This morning's keynote speech was presented by Ken Haycock of San Jose State University. His keynote was a well presented and thought provoking analysis of what libraries traditionally have done and what they need to do to get things accomplished in their communities. Ironically, much of the point that Haycock made in his speech completely discounted the efforts, traditionally done by the Illinois Library Association during National Library Week (coincidentally the week of Computers in Libraries this year), to have a legislative day where board members, library staff, and concerned patrons visit the state capitol and request increased library funding.
Haycock instead sought to better define the terms of influence and advocacy and made a cogent point that libraries need to have active involvement at the local level in order to get the kind of political change and recognition that they need. At the core of Haycock's speech was this statement, repeated several times: "Advocacy is a planned, deliberate sustained effort to develop understanding and support incrementally over time." Additionally Haycock quoted someone (whose name I unfortunately did not write down) saying, "Advocacy is like banking: you can't make a withdrawal until you've made a deposit." The combined point of this being that libraries need to do things for people in government and people in our communities and build up political capital in order to then spend it. It is not enough to say (true or not) that "libraries exist for the public good and so you should make sure they continue to thrive." Without a clear understanding of the value that libraries provide, and that understanding having been imparted through explicit demonstrations of that value, libraries will continue to struggle, particularly in the current economic and political climate.
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