Advocacy @ Your Library
March 4th, 2007 by Kristin YiotisI’m a SLIS student at SJSU volunteering to report my experiences at Spring Symposium. I attended the Advocacy @ Your Library workshop on Friday morning and Mining the Gold workshop Friday afternoon and Saturday morning.
Advocacy @ Your Library introduced Advocacy Toolkit for Success, a collaboration between PLA and the Metropolitan Group . Earlier in the conference in the Opening Session, Mary Baykan, director of Maryland’s Washington County Free Library, executive director of the Western Maryland Public Libraries, and the Library Journal’s Librarian of the Year, told us how Maryland Libraries succeeded in getting the Maryland legislature to increase funding to $37, 000,000 in a state with a population of 5,000,000. As a point of comparison, Susan Hildreth, the California State Librarian, reminded us California State legislature spends $28,000,000 on a population of 38,000,000 (please correct my figures).
Friday morning Laura Lee Dellinger, a principal at Metropolitan Group, gave us an Advocacy 101 crash course titled Libraries Prosper with Passion, Purpose and Persuasion as an introduction to the workshop. Friday afternoon and Saturday morning participants broke up into groups to work on four real library advocacy situations: bond measures/levies, library districts, general funding, and matching grants. I was encouraged to browse other workshops, which I did.
I have trouble even saying advocacy (four syllables with stress on the first), so I really appreciated the overview. I’ve straightened out my notes and publishing them here. If I’ve made any conceptual errors please correct me in the comments!
There are differences between public relations, marketing, and advocacy. Public relations concerns to long term relationship building–the ongoing interactions with people beyond the library community. Marketing relates to a specific transaction; you market a specific program to a target population to bring about a specific transaction. An example would be marketing the summer reading program to school-aged children to encourage reading.
Advocacy involves advancing a cause or proposal through persuasive argument. The cause or purpose must have a clear focus—a problem defined in terms of the community served, such as what the library can’t do because it doesn’t have the resources. The cause must have a solution—such as if the bond measure passes then the library can better serve the community. The cause must include a call to action—therefore, please vote yes on the library bond measure, or vote yes on the library funding bill.
To successfully advocate for your cause, you will need to have your public relations already established–that is your relationships with groups and people beyond the library community must already be in place. Libraries usually advocate for is increased funding. But your cause must be defined in terms of the community your serve, not in terms of what the library needs or how much money the library needs.
The very first step is building the argument. This means defining the problem and developing a solution. Defining the problem involves inquiry—asking the questions that will uncover the right information. “What are we trying to change?” “How can we meet our mission to serve the community?” Determining community needs involves surveys, polls, studies, and statistics. Bottom line: define the problem in terms of community needs and expectations of services.
The second step is developing the solution: working out how the library can meet the needs and expectations of the community and how to build a persuasive argument that best presents this solution. Here is where passion, purpose, people, and persuasion come in. Passion is ethos or character, competence and goodwill. Purpose involved stating why libraries are essential and what is needed in the community what libraries can provide. “We’re listening to you and finding out what you need;” now how does our solution address community needs?”
The third step focuses on people and persuasion, people who can advance your cause and methods to persuade them. Focus on the people who can give you what you want—who can make the choice for which you are advocating. There will be primary audiences, the decision makers such as those controlling the money, and s and secondary audiences, those who influence them, such as stakeholders in the community. Don’t waste time on those who will never be convinced, nor those who are already convinced—focus on the moveable middle, those who can be persuaded to move in your direction.
Persuade them through your commonly shared values. Base your message on commonly held existing community values rather than attempting to establish a new set of values. Get your message right. Take the argument away from money itself to what you need it for—what is needed in the community that the library can provide, not what the library needs.
A persuasive argument involves a systematic chain of reasoning—building a chain of support for your position. You must prove your position. You must make a link between what the library has to offer and what people in your community care about if you expect the community to support the library. You convince your audience by providing meaningful information: not statistics but real life stories. Blend together proof by reason with emotion: “Marry the data with a human story.”
You must consider the messenger as a key part of the argument, so make the messenger the right person. Fit the messenger to the audience. Use as proof qualitative data–sttories, examples, definitions, description, quotes, analogies/comparisons, testimonies from experts, customer leaders– and quantitative evidence—surveys, polls, studies, statistics.
The last step is the call to action: what you want your audience to do that will serve your cause. Your call to action can involve supporting a proposal, becoming a partner, passing a budget, voting, giving. Calls to action involve getting your argument heard. Use channels such as direct outreach, grassroots outreach, and media outreach. Meet directly with individuals or small groups. Meet with larger groups through partner and allies. Use formal media outlets.
The last “P” is position or measurement and evaluation. Gather information as you go. Ask your audience how you are doing and ask yourselves how you did—what happened? Did you achieve your goals?
Lasting notions about Advocacy
Champions: every cause/program/effort needs its champion. What are champions? People with the power (at varying levels) to make things happen. There are primary champions and secondary champions: Primary: people in state, county, city, or community governments that directly make things happen. Secondary: stakeholders in the community that influence the primary champions. Champions can be people or groups: In context of libraries, champions are legislators willing to sponsor a library funding bill. In the context of literacy, libraries are the natural champions of literacy.
Kristin Yiotis
SLIS, SJSU
ALASC Chair 2006-07
Tags: advocacy, marketing, PLA, PLA Symposium 2007, problems, public libraries
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