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This season, we are working on building a toolbox of leadership skills and ideas. By the end of this season, you will have fifteen specific skills that will make you a stronger leader and manager in your organization.

Happy National Library Week!!! This is our chance to celebrate libraries, and all the wonderful things we do for our communities. In honor of this week, we discuss a topic both scary and exciting: Advocacy.

Joining us is returning Guest Host Jami Trenam, from Great River Library System and is the outgoing Chair of the Minnesota Library Association Legislative Committee. Email her at jamiet@grrl.lib.mn.us.

 

The Basics

If you are like many library professionals, you probably lean toward introversion rather than being an extroverted party animal; and the idea of needing to be an advocate sounds kind of scary. But advocacy is not just standing on a soapbox, screaming out your ideas. It means making connections with individuals and groups, and sharing ideas with people. It means knowing who is in your community, and reaching out to them to talk about the things you are doing: materials, services, and programs.

Not surprisingly, we are generally a pretty easy sell! People who do not use the library regularly, and even those who do, are often stunned by the range of things we have to offer. You may have seen some of those neat materials and services on our website and social media this week, and hopefully you saw some great ideas on library websites all over the place.

It will be so important for both you and your library to advocate for existence, for success; learning a few basic procedures for advocating will help you to keep things going.

Know your community and stakeholders

• Who funds your library? Who visits your library? Who governs your library? Those are your stakeholders, and there are probably others you can identify. Don’t assume you know all the demographics and groups in your entire community – actively seek out people and groups who may not even know they are important to you. Just as an example, one often overlooked group in every type of library is people with disabilities. How many blind people visit you and use your resources? People in wheelchairs? People with mental disabilities? All of these people exist in your community, we promise you. If they are not in your library, you need to go find them.

Make connections and form relationships

• Politicians are easy to find – they want to hear from you. Even if your library is not directly funded by federal or state legislators, there are many issues important to libraries that they need to know about. Net Neutrality is one that has been very important, but unless we reach out people may not connect free and fast internet with the needs of their local libraries.Talk to patrons. Find community groups. Ask around to find other people who need your services. Connect through social media. Meet these people – and then keep up the relationships. You don’t need to be best friends, but sending an occasional “hey, we are doing a program in Spanish Thursday night – bring your group” or “we just got in a new book I think you will like” are good.And for sure: say thank you!! Politicians, principals, and administrators get asked for a lot of things all day long – but the number of people who follow up to say thank you is pretty small. You will stand out for doing so.

Hone your message

• Think about the idea you want to convey. “Please give us more money” is good; “support net neutrality” is good; “We teach critical thinking skills” is a winner. Then start working on your word choices, so you are ready to say this in a clear and concise way. When someone asks you why their town is wasting money on a public library, when everything is on Google – have a response. When someone wants to know why understanding information literacy is important for high school students – have a response.Practice it before you are ready to talk to your community. Dogs are helpful listeners when you hone an elevator speech, and you might also try it on trusted humans. Have several concise, informative 30 second bursts of information on your advocacy topics, so you are ready to start a conversation and share information!

Repeat it all the time

• Advocacy does not mean you say something once and wham-o! it’s done!! You need to repeat your message over and over again. Say it when you talk to people. Share it on social media. Make a video of someone else saying it. Write a blog article. Draw pictures and put them all over town. If you say it once, people will miss it or will forget it. Keep repeating it, all over the place, and it will make a huge difference!

This was an overview of some basic ideas about advocacy for libraries. It’s an easy sell – but we have to do it! Decide on one thing you are going to do today to advocate for libraries, and make it happen!

Thanks to our Guest Host Jamie! And check back in with us next week to discuss our next topic: Teamwork.