That old warble

I wonder if you've ever heard that saying, "Networking is more important than your resume/cover letter." As an extrovert it surprisingly takes special effort for me to approach others to becoming part of my network or for asking them for favors (i.e. letter of recommendation, etc). I was pretty despondent with the lack of results from applying to jobs online, and feared I would never get a job that way. Then we had a guest speaker in our "Libraries and the Social Process" class, and she helped enlighten me as to how librarians can be saved, with advocacy.

I was being a huge pessimist and asked her would the community even respond to advocacy pushing until their resources were taken away, the old "you never know what you've got until its gone" deal. By telling real live patrons how important the library is and how underfunded and desperate times are, they can lobby to their legislature who in turn can make the difference with the governing bodies. It's not enough for librarians to meekly work with what they have. We have to make some noise and get people to care.

Some of her comments:

• You need to demonstrate to the public that if your budgets are cut, you will close. One way to do this is to take your furlough week during the busiest time for the library.
• Librarians are professionals. We have skills.
• People like those who will fight for their security. When government officials hear from the public, that's what they do.
• Librarians shouldn't have to make due with less. They should fight to get more.
• There has been a huge emphasis on don't cut teachers or law enforcement. Not librarians.
  
• My world class library service is about to become third class library service.
• How many bake sales is it going to take? Not enough
• We don't need the school library media center anymore. Apparently there are those that think we can put everything on a kindle and rent them out (this is actually happening in some school libraries)
• Relationships are key. Journalists need to fill pages everyday. The best news is a national trend and a personal story.
• Legislators love to interact with cute little kids. Makes great pictures.
• There's no emphasis of library's active involvement in early childhood learning. We need to explain the link between these two.
• There's no three year old who is going to learn how to read from a Kindle.
• They need to understand that libraries are in jeopardy.