Description: 

“Understanding the library ecosystem is to understand why different groups are doing what they are doing,” EveryLibrary Political Director Patrick Sweeney maintains. If we become better at understanding how companies’ business activities affect our ability to advocate on behalf of libraries and the communities they serve, and if we better define and understand the roles libraries, library boards and commissions, library foundations and nonprofits, and library schools play in creating positive results through advocacy, we are better prepared to produce those results.

Join us for this free, 90-minute highly-interactive online workshop (via Zoom) under the auspices of the California Library Association Ursula Meyer Library Advocacy Training project, to hear from and interact with Sweeney as he returns to this series of workshops with fresh insights for a new year in library advocacy in California and encourages us to pay attention to underexplored resources and approaches in advocacy.

Goal:

Participants will explore and further hone their understanding of how the various parties affecting libraries and their communities can work together to produce concrete, positive results that benefit members of those communities in the California library ecosystem.

Objectives

By the end of this session, you will be able to:

• Describe at least three ways that advocates can work with potential partners to produce positive results on behalf of California libraries and the communities they serve
• Describe at least three key roles played by partners in library advocacy as they collaborate to foster positive impacts on the communities they serve
• Cite at least three resources you can use to further hone your ability to advocate on behalf of libraries and the communities they serve.

Presenter:

Patrick “PC” Sweeney is a graduate of the San Jose School of Library and Information Sciences and former Administrative Librarian of the Sunnyvale (CA) Public Library. He was Executive Director of EveryLibrary California, a statewide initiative to support library propositions. He is co-author of “Winning Elections and Influencing Politicians for Library Funding” as well as “Before the Ballot; Building Support for Library Funding.” He has been recognized with a “40 Under 40” award by the American Association of Political Consultants for his work fighting for libraries at EveryLibrary. He is a lecturer at the San Jose Information School where he teaches courses on politics and libraries. He is active across social media as PC Sweeney.

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.

To support the series through a donation, please visit the CLA website at https://www.cla-net.org/donations/fund.asp?id=23440.