Category Archives: Advocacy

Advocacy, CMLE, Communication

Vote for our next Postcard Party date and location!

Last May we had a great time connecting with our members and advocating for libraries at our first Postcard Party in the Park! If you missed it, check out the recap here. The goal behind our Postcard Parties is to share the value of libraries with legislators and other library stakeholders who may not hear enough about the incredible work that takes place in libraries.

And since library advocacy is always going to be necessary, we are planning our next Postcard Party! We will provide the postcards, facts about the value of all types of libraries to their communities, addresses for state and federal legislators (feel free to bring your own addresses for your library’s stakeholders), and sample text of what to write on your postcard. We will even mail your postcards after the event so no need to worry about postage.

We are offering a few different location and date suggestions in our poll below. Our system is large and we know that our events aren’t always conveniently located for all our members. You can vote for your preferred location and date ranges below. Don’t be shy, make your voice heard! We want to connect with you and work on some library advocacy together 🙂

Advocacy, CMLE

CMLE Wants You! Let’s do some strategic planning!

Two-people-talking-logoLet’s talk!

We are approaching the end of our strategic plan, and we need some ideas on new directions to take for the next three years.

Our mission is to serve our members, and to share information resources for everyone. We have been expanding the kinds of information sources we provide – from the weekly newsletter, to the library training podcast, the books/reader’s advisory podcast, the online training programs, the member events, and more.

And now we need to hear from our members. What do you want? What is going to be valuable for you? What kind of library information would be helpful to you?

We know there are a few specific needs across the system:

  • better connections between libraries;
  • more skills, information, and training in advocacy for yourself and your library;
  • an easier way to build library skills of all sorts.

We will be sending out a system-wide survey to everyone, to find out what kinds of ideas and needs you have. For now, we want to build on the work our Board has started, and set up some focus groups to chat with people.

If you have not participated in a focus group before, it might sound intimidating. It’s not. The idea is just to gather a few people together to chat about libraries of the future, and some ideas on how we can continue to work together to make CMLE libraries well-supported and fantastic areas of service to their communities! (No pressure here – we aren’t going to solve all the issues of the library world in an hour session. We are just going to get some ideas and work on being more fabulous!)

If you can come join us for an hour or so, we will give you food and enjoy chatting with you! Let us know what day and time would work for you in December. We will work out some locations to reach out to people across our twelve counties. And if you know of anyone else who would like to express ideas for CMLE, forward this on to them. We are looking to have opinions from anyone who wants to share!

What day/time would generally work for you to chat about CMLE and libraries(required)

Advocacy

Library Election Results from EveryLibrary

Election MG 3455

Tuesday was a pretty good day for libraries in the elections! Regardless of any other political ideas you have, we all celebrate library funding – and it’s wonderful to see libraries being supported by their communities!

Here is the information from the EveryLibrary report. Read through it and rejoice in our successes!

“Yesterday was a great Election Day for the library communities thatEveryLibrary backed! Seven out of 9 of our libraries passed their measures. From Rochelle Park, NJ., where the town will now have a permanently funded municipal library, to Kitsap Regional Library in Washington where $3.5 million in new annual operating funding will take that county system to the next level, libraries were strong on the ballot. Here are the preliminary vote results from November 7, 2017 for each of our communities:

WIN – Moniteau County (MO) – a vote to establish a new library district and a vote to establish basic funding for unserved parts of the county, including the town of California, following a judge’s invalidation of the previous district in February. This is our second campaign in Moniteau County.

WIN – Hiawatha (IA) Public Library – a $1.7-million bond vote, as part of a $4.7-million funding plan for a new, larger library with $2 million in fundraising and a $1 million contribution from the city.

LOSS – Clearview Library District (CO) – a $25-million bond to build a new library and re-invest in the education, arts and culture, and business development work of the library.

WIN – Rochelle Park, N.J. – The town of Rochelle Park did not have a municipal library and has no access to interlibrary loan or other key library resources. A wonderful group of local residents is campaigning to set up a library with guaranteed funding of .3 mills, the “baseline funding” for libraries in the state.

LOSS – Greensburg-Hempfield Area Library (PA) – a 1-mill dedicated levy to put the library budget on stable footing and avoid severe cuts now and closure soon. 3 of the 5 needed municipalities failed to pass the measure.

WIN – Kitsap (WA) Regional Library System – an $0.08-cent levy increase ($3.45 million annually) for operations, collections, programs, services and staffing across this county-wide system.

WIN – Dallas (TX) Public Library – an $11.5 million dollar bond package to build two new libraries and make facilities improvements across the entire system. This is one line item (Item E) in a larger city bond package, but must pass on its own. The team at the Friends of the Dallas Public Library spearheaded this campaign.

WIN – St. Clairsville (OH) Public Library – a vote to establish a new district library and permanent levy funding. This was one of the few remaining libraries in Ohio that only runs on state aid.

WIN – Henrietta (NY) Public Library – a $10 million dollar bond as part of a $12.5 million dollar project to build a new library in the heart of the town.

With these campaigns, EveryLibrary has now helped bring 72 libraries to the ballot and helped secure over $255 million in stable tax funding for these libraries. Since our start in 2012, we have been singularly focused on ensuring that libraries have the resources they need through voter-approved measures. As the only national organization dedicated to building voter support for libraries, we need your help to do it again in 2018.

Next year, we expect to support 20+ libraries places as “red” and as “blue” as the UP of Michigan, in the front range of the Rockies, and in the Bay Area in California. Because of our donors, we provide all our assistance to library leaders and local Vote Yes committees pro bono and for free. If you believe like we do that “any library ballot measure anywhere should matter to every library everywhere,” please take the next step and set up a monthly donation today. Your monthly contribution will let us get to work with our 2018 libraries tomorrow.

Thanks so much for your support.

John Chrastka
Executive Director

P.S. I’m proud of all our libraries, but very happy that Rochelle Park won. There is something very satisfying about helping to set up a new library in 2017….”

 

Advocacy, Communication, General

Learning About Library Associations: Library and Information Technology Association

Library science is an enormous field, home to every interest you could imagine! This means that there are many organizations out there for you to join, in order to connect with other people who share your professional interests.

So even if you work alone in your library, there are other people out there doing work similar to yours! Each week we will highlight a different library association for you to learn more about, and depending on your work, potentially join! You can also check out our page dedicated to Library Associations.

This week we are learning about the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) which is a division of ALA. According to their Wikipedia page, “LITA became a division of ALA in 1966 in response to the changing technological environment in libraries. LITA advocates for equitable access to information and technology, placing a focus on providing an environment that fosters investigation and enables the implementation of new technology within libraries. LITA is headquartered in the Chicago ALA offices.” You can find out more about membership to LITA and ways to get involved here.

According to their website, LITA’s vision is: “As the center of expertise about information technology, the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) leads in exploring and enabling new technologies to empower libraries.  LITA members use the promise of technology to deliver dynamic library collections and services.”

LITA publishes an open access e-journal called Information Technology and Libraries which can be accessed here. They also offer several awards and a scholarship each year.

To learn more about LITA’s work with advocacy and the issues they promote, check out their page!

Advocacy, Public

September is Library Card Sign-up Month!

It’s Library Card Sign-Up Month! As library people, we probably know most of the wonderful benefits of having a library card, but not everyone is aware of all the great things that become available with a library card!

Library Card Sign Up Month began in 1988. For more about the event’s history, read a thoroughly-detailed accounting in the August 24, 2015 entry at the American Library Association Archives Blog, A Library Card for Every Child: Library Card Sign-Up Month, by Cara Bertram. Then follow this link to view the American Libraries Association Council Resolution that started Library Card Sign Up Month.

ALA has some great resources you can use this month, including this press kit that has resources like this downloadable pdf containing twenty quotable facts about libraries. And I Love Libraries.org has this great list of ways to celebrate Library Card Sign Up Month!

Finally, watch and share this short video from Overdrive that details all the benefits of having a library card: