maryland, but we see people lined up outside our door. We open at 10am and most libraries have people standing outside the door at 10am waiting
8Nestor Aparicio 10:11
to, not only to get online the way we did 15 years ago, to go to a coffee shop, to blink into Wi Fi, right? Literally, we’re
Meaghan McCorkell 10:18
also lending out hot spots like you can lend out a book, like, I have one of these right here, yeah, so you can get one at the library. Now, what I will say is we have 2000 hotspots in circulation. That’s what we can afford and afford the data plans at this point. We have a waiting list right now, last time I checked, it was over 900 people waiting for a hotspot. So that gives you the kind of idea of what the need is out there for Internet inside people’s homes. I mean, it’s basically you needed to do anything. Well, listen,
Nestor Aparicio 10:49
I’ve driven in the plague. Two years ago when I did the crab cake tour. I went all over the state, all the back roads here on the eastern shore, and I literally was in the pasture seat with my wife yesterday, driving between Salisbury And Ocean City, kind of near where the Purdue area is, and I’m on 50 and I had no Internet, and I said to my wife, I’m like, it’s unbelievable. Me, year after year after year we talk about broadband. I get all these delegates, senators, and I’m like, Governor Moore, if you’re off the side of the road and you want to text, it doesn’t. Anyone can see how hard this is, and knowing four and a half years ago that you had a kid from school trying to homeschool where there’s no internet. It’s my employee, Luke. Lives in Pennsylvania. He can’t if people listen, they know he breaks up. Sometimes it’s the best we can do. He cannot get the internet, where he lives on a farm Road in Pennsylvania. And I think we city slickers, man, we just take like, boom, I got four bars. Oh, man, I’ve only got three bars. Well, how about zero bars ever, all the time, and that goes on. Oh, absolutely, just
Meaghan McCorkell 11:55
8as tough in the city. I mean, I’ll be honest with you, when the pandemic happened, we had to close our doors. And the first thing, the only thing we thought about is, are we not going to get people online? So we were really fortunate to get private donor funding, and we put like antennas on the top of every single one of our buildings, and beamed Wi Fi out around our buildings. We were seeing children sitting with laptops outside of our buildings, doing their schoolwork, because that’s the only way that they could get Wi Fi.
Nestor Aparicio 12:21
And these are things they wouldn’t have taught you at W, J, Z, back when you were just doing you know? These are things you wouldn’t have known if you weren’t on the inside of it, right? Yeah.
Meaghan McCorkell 12:27
I mean, it’s a beautiful place, the library, I always say our business is access. That’s all it is. And access can come in the form of a book, it can come in the form of a database, or it can come in the form of a person, and we find a way to provide that in all of our libraries. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 12:40
when I made the move 10 years ago this week, by the way, to not just be a sports station and discuss things, I thought, you know, my wife was battling for her life, and what am I gonna put on the radio when all this is over with? And I thought, I just want to have, like, intelligent conversation. You know, I want to talk to people who read books and stay up. Those are my favorite people, or the people that actually read the books you have, anything you want to say about the book burning and the political side of we shouldn’t allow young people to see this or that it’s I, I never thought it would come to this. You know, I mean, I’m a little older, but that’s a real battle in this country that these people want to like, do away with libraries. It’s insane. Yeah,
8Meaghan McCorkell 13:22
it’s very disheartening. It’s disheartening to see, as the State Library of Maryland, we obviously very much believe in intellectual freedom, we have all of the top most banned books, most challenged books are available, all of my favorites. They’re all available on ebook. And so if you can’t get it in your county, you can download it with your Pratt library card anywhere across country. And so, I mean, we really stand up against book banning, because here’s the thing, we think parents have the right to oversee what their children are reading. But just because maybe you don’t think something’s appropriate for your child, maybe my child sees themselves in that literature, and everybody deserves to be able to see themselves in literature. When you look at the books that are getting banned, they are characters of color, they’re LGBTQIA plus characters, and so you’re taking that away from people who wouldn’t, then be able to maybe see themselves a child that’s growing up and say, I relate to this, and it’s just such an important thing, you know what you and I were growing up? A lot of the books looked like me, right? A lot of like you, they look like us, right? And there weren’t a lot of children’s books with people of color. That has changed now, but the idea that those are being taken away from people, that people aren’t getting that opportunity, it’s really disheartening, and that’s why we stand up and say, we’re going to carry those books and we’re going to make them available to everybody.
Nestor Aparicio 14:52
Everyone should read The Catcher in the Rye and learn that you can’t erase all the fuse, because it’s true. You can’t. Well, that’s really the story. You can’t they’re there. There. And you know, we’re going to read books and we’re going to write books. I want to write some more books as well. Megan McCorkle is here. She’s writing the Book of Enoch Pratt the free library. Get on down and participate in any way you can. So for John Grisham, what do I need to do?
15:15
All right,
Meaghan McCorkell 15:16
8so what is the date? Okay, so Monday, Monday, August 19, we’re gonna start registering for our October programs. So Monday at noon is when we do registration. So get on our website, Pratt library.org, go to the events page, and then make sure to set your alarm clock for 1155, so you can see we sell they’re free tickets, but we register 800 people, so you want to be in the first 800 people that that get those tickets.
Nestor Aparicio 15:41
My wife would think that’s cool. So who have been the most popular ones? Give me all your superstar things I know Will and Jada was part of
Meaghan McCorkell 15:49
right? That was, that was great work. Said Bobby Flay is going to come in November. We have ta nehisi Coates coming in October.
Nestor Aparicio 15:58
I’ve had to he see on the show. Yes, good. We’re very
8Meaghan McCorkell 16:00
excited about that. Nancy Pelosi came last week, so I was, that’s what I saw. Nancy Pelosi, okay, so Nancy was with us last week, also another guest on my program. She
Nestor Aparicio 16:10
talked a lot, a little Italy, right? I mean, yeah, she talked about her her family was involved forever and ever and ever. Yeah. I mean, it makes all the sense in the world that when she’s gonna come back and speak in Baltimore, she would do it on speak in Baltimore, she
Meaghan McCorkell 16:23
would do it on your behalf, real deep history in Baltimore, and talks about
16:27
8her experience with coming to the she is a kid. So So yeah, those are just a few
Meaghan McCorkell 16:31
of the names. But you know, you always want to check us out, because people are always so interested to see what our lineup is. The fall lineup is really big. We have sold out almost all of September. And so starting Monday, we’ll start registering for October. John Grisham and ta nehisi Coates are probably some of the biggest that we’re seeing in October. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 16:48
they’re bringing the stars out there. Not Pratt, free library, Megan McCorkle, formerly WJZ, now of Enoch. Pratt always been there. And anything I’ll say about state of journalism, where you’re happily gone from that, right? You’re just done, you know, I see Jamie Go, right? You start to see Mark. You know, Mark, by the way, Vince coming on next Friday. Or, excuse me, a Coco’s on Wednesday the fourth, and he has refused to come on on Zoom. He only wants to sit next to me. We have never, ever done a segment to get well. You know, it’s bad that you’re ready. You have to have to your television. I was not allowed in any way, especially 1057, was owned by Jay Z and Westinghouse and all that stuff. Viv and I have never done a segment together. People don’t think that we like, know each other or get along, because we’re never spotted together. We don’t tweet at each other, we don’t buddy and take I mean, Viv and I, like, we just weren’t he was never allowed to come on my show, and I was never allowed to come on, you know? So this is gonna be, there’s gonna be this meeting of St Louis and Baltimore, oh yeah. And we’re gonna have all that going on.
Meaghan McCorkell 17:52
Mark is great. He’s what, I’m really good friends with, Mark and his family. So, so I always laugh. I say, I’m sorry, like, I’m sorry, Baltimore, can’t see you, but now I can just go to your house. What
8Nestor Aparicio 18:00
do people know about Viv? Tell some VIV stories or other than he runs a lot. He
Meaghan McCorkell 18:04
does run a lot. I’m really good friends with his wife, and I just love seeing him with his kids. So I
Nestor Aparicio 18:10
want to have her on a talk about Chesapeake Bay, right? Yeah,
Meaghan McCorkell 18:13
8the Chesapeake Bay magazines. Well, I’m
Nestor Aparicio 18:16
doing the oyster tour next month, so maybe that you know what, I should make him bring her and I get both crab cake, absolutely
Meaghan McCorkell 18:23
a double Viviano. But yes, they’re boys. I love watching their boys play sports and how like Mark is into that. I mean, it’s
Nestor Aparicio 18:31
said something to me that I’m going to say it out loud here. Mainly, I never heard Mark curse. I’ve never heard, you know, March a sweet guy, right? You know, very faithful, very much so. But I heard Mark curse. The last time I physically saw Mark. I was in a room with him that had a media pass last year in Arlington, Texas. Luke and I flew down, and of course, they allow my Caucasian employee to Luke in. They do not allow me. And they sat us at the kids table to punish me and to punish Luke. They put us in the far end of the far end of the press box away from all the other Baltimore media, because I smell and VIV made his way up to the third row, and he’s like, Hey, good to see you here. I’m like, Yeah, neither one of us have clubhouse badges because they’re trying to punish us. So finally, about the fifth or sixth inning, they came and gave Luke a clubhouse pass. Didn’t give me one, and they let Luke go in the locker room. After the season was over, Viv came up before the game, and VIV was enraged. Viv saw me being treated like I had a different water fountain, and knew it wasn’t right. And VIV is a listener to this show. Viv, anytime I see Viv, he mentioned stuff I said on the air last week, so I know he’s listening. So he saw me up there. And he’s like, You had this personal you had that person. F those people, is what he said. And I’m like, Thanks, Viv I appreciate you having my back. I know you can’t say that on the evening news tonight, but at least you understand. So I love Mark Viviana, and I’m gonna be thrilled to have him on and we’re gonna have a big fat crap. Make it cocoa. I’m thrilled to have you on and I appreciate you telling me about John Grisham, giving me the 411 ahead of time. Track, all right. Well, go get a book and go read, go learn more. Library.org, not a lot of places you can get all of the free knowledge collected in the history of the universe in one place, and it’s for you to figure out what to do with it when you read it exactly is there. They don’t ban books. Enoch, Brad, and we don’t ban stuff around here. And it’s always good to see you. Good to see you. All right. Megan McCorkle, Enoch, free. Enoch. Pratt, free library. Knock Pratt was all they’re brought to you by friends at the Maryland lottery, the gold rush. Seven stumblers are here. My wife’s on the beach. I’m here, but I’m gonna be back next week giving these away at fadelies, where I got her crap kicked a couple months ago. We’re going to be there next Friday. Luke’s going to be coming by, and then we have VIV coming by at Coco’s on the fourth, and then on the fifth, we kick off the football season as well as 26 oysters in 26 days in 26 ways. Maybe I could check out a book at the Enoch Pratt library on that we’re going to learn about the oysters, oxygenating the bay, cleaning up the bay, how delicious they are, and where the pearls come from. I’m going to these oyster beds down here in the Eastern Shore and down in Southern Maryland. So I’m almost like a real reporter back for more in Ocean City. We’re here for Ocean City, Maryland. It is Mako. We’re gonna have Senator Cardin on later on. We’re gonna have Senator Van Hollen on, all sorts of people dead. Ramos is stopping by. I think Johnny O’s going to roll by. Oh. Brook learman, our controller gonna be coming by as well. So stay tuned more for motion city. We’re here having fun promoting the lottery, and hopefully at some point I’ll put my toes in the sand in the Atlantic Ocean. Stay with us. You.
