Each week we will share one tip – usually something simple and easy to do – that will help you build your advocacy skills. Why Alchemy? Because libraries are wonderful and not enough people know about the breadth and depth of library work. When we mix together all the different small things we are doing to advocate, the result in library support will be worth its weight in gold!

To be a good member of the library profession you need to be advocating for yourself, for your organization, and for your profession. It does not matter one single bit what job you have, what your training in libraries may be, or what kind of library you are in. If you are in a library, we want to help you advocate!

This week we are sharing this article from District Dispatch all about effective advocating for libraries before an election takes place. The author lives in Maryland and before their primary election, he reached out to candidates running for office to find out where they stood on issues related to libraries. This author specifically mentions public libraries, but you can edit the language to include the type of library you work in. (You can read the full article to see the email he sent to the candidates). He heard back from a good number of them and recorded their responses. Based on his results, he also came up with some ideas to improve this process in the future.

The author offers these words of advice:

“No matter how we as librarians approach candidates, keep two goals in mind: alerting them to the constituency for public libraries, and electing officials who will be sympathetic to our concerns. That way, when it’s time to approach them about funding and policy decisions, we’ll know where they stand, and we’ll be able to anticipate how they’ll respond.”

Check out the full article here.