Thing 16: advocacy

Another rant today I'm afraid.......!

Advocacy is a really important skill to have as a librarian for both personal (you can ‘sell’ yourself and show what a difference you have made to the library and the people you serve) and professional reasons (you can ‘sell’ what your library has achieved and (hopefully) ensure that no-one tries to close it down.)

As the image of librarians change, we are finding ourselves to be much better at doing this rather than being people who run away and hide in rooms of dusty books. However, it is still difficult sometimes to persuade people to put their heads above the parapet- especially if they’re worried that their jobs or professional reputations might suffer as a result. Some of the comments on this blog http://infoism.co.uk/blog/2012/06/what-would-it-take-to-make-you-a-library-activist/ are truly shocking (to me) in how people judge people who are willing to stand up for what they believe in. I think that people shouldn’t feel guilty about not having the time to take on campaigns, but if you can comment on a blog post surely you can also email your local MP to encourage them to support libraries?! You don’t need to be articulate, you don’t need to make yourself unemployable, you don’t need to know every detail about what you are supporting ("you mean you haven’t read the 1997 financial reports for a random library in Croydon? Shame on you!") and you don’t need to feel scared.

Here are some of my ideas of ways you could still advocate on behalf of libraries.

1)    Promote your profession in unexpected ways.

For National Libraries Day 2012, myself and a couple of friends did a pub crawl around library themed pubs and bars in London. We were wearing old school library badges and would ask people to pose for photos with my special library t-shirt (which features a large road sign with the large letters “use your f***ing library.”) While you may not want to wear such sartorially challenged clothing, it was heartening to see how many people came up to us to talk about the importance of books and libraries. By shouting about our love of libraries, we can show new & different people that the profession has moved on and their old fashioned image needs to change. World Book Night is another (and more professional!) example of this working.

2)    Get involved in campaigns that are not linked to your work. Library advocacy is not just about public libraries. There are sadly lots of issues affecting libraries all around the world and adding to the numbers supporting campaigns can have an impact while your name just provides a statistic.  Examples include:

·         Asking the Law Society to reconsider its decision to auction off parts of the Mendham Collection (a unique collection of Catholic and anti-Catholic literature including manuscripts and printed books ranging from the 15th to the 19th centuries”) despite an initial agreement with Canterbury Cathedral and the University of Kent that they could retain the collection until the end of 2013 https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/the-law-society-of-england-and-wales-stop-the-break-up-and-sale-of-the-mendham-collection

·         Signing against the closure of public libraries by councils (e.g. Golcar Library in Kirklees http://epetition.kirklees.public-i.tv/epetition_core/community/petition/1818  or Upper Norwood Library http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/save-upper-norwood-library ) and I’ve already mentioned in previous posts The Women’s Library http://www.thepetitionsite.com/925/128/986/save-the-womens-library-at-london-metropolitan-university/

3)    Support the work of linked charities such as The Literacy Trust http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/campaigns ,  the British Library http://support.bl.uk/Page/Ways-you-can-help  or The Reading Agency http://readingagency.org.uk/about/support-us/  (I’m ignoring their current volunteering project for libraries- I can do that. If I don’t agree with the stance of a campaign or project that I’ve previously supported then as an advocate I have the right to walk away.)

4)    The beauty of the Internet is that it can be relatively anonymous. The downside of this is trolls harassing people online but librarians can use this to their benefit.  No-one needs to know who is behind the twitter account @SaveXXlibrary and you don’t have to show your id to get a new email address. While I’m not advising you to break the law, it is remarkable how much can be achieved by promoting your cause. Authors and other library advocates are more than willing to retweet information about your library, hopefully alerting other members of your community to what is under threat.  If you’ve got a good service, once the ball is rolling then other people will be more than happy to take up the baton. Remember, when Voices for the Library started it was often anonymous librarians who were quoted on their behalf until the organisation and activists became better known.

So basically- be creative, support what you believe in and love libraries!

For today’s photo: how could anyone not want to celebrate a library with as good a name as this?!