Advocacy

As ICE raids continue in Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN (MSP), the school day is anything but normal. Parents are standing guard and acting as escorts for immigrants and all nonwhite students at drop-off and pickup, recess has often been moved inside while ICE agents stand just outside campuses, schools are facilitating online learning to accommodate children whose families are too scared to let them leave the house, and students are staging walkouts in protest.

The 17 goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development were released in 2015, with the aim of addressing planetary ills such as poverty, violence, and human rights violations over the following 15 years. The simple but far-reaching items overlap, on a smaller scale, with library values—so much so that the American Library Association (ALA) created a Task Force on the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals in 2021. The task force’s mission is still going strong, and this year ALA sent a delegation to New York City during the UN’s High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development in mid-July.

I played basketball from the time I was about nine years old until a knee injury sidelined me in high school. The game features in some of my happiest memories from growing up—from my dad coaching our undefeated rec league team to summer open gym sessions to laughing with my teammates at pre-game dinners and post-game bus rides. I enjoyed playing basketball, but what I really loved was being part of a team. I was reminded of teamwork as I began to prepare for the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference this year.

Even facing fierce political winds, Oklahoma librarians and colleagues Molly Dettmann, Amanda Kordeliski, and Cherity Pennington have successfully defended school libraries, devoting their energies to educating communities and state leaders on libraries’ advantages and responsibilities.

A new documentary, Banned Together—available to stream April 10—shines a spotlight on three young freedom to read advocates, and how, together and individually, they are standing up to make a difference.

Alan Inouye has led advocacy and public policy for the American Library Association (ALA) since 2007, where he’s touched everything from E-Rate to copyright to ebook access, securing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for libraries. His retirement from ALA this month marks a crucial moment for the association, which has weathered significant challenges in recent years and cannot afford to lose ground with relationships in Washington, DC, and across the broader library landscape.

We cannot be caught flat-footed when library funding is called into question. Doing the work of capturing stories today will help ensure we’re prepared to deal with threats that we may face tomorrow.

As libraries face increasingly challenging funding landscapes, a key to securing public support lies in mobilizing a coalition of foundation donors, Friends members, and board volunteers. Successful advocacy campaigns happen when these key stakeholders unite behind the library’s mission, reinforcing its value and amplifying its message to decision-makers. To that end, library directors can use several types of advocacy to strengthen their budget campaigns, including community-driven advocacy, public-private partnerships, and the concept of advocacy through fundraising.

For the past four years, EveryLibrary has been working to fight the book-banning movement. A large part of that fight is developing effective messaging against book bans, as well as conducting extensive message testing, surveys, and focus groups to understand the impact of messaging and determine which messages perform best.