Skip to main content

School library advocacy

Image
By
Some months ago, I had the privilege of facilitating a meeting of the Colorado Association of School Libraries (CASL). The topic was advocacy -- and it was urgent. I asked them this question: suppose you were running a great ship, with all kinds of important operating tasks. Suddenly, that ship is the Titanic, and it just hit an iceberg. Would you keep doing the same tasks?

School libraries in Colorado are in trouble. Despite wonderful research showing just how much they contribute to academic performance, school librarians are being laid off, replaced with volunteers or technology people, and generally being dismissed from a progressive educational strategy.

The good folks of CASL came up with a host of ideas for communicating differently, in a way that is more focused on the people who make these funding decisions. To that end, they've put together a website -
caslsurvive/ with a bunch of ideas, and immediately useful tools, to get the word out.

Definitely worth a look.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Uncle Bobby's Wedding

By
Recently, a library patron challenged (urged a reconsideration of the ownership or placement of) a book called "Uncle Bobby's Wedding." Honestly, I hadn't even heard of it until that complaint. But I did read the book, and responded to the patron, who challenged the item through email and requested that I respond online (not via snail-mail) about her concerns. I suspect the book will get a lot of challenges in 2008-2009. So I offer my response, purging the patron's name, for other librarians. Uncle Bobby's wedding June 27, 2008 Dear Ms. Patron: Thank you for working with my assistant to allow me to fit your concerns about “Uncle Bobby's Wedding,” by Sarah S. Brannen, into our “reconsideration” process. I have been assured that you have received and viewed our relevant policies: the Library Bill of Rights, the Freedom to Read, Free Access to Libraries for Minors, the Freedom to View, and our Reconsideration Policy. The intent of providing all tha...
456 comments
Read more

Installing Linux on a 2011 Macbook Pro

By
I had two MacBook Pros, both 13" models from late 2011. One had 4 gigs of RAM, and the other 8. Both of them were intolerably slow. In the first case, I wound up installing CleanMyMac , which did arcane things to various files, and put up alerts to warn me about disappearing memory. But it made the machine useable again, albeit not exactly speedy. I changed some habits: Safari as browser rather than Firefox or Chrome. I tried to keep tabs down to four or five. The second Mac had bigger problems. Its charger was shot, but even with that replaced, the battery tapped out at 75%. More importantly, the whole disk had been wiped, which meant that it wouldn't boot. Recently, I had downloaded a couple of Linux distributions ("distros") on USB drives. Elementary OS 5.1 (Hera) was reputed to be a lightweight, beautiful distro that shared some aesthetics with the Mac OS. So I thought I'd give it a try. Ahead of time, I tried to read up on how difficult it might be to...
6 comments
Read more

The First Year: 5 strategies for success

By
[The First Year: 5 Strategies for Success, 1 of 8] Over the past several years, I've had the pleasure of coaching several new public library directors. For a  variety of reasons, many directors are stepping into the role for the first time. Often, particularly in smaller or more rural libraries, they haven't even had a lot of supervisory experience. I tell new directors that the two big advantages of confidential access to someone who has walked in your shoes is that (a) you can ask the questions you might feel embarrassed to ask your board or staff, and (b) you have the advantage of someone else's mistakes. To be clear, everybody makes mistakes. It may be the most powerful learning tool we have. But I've thought about my mistakes, and I can help you identify the old ones, and with luck, make new ones. There's no good reason to make the same ones! I believe that there are five key constituencies the public library director must satisfy:  your boss  (usual...
1 comment
Read more