PLA Blog

This Sunday afternoon program was intended as a follow-up for individuals who had participated in Webjunction’s Spanish Language Outreach workshops. Although I was not one of those lucky few, I decided to attend the session to learn more about it, and I am very glad I did, as the information provided could be useful to any librarian who hopes to work in a diverse community.

Yolanda Cuesta presented the first segment of the program on marketing to Spanish speakers. Yolanda’s advice was practical and very useful:

- Work with community leaders to start the needs assessment for the community; try to create a personal connection so that you will come to be trusted in the community. It is very important in this community to establish personal relationships and rely more on personal contact via phone or in person, since email or mass mailings may not be as relevant in this culture.
- Develop the “library as a brand that is culturally relevant”; a place that provides services that the community needs and wants-a place for getting help, for entertainment and fun, for learning, and for family activities- vs. the traditional promotion of the library as a provider of books and information resources.
- In the first marketing stage, translate the library card application and basic brochures into Spanish. Jump right into marketing, without over thinking it: send press releases to Spanish media outlets and start to participate in community events, where you can hand out information about the library and meet more of the leaders.
- In the second stage, start to realize the differences within the community itself, including age, country of origin, degrees of acculturation, and marital status. These factors all have a great impact on the services you provide and how they should be marketed. Also during this stage, start adapting traditional library services, such as story hours or computer classes, for the Spanish speaking community, and begin to experiment with marketing at local gathering spots such as grocery stores or pharmacies. Additionally, you should never undervalue the importance of word-of-mouth marketing.
- The third marketing stage follows a more holistic approach, where you look at the entire library and the Hispanic community in more depth, deciding which specific segments of the community you would like to target. It is hard to make this decision, since selecting one segment means you will not reach everyone, but these are necessary (hard) choices that will help the services grow well and target the marketing more specifically. During this stage, the library should also try to increase its presence in the community by organizing community events such as Dia de los niños.
- Once you have completed this process, you can start over, targeting a different portion of the community: look and learn who makes up the community, determine their needs and develop a program. It is important to keep the process going and not neglect it after the first try, as continuity is an important factor for establishing trust in the community. As the projects progress, continue to make inroads with community leaders to get a better understanding and form partnerships.

The session continued with a few stories from individuals who had participated in the workshop and the way they applied the training to their libraries. John Tull from Wallens Ridge State Prison in Virginia described the progress he has made at his prison library, including the translation of signs and procedural documents into Spanish and collaboration with the ESOL classes. Previous program participants then broke up into discussion groups to brainstorm about their different outreach projects.

To learn more about the workshops and find materials about the topic, visit Webjunction’s Spanish Outreach page: http://webjunction.org/do/Navigation?category=10555

PLA receives Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant to help public libraries build skills and experience needed to increase local support and funding
$7.7 million grant will fund national training program for library staff and supporters

(Washington, D.C.) – Susan Hildreth, president of the Public Library Association (PLA) announced during the 2007 American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded PLA a $7.7 million grant to develop and provide a national advocacy training program for public librarians over the next three years.

Research shows that the public is often unaware of the contributions libraries and librarians make to the health and vitality of their communities. As a result, libraries—which receive more than 80 percent of their funding from local sources—are often overlooked when scarce state, and local financing are allocated among critical services in a community. To help library staff and supporters counter this trend, PLA’s training program will provide librarians with the skills and resources necessary to seek increased funding, create community partnerships, and build alliances with local and regional decision makers. The training will support libraries that are eligible to receive Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Opportunity Online hardware grants, which require grantees to match foundation funds with local dollars. It will also be available to non-grantees on a limited basis.

“It is imperative that all librarians and library supporters learn to position their public library as an essential community resource in ways that resonate with local stakeholders and result in increased local funding,” said Jill Nishi, program manager of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s U.S. Libraries initiative. “This professional development program will give people the skills they need to channel their passion and commitment to libraries into strategic community outreach and communications.”

The training will be offered in sites around the country for Gates Foundation grantees, as well as online and during the PLA National Conference and the PLA Spring Symposium. Foundation grantees will be encouraged to send teams of up to three people to the locally customized training where they will learn about and create advocacy plans grounded in the reality of their local, political and economic environment. Each participant will also receive the PLA publication Libraries Prosper with Passion, Purpose and Persuasion: A PLA Toolkit for Success, which will provide them with step-by-step instructions for implementing their advocacy plan. Finally, the training will include access to an online community, which will provide original content, managed discussions and ongoing support for libraries engaged in local campaigns to build public support and funding.

“As outlined in PLA’s strategic plan, advocacy is a priority for our organization,” said Hildreth. “Thanks to the generous support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we will be able to reach thousands of librarians with the training they need to build the skills and confidence necessary to effectively advocate for increased public funding for their libraries.”

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Contact:
Louisa Worthington
PLA, Manager of Communication
312-280-5024

Allison Davis
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
206-709-3400

For more information about PLA, visit PLA’s Web site at www.pla.org or contact the PLA office at 800-545-2433, ext. 5PLA, or PLA is a division of the American Library Association. PLA’s core purpose is to strengthen public libraries and their contribution to the communities they serve. Its mission is to enhance the development and effectiveness of public library staff and public library services.
Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, it focuses on improving people’s health and giving them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the United States, it seeks to ensure that all people — especially those with the fewest resources — have access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and life. Based in Seattle, the foundation is led by CEO Patty Stonesifer and co-chair William H. Gates Sr., under the direction of Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett. More information is available at: www.gatesfoundation.org.

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Public libraries can be total rock stars when it comes to publicity. Take a moment to strut your stuff by entering the competition (details below) now that they’ve extended the deadline!

C’mon - you know your library does some amazing public relations work . Show it off to the rest of the country! Enter this year’s Best of Show Competition, put on by the Swap & Shop Committee (LAMA/PRMS). All libraries are invited to submit promotional materials produced in 2006. Judging in all categories will bebased on content, originality, design format and effectiveness. Entries must be received by April 20, 2007. A team of experts in librarianship, public relations and marketing will judge the library promotional materials. Winning entries will be on display during the Swap and Shop program scheduled for Sunday, June 24, 2006, from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., during the ALA Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. The awards will be presented to the winners on that day. Free samples of library public relations materials from dozens of libraries will be available for attendees to “swap and shop” during the program. For more information, contact Luke Vilelle at or 540.231.1108. Best of luck to you all!

Best of Show Entry Form

2007 FAQs

Troy Rumpf
Manager, Community & Media Relations
Laramie County Library System
2800 Central Avenue
Cheyenne, WY 82001
307.635.1032 ext. 123
www.LCLSonline.org

We invite you to share your fabulous promotional tips, campaigns, and even ideas you haven’t tried yet here on the blog by commenting on this post.

I’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

The title for this post comes from a sign I saw in one of the hotel elevators when I first arrived yesterday. I’ve heard Karen Hyman speak probably about 4 times by now, but it’s never too many times. Her well-attended presentation this morning on “The Customer-Centered Library: How to Stop Tweaking and Start Doing It with 12 NEW Steps,” has elements of her other presentations I’ve attended, but you know, she’s like a good movie, I just keep coming back. That, and customer service continues to be a topic you just can’t say enough about.

“People vote with their feet”
We live in a world where libraries compete with the likes of Google, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, at home wifi, movies on demand, Netflix, “Send to phone” options, and more, it’s about service. Karen’s Big Fear is that “Libraries (and what they can offer) will be increasingly irrelevant and invisible to the majority of people.” In my mind, the Web 2.0 world of membership to many networks including MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, Google and Yahoo! Groups, and more, emphasizes that people like to *belong* in places (the amazing competition for numbers of Friends aside). Karen points out that if libraries are to become The Third Place, which implies a place you go that isn’t home, isn’t work, but doesn’t make you feel like a loser to be there, we need to provide quality service that is centered on the customer.

I believe that the idea of foot voting can apply to the online branch of your library (the web site), as well. Creating a site that’s easy to use from home, that highlights online services like databases and other paid services and makes them easy to access, and use technologies that appeal to patrons but also serve specific purposes to the library and the site. It keeps libraries relevant, but also gives you a whole other point of service for people who don’t come to the library proper.

Don’t feel like a loser, feel like you belong
So what brings people to The Third Place? While Karen answered this question ten times over this morning, talking about using failure as a learning experience, ditching your rules (especially the ones that sound dumb to patrons), offering choices, and all sorts of things that are, generally, considered work that is worth it, the major bits I want to focus on are about customer centrism, and just plain caring.

Libraries and librarians need to accept that we *cannot* change customer behaviors. Anyone who has tried to teach someone how to use Google, or how to search the catalog the way a librarian searches a catalog should know. I look at it as a sort of “March of the Librarians” for patrons: observe how customers do things, examine their customs and habits, ask questions about what would work, talk it over, then apply it. Get out of your head, and get into the customer’s head. Everything from library displays to text messaging to Library Elf, it all fits in here. The “Have it your way” Burger King approach can go a long way to making customers feel right at home, improve the perception of the library, and increase foot traffic physically and virtually.

And what could remind someone more of a place where they want to be than caring? People who work in libraries *need* to care. It’s a service industry, and attitude directly affects anyone’s ability to provide quality service. The best thing libraries can do when they recruit new staff members, and the best thing library schools can do in recruiting students), is to find people who care about providing good service, who care about doing a good job, who aren’t bitter and disconnected, who seek an opportunity to help people, an who really care about the profession (and aren’t there to live the stereotype). Make sure that the people you hire and that people you have are doing what they care about, as opposed to what they couldn’t care less about, avoiding the “children’s librarian who hates children” syndrome.

Libraries need workers who care about libraries, care about their jobs, and care about the people they serve (you know, without going overboard, or being crazy stalkerish about it). Caring can be the ginseng/caffeine/gingko punch for your professional life, if you let it. If you’re already trapped there at your job, and you can’t get away, even if you are unhappy, why not make it festive by caring. If you care, they’ll care, and everyone is happy.

Go to Step 12: Make something happen
Even just with the two points of service and caring, libraries can really start to do something and make a difference, and doing the work, however much or little, will create results that are overwhelmingly worth it.

I had the distinct pleasure of hearing Mary Baykan, director of Maryland’s Washington County Free Library, executive director of the Western Maryland Public Libraries, and Library Journal’s Librarian of the Year for 2007, present the keynote session for the symposium, which Mary graciously gave us permission to record and podcast for your listening pleasure.

After an entertaining introduction by PLA president and California State Librarian Susan Hildreth, she spoke about how she found out she was librarian of the year, her experiences as the originator of the feat of advocacy now known as the Maryland Poll which measured the importance of libraries to Maryland residents, fun with legislative lobbying, about how librarians choose “to fight the bull” everyday, and so much more. She was entertaining, engaging, and very, very funny, definitely worth a listen!

While there are some interesting tidbits about upcoming PLA developments in the opening remarks, if you want to skip straight to the keynote, Mary is introduced around 10mins29secs.

The Urban Libraries Council report that Mary mentions towards the end of her remarks, Making Cities Stronger: Public Library Contributions to Local Economic Development, is available for free online (.pdf, requires Adobe Acrobat to view).

Many thanks to Susan Hildreth for the awesome PLA Blog plug at the very end, and for the recognition of the work of our peeps and volunteers as well as our contribution to what she calls “PLA 2.0.”

 

 PLA Blog: Mary Baykan, 2007 Spring Symposium keynote [48:09m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (236)

As you’ve seen from our recent buzz, the drafts of the new and improved PLA Results Service Responses are now available.  True to the first round of the process, we are opening up each new Service Response for discussion here on the blog.

The original set of service responses numbered 13, and last time around we were asked to post them all at the same time.  This proved to be a burden especially with our feed subscribers, so I’m going to avoid that this time around.

With a new set of 17 service responses total, we’ll be posting 5 today and 4 each subsequent day of this week, so that discussion can get started before the session at Midwinter in a few weeks.  While that’s still a lot of posts per day, I promise the posts will be significantly shorter!  Especially since we’ve already established a PLA Service Responses Index page to explain the project and document the progress.
The idea here is the same as before: read the new draft, and post your comments.  I’ll be posting links to the individual discussion posts on the PLA Service Responses Index page as the posts go up.  I’m sure you all have a great amount to contribute a second time around!

If you don’t know about the Dewey Donation System, take a look.

Started in 2003 by a blogger and writer Pamie, the idea is to get book donations for libraries that need help. In 2003, it was the Oakland County Library, and in 2004, DDS helped out a branch of the San Diego Public Library after a fire. Now, they are assisiting the Harrison County Library System in Mississippi.

They have recently passed the 500 donor mark, according to Pamie.

You can keep up to speed with the ongoings at DDS via their blog.

update: links should work now
Jessamyn already wrote about the “Small But Powerful Guide to Winning Support for Your Rural Library” (available here as a PDF). You can now also access the Small is Powerful Online Toolkit for Winning Support for Your Rural Library online. I haven’t had a chance to study it in depth, but it’s certainly something I’ll be turning to for my small rural library.

Saturday, June 24 was a sort of unofficial Day of Rural, Native, and Tribal Libraries at ALA. I attended a variety of programs on rural, native, and tribal libraries, including the official unveiling of the Guide and Toolkit, a Town Hall Meeting on issues facing rural, native, and tribal libraries, and a program on Intellectual Freedom in Rural Libraries presented by John Ellison of the University of Buffalo.

While much of his program contained advice about handling challenges that would be applicable anywhere, some of the tips were particularly relevant to rural librarians, who are isolated from their urban colleagues and often from each other. (I am lucky in that regard–although Wyoming is the least populous state in the nation, its libraries have worked very hard at creating a community. We all share the same ILS, and we meet frequently, both in person and online.)

Ellison stressed that the most important thing you can do to protect intellectual freedom is to educate people about it. He suggested incorporating intellectual freedom messages in every medium you use to communicate with the public:

• Displays
• e-mail signatures (”A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.” –Granville Hicks
• web page
• bookmarks, posters
• letterhead (”Unrestricted access to information since 1896″)
• bumper stickers (”I support the library and I vote”-make them available at the library for the community

He then presented a checklist of things to do in case of a challenge:

• Persons other than the librarian should be the voice defending the library
• Form an advisory community-library school friends, colleagues, attorneys, etc.-people who can provide support and tell you when you need to keep quiet
• Study the challengers-where do they come from? What are their beliefs?
• Determine the needs of the community (not just the users of the library) and meet those needs [something one hopes one is doing before the challenge]
• Inform the media if necessary (should not be first step)
• Defend the principles of intellectual freedom, not the item in question
• Use technology-connect with other libraries, different communities (Board, Friends, staff, etc.)
• Learn the hidden agenda of challengers (intelligent design, religious education, protect others from evil, right to life, whatever)
• Hold public forums if necessary
• Prepare for rhetoric battle (challengers will say items are destroying family values, motivating sexual violence, etc.)
• Expose all of challengers’ beliefs

If you’d like to hear the whole program, it will be presented by OPAL sometime later this summer.

This afternoon, as I was walking through the conference center with Kathleen Hughes, I saw out of the corner of my eye a flutter of yellow balloons. Outside near the shuttle buses, a the McGuire family, Bob, Meg, Miles (the 8-year old Marketing Mastermind for the stand), and Callan (a.k.a Cal, the 7-year old Idea Man behind the brilliant idea) had set up a lemonade stand with the express mission of raising money for their library, the Smith Library in Lakeview, part of the New Orleans Public Library system. I had the pleasure of interviewing them for the very first podcast here on the PLA Blog.

Have a listen (the MP3 clip is just over 9 minutes long)! You can check out more pictures of their awesome operation here.

By all reports, the family will be back tomorrow, stationed right near the shuttle buses here at the Morial Conference Center. Stop by, have some fabulous lemonade (made with real lemons!), and experience the wonder of an action plan that came to be literally *overnight*. Since they are interested in making this a nation-wide grass-roots effort, we’ll be posting contact information for them as soon as we get it.

This is our first experimental foray into podcasting here at the PLA Blog. Let us know what you think!

 

 PLA Blog podcast - Lemonade for Libraries [9:06m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (101)