Description: 

The California Library Association’s annual “Day in the District” effort now through April, connecting library advocates with legislators, remains a wonderful opportunity to learn how to work effectively with legislators throughout the year. It also is an opportunity to connect with other advocates at a critically important period in the State budgeting process so you increase your community of support in advocacy.

The free 90-minute 2025 version of our annual Ursula Meyer Library Advocacy Training Day in the District online workshop again features a panel of experienced library advocates; will include a brief overview of the newly-adopted 2025 CLA Legislative Priorities; and will provide suggestions for how you can connect with others who are pursuing those efforts. Topics include how to become involved in Day in the District; how to identify and contact your elected officials; practices followed by advocates who successfully establish long-term, productive relationships with elected officials; and resources available to us as we continue building those relationships.

Goal:

By participating in this session, you will learn, from peers, how you can foster positive, productive relationships with your elected officials and begin identifying how to effectively take part in Day in the District activities this year.

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

• Identify at least three ways of gaining your legislators’ attention
• Describe at least three practices followed by peers who work effectively with legislators to meet community needs through libraries
• Summarize at least two of the 2025 California Library Association Priorities and describe how you can become involved in supporting them
• Work from a brief plan of action you will develop to participate in Day in the District 2025 if you want to become involved in that effort

N.B.: The newly-adopted 2025 Legislative Priorities for the California Library Association are available for review at https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.cla-net.org/resource/resmgr/legislative/legislative_priorities/cla_2025legpriorities.pdf.

Those interested in the previous version of this workshop, offered in March 2024, can view the archived recording on the CLA YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBILDLl6yr4&list=PLdrlIGxgBLmXyjrj1cHsWCcSm5vlPiXa8&index=9

Presenters: 

Crystal Duran, Library Director at the Belvedere Tiburon, serves as a member of CLA’s Advocacy and Legislation Committee; she has also been a library board trustee with the Brawley Public Library and was County Librarian at the County of Imperial.

Amreet Sandhu, J.D., served as Outreach & Training Librarian for the Sacramento County Public Law Library and has worked for both the California State Library and the Sacramento Public Library. Amreet has served on both the California Council of County Law Libraries and California Library Association’s legislative committees, and is a current board member of Ursula Meyer Endowment Committee. 

Paul Signorelli, a San Francisco-based writer/trainer-facilitator/presenter/consultant, is project manager for the CLA Ursula Meyer Library Advocacy Training project and co-host of the San Jose State University iSchool podcast “Information Gone Wild”; his publications include “Change the World Using Social Media” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021).

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.