Grassroots Advocacy Session Notes

Grassroots Subcommittee Meeting at Midwinter
Saturday, Jan 24, 2009 4pm

Attendees:
Eric Suess - COL
Joan Ress Reeves - RI
Kristin Murphy - ALA WO
Lynne Bradley - ALA WO
Curtis Rogers - SC
Stephanie Vance - Consultant
Vivian Wynn - Consultant


COL Protocol - appointees are for one year. COL has this as clear information on the appointment form. Two year terms seem to make more sense on the subcommittee. Can this be recommended to the COL? What are the other subcommittees of COL doing with appointments?

Why Should We Care? Kristin explained this as a potential PR document. Why libraries matter? Is there something like this already out there? What is currently available at ilovelibraries.org? how do we move from the toolkit to the personal level? Kristin will look to see what is already out there. Communications among all advocacy groups within ALA is being streamlined so there is more information being shared.

ALTA/FOLUSA advocacy groups were mentioned. We need to engage these groups for cooperation and assistance.

CapWiz was discussed. Maybe some more webinars could be offered on how to use CapWiz.

Suggestion: conduct annual online survey about individual contact with election officials, etc.

Definitions of Advocacy, Public Relations, and Marketing were discussed. It was suggested to use standard definitions. OLA has been working for a little over a year now. There was discussion about getting Marci to participate in the suggested webinar. OLA is the central location for library advocacy for the association. Kristin will investigate asking for PLA to participate in the webinar.

NLLD: Vote for Libraries was discussed to be used again. We can discuss more about this online. The hotels are already booked for 2010. Location is still being discussed. WHCLIST has disbanded and has given the remaining funds to ALA to fund non-librarians to attend NLLD. This information should be sent by libraries to boards and friends groups.

Workforce Investment Act - Kristin explained this as a one stop process and WO has has asked that libraries be included in this. Should there be a separate bill that libraries can be involved in?

Are there any awards we can provide to library champions? Staff award was discussed. There was discussion about the NLLD awards provided was from FOLUSA. How would this be provided this year?

Library Congressional Caucus - Kristin suggested this be created. Others agreed this is a good idea.

Mentorship program - Kristin suggested that this be implemented. Others agreed this is a good idea. There was some discussion about seeing what else is out there and that this be focused on the advocacy component.

The group will follow up with a conference call. Date and time TBA.