Check out some really great book advocacy here!!
Have you ever seen a motorcycle group promoting literacy and reading? A group of bikers in Michigan did just that, to promote this book:
Continue reading The Infamous Ratsos: Bikers & Lessons on Kindness
At CMLE Headquarters we are all about library advocacy!! So we are excited to pass on to you the chance to do some fun, and valuable, advocacy work for your library!
This is a challenge from the Association for Library Service to Children. You can be part of a cohort of library people who do some advocacy work, and have the support of your cohort in providing great service! Sound like an adventure to you? Click through to see the details: Continue reading Take the Everyday Advocacy Challenge!
At CMLE Headquarters, we want you to be informed about all the great things happening across the profession. And advocacy is ALWAYS an important topic!!
If there is sufficient interest in this, CMLE HQ can help to make arrangements for members to travel to Washington DC, so we can directly tell our federal politicians how valuable we are to our communities. Funding is going to be tight, and priorities for resources are shifting – and libraries are not at the top of the list for support.
This is not just for “other” library people, or just people with a degree, or just ALA members, or just ANYTHING!
YOU are in a library, YOU know about the service you provide, the materials your patrons would not have without you, the help you give every single day. YOU are exactly the right person to do some advocacy for your library, for your community, and for your profession. GO TELL SOMEONE!!
(There we go – that’s library advocacy! You nailed it!!) Continue reading Start planning now: Library Legislative Day is coming soon!
Videos can be a great way to demonstrate your services, and to advocate for your library! Check out these library videos, to see what kinds of things other libraries are trying.
Does your library make videos? Would you like to?? At CMLE Headquarters, we want to encourage video creation and sharing, so tell us about your work!
“Do you need a book recommendation? Have you ever seen a librarian stunt double? Check out our 2016 Livonia Library Summer Reading video featuring Phoenix Freerunning Academy and our very limber librarians. Jump into action on June 4, 2016 by grabbing a reading log at any of the Livonia Public Libraries! Visit our website for more info: http://livoniapubliclibrary.org. And for the Children’s summer reading log, visit our Children’s Programs page: http://livoniapubliclibrary.org/kids/…. Library Parkour!”
“The city of Troy, Michigan was facing a budget shortfall, and was considering closing the Troy Public Library for lack of funds. Even though the necessary revenues could be raised through a miniscule tax increase, powerful anti-tax groups in the area were organized against it. A vote was scheduled amongst the city’s residents, to shut the library or accept the tax increase, and Leo Burnett Detroit decided to support the library by creating a reverse psychology campaign. Yard signs began appearing that read: “Vote to Close Troy Library on August 2nd – Book Burning Party on August 5th.” No one wants to be a part of a town that burns books, and the outraged citizens of Troy pushed back against the “idiotic book burners” and ultimately supported the tax increase, thus ensuring the library’s survival.”
“This short film provides pointers for creating a school board/district wide vision statement for school libraries and emphasizes the importance of advocating for school libraries.”
“Students and faculty from the University of Washington’s Information School get their groove on.”
This is the most unusual annual report from a library that I’ve ever seen – but combining telling their community about the things they have been doing over the past year with a strong message advocating for the library is a great touch! (Keep watching to the end for the final couple of sentences!)
In this series we have spent a lot of time focused on libraries and how we can advocate for our libraries and our profession. Of course this is important, and if you have not told someone today about a great thing your library does – get on that!
We also need to talk about advocating for ourselves! As library people, we need to advocate for our specific jobs, and we need to advocate for ourselves to move into other jobs, to be taken seriously, and to do the good things we want to do in the library. (You can also advocate for yourself outside of the library; but here we will focus on self-advocacy in the workplace.)
Where do we start? Think about your job now. Do you like it? This is a serious question. Too many people are stuck in jobs they don’t like, or jobs that don’t speak to their skills and professional interests. Sometimes there is nothing to do about that, and then you either decide to just grit your teeth and do it (develop some good outside hobbies!), or you start looking around for another job.
Let’s assume that we are somewhere different, that we are in a job that may not really connect with the things we know we can do professionally, or that we can not see with a strong potential for growth and promotion. It’s not bad enough to leave it, but things could be better.
This is where self-advocacy can really come in handy! Continue reading Self-Advocacy (Advocacy Series #4)