Speak out for Libraries!
In a librarian's day to day they have to perform collection management duties, user services (both in person and online), maintain professional development for oneself and possible employees, budgetary duties, and more! Another major duty that is not always the top priority is advocacy and outreach for the library's materials and programs. It does a library no benefit if they have a great collection, awesome services, and other hidden gems within reach if there is no one to enjoy or use them. Part of a librarian's job -- all librarians, from paraprofessional to professional -- is to advocate for the use of libraries and to benefit from the resources available.
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The need for regular advocacy extends outside of the need for more funding, it is also to remind people that libraries have significant value and without them, society as a whole would suffer. The biggest problem is that people do not understand how the library functions for society and what exactly librarians do all day. The misconception of a library's purpose means people doubt the true value of a library, they just see leisurely reading made available to the public. Without librarians to properly explain what exactly they do, what services they provide, what materials they offer to aid in the development of information literacy skills, many people make incorrect assumptions. It is the duty of librarians to be a force for good, spreading the word on how a library can improve a person's life and to expand their horizons. In a digital world full of information, it is easy for a person to get lost and overwhelmed which is where libraries come in -- a library is a life raft to pick people up and teach them how to navigate.
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American Library Association Advocacy
The American Library Association (ALA) has dedicated an entire division to Advocacy. They have multiple resources for training librarians how to effectively advocate for themselves and also how to do it on larger scales as well. They have several initiatives and public awareness programs established like Libraries Transform, Banned Books Week (the Office of Intellectual Freedom is the sponsor, but it is still a public awareness campaign about censorship and intellectual freedom), and other programs. ALA also sponsors an Advocacy University to make advocacy material and training for librarians available to everyone to become a better advocate. Library Transform is a national campaign to create more awareness for the value of libraries and how libraries transform people and their communities.
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A big part of ALA's role for libraries to help with the legislative and budgetary concerns at a national level, advocating for libraries and for continuing funding for libraries to continue operating. ALA is responsible for the national representation as not every librarian can march on Washington D.C., unless to make an extreme point. ALA does encourage librarians to make contact with their representatives and senators in order to have multiple librarian voices heard in addition to ALA's representation.
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Banned Books Week
In my Foundation of Library and Information Studies course (LIS 600), my major assignment centered around censorship and intellectual freedom. I picked it because as a public librarian, we would highlight banned books through bookmarks or displays and I always enjoyed when a person selected one to check out and asked me about censorship. As a student of history, political science, and LIS, I have studied censorship in many forms and personally, I believe it is one of the inherent evils that stifles a society's ability to grow. Part of my personal mission to educate my patrons and students in various ways about censorship and the harm it has caused.
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My favorite annual advocacy campaign is Banned Books Week where the ALA's Office of Intellectual Freedom produces promotional material for libraries to display and use as a way to inform the public about the ongoing war against censorship. Many people believe censorship has disappeared for good as it is no longer a national story with major headlines, but it does still occur. Books are continual challenged on a daily basis for a number of reasons, for their sexual content, homosexual references, cursing, excessive violence and many more reasons. the OIF spends its times fighting against challenges, defending libraries and librarians for placing what the community believes to be controversial material on their shelves or in their virtual collections. Banned Books Week is a national campaign to bring awareness back in the public's eyes, producing a list of challenged books from the previous year. Each campaign also highlights the ALA's Freedom to Read statement which states every man, woman, and child within the United States has the right to access all information, with the ability to read, watch, listen or review any piece of material within a library's collection.
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Library 101: Reference Librarian
An assignment I had to complete for my LIS 635 technology class was to produce a two to three minute video where we would explain what we really do. It is a type of advocacy of sorts as it gives a simple explanation of what librarians do, encouraging people to approach librarians either in person or virtually with their questions. I came up with the idea of Library 101 for the many different hats librarians wear in a day and produced only one segment with ideas for future positions for future library instruction either in public or academic libraries.
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