Description:

What we can do when our advocacy efforts inspire controversy and harassment is something that Louisiana school librarian and English Language Arts teacher Amanda Jones knows from experience. Jones, as readers of her book That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America know, was thrust into a particularly brutal maelstrom of harassment after speaking out, in a public meeting, against book challenges directed toward her local public library. At first devastated by caustic misrepresentations of what she was saying and what she was doing in her own school’s library, Jones eventually found herself supported by a variety of individuals and organizations in her efforts to speak out against censorship and in her efforts to initiate legal actions against those she saw spreading lies about her and the work she was doing.

This free, highly interactive 90‑minute online workshop, under the auspices of the California Library Association Ursula Meyer Library Advocacy Training project, begins with a brief exploration of what Jones faced in her own community and then focuses on “what you can do in your own community” and how to thrive by not letting anyone “dull your sparkle.”

Goals and Objectives:

By participating in this session, you will learn how to protect yourself when facing controversy and harassment and how to build support through collaborations with individuals and organizations experienced in dealing with controversy and harassment.

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

• Identify at least three ways successful advocates respond to controversy and harassment
• Describe how you can effectively use social media, websites, and other platforms to respond to controversy and harassment
• Cite at least three resources you can use to further strengthen your own ability to respond effectively to controversy and harassment

Presenter:

Amanda Jones, author of That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America, is the frequently honored, well‑known school librarian and English Language Arts teacher whose efforts on behalf of libraries have earned her a variety of awards including the 2023 AASL Intellectual Freedom Award, the 2023 ALA Paul Howard Award for Courage, 2023 LLA Alex Allain Intellectual Freedom Award, 2021 School Library Journal Librarian of the Year, a 2021 Library Journal Mover & Shaker Award, and 2020 Louisiana School Librarian of the Year Award. She was among those included in the 2025 film The Librarians, a documentary directed and produced by Kim Snyder with Sarah Jessica Parker serving as executive producer and given its premiere showing at the 2025 Sundance Festival, where it was favorably reviewed. She has “the best job in the world,” she says, “and I have enjoyed making our school library the heart of the school.”

About the Ursula Meyer Advocacy Fund Training Series

This program is part of an ongoing series of monthly online sessions 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 June 2025 session is scheduled for the first Wednesday of the month to accommodate the presenter’s schedule. 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.