Description: 

Storytelling is an essential skill used by members of the California library community to sustain libraries through successful advocacy work. It also is a key element in building the connections that support collaboration capable of supporting people in the communities served by libraries. Additionally, storytelling helps inspire high degrees of performance that strengthen communities at the local, regional, national, and global levels.

Current and prospective advocates will, through participation in this session, explore the structure of storytelling and how they can use it to make storytelling work for themselves and their communities.

Goal:

By participating in this session, you will further hone your ability to inspire positive action through advocacy on behalf of your library and the community you serve.

During the session, you will:

• Explore at least three key elements of storytelling to inspire positive action
• Participate in an exercise to workshop stories that can be incorporated into your work as an advocate for libraries and the communities they serve
• Identify at least one venue (onsite or online) where you can incorporate your story into a library-advocacy effort within the next four weeks

Please note: This is an expanded version of the 45-minute workshop offered at the CLA Conference in June 2023. Participants in this workshop are encouraged, but not required, to come to the session with a specific advocacy issue/project in mind so that they can work on a story to support that effort.

Session Facilitator:  

Paul Signorelli, CLA Library Advocacy Training Project Manager, incorporates engaging, effective storytelling into everything he does. As author of "Change the World Using Social Media," he captured the stories of advocates working in libraries and a variety of other settings. As co-author of "Workplace Learning and Leadership," he helped document the stories behind those engaged in successful training-teaching-learning programs throughout the United States. As a storyteller in residence in Arizona State University's ShapingEDU community that works to help reshape learning in the digital era, he wrote about community efforts to support universal broadband, conducted interviews showing how educators and learners responded to COVID-era challenges, and wrote about other ShapingEDU community activities. And as a trainer-teacher-learner, he continues to incorporate storytelling into every learning opportunity he develops and facilitates.

About the Ursula Meyer Advocacy Fund Training Series

This program is part of an ongoing series of monthly online sessions organized offered through the Ursula Meyer Advocacy Fund Training Series; sessions are generally held online on the second Wednesday of each month, beginning at 10 am PT. The series honors the memory of Ursula Meyer, 1977-78 CLA President, California Library Hall of Fame inductee, longtime director of the Stockton-San Joaquin Public Library, and fierce advocate for library services and intellectual freedom. The Ursula Meyer Fund was established to provide for the training of librarians in all stages of their careers, and library supporters, in political advocacy and political action, in honor of Ursula’s belief that librarians need effective political skills to advocate for library support at all levels of government. Archived recordings of previous sessions are available on the California Library Association YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@californialibraryassociati2705/videos.