Student Learning Outcome Seven

The seventh Learning Outcome is one which pushes us to look at how advocacy, marketing, and communication principles interact with our leadership pursuits. There are many ways for librarians to accomplish these things, especially once they begin interacting with their communities directly. Based on the libraries size, their community needs, and currently available resources, many different routes can be taken to advocate for a library or advocate it's usefulness.

During my program, I had the opportunity to dip my toe into grant writing. This was not something I had ever had any experience with before, but it was something that I was aware of as a spectacularly useful tool for any kind of resource gathering. Through two different classes, I was able to see the power that grant writing can have in multiple areas, and with different kinds of libraries. By writing the same grant two different times, I was also able to see how the levels of complexity can change within just one grant.

Additionally, some academic libraries offer grant writing classes to their community members. At the University of Utah, for example, librarians in health sciences and medicine came together to form classes for their post-graduate and beyond students on the basics of grant writing ¹⁾.

In the fall of 2001, librarians at the J. Willard Marriott Library and Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library at the University of Utah had a series of instruction-related “sharing classes.” … The training and background of the librarian who would teach these courses were a central concern. There had been no formal education in this area for anyone at either library; however, there were numerous opportunities to learn to teach the basics of grant writing to varied audiences.

The grant I've chosen to highlight here is one that was completed in my LIS644 course, Digital Libraries, as a form of advocacy for a digital collection that has been largely ignored. I first learned about this collection while working at one of the university's which co-owns it ²⁾; my interest in it deepened when I learned how expansive the collection was, with only a small fraction of it having been digitized. My interest grew when I discovered what an historical treasure the collection was, and I decided to use it as the foundation for a grant which sought funds to digitize the remaining artifacts.

In addition to grant writing as a form of advocacy, I had multiple projects that allowed me to sit down with working librarians to learn more about their place in their libraries. This became a critical communication principle, as these interviews led to a much deeper understanding of not only “real world” library work, but also new and different ideas that could be applied from one library to another.

One such interview was conducted for my LIS630 course, Computer Technology and Information Management. I interviewed Margaret E. Hazel, Library Technology Administrator at Eugene Public Library in Eugene, Oregon. The interview consisted primarily of ways that she worked to keep the library safe in a digital sense, but also contained advice for how new librarians should adjust their mindsets and expectations about coming to work in her kind of profession. When asked about the kind of work that has to take place to keep the library functioning, Hazel divulged this ³⁾:

Strategic planning starts, quite honestly, with the systems and software that need regular updates, or replacement exploration, and how we can fit those into our own, the overall Library, related vendor, and the City IS Department schedules. Large projects start months and sometimes years in advance. My current big projects are replacing the automated materials handling system, which has been a 4 year, half-million dollar project, keeping the City IT folks working on a 4 year Public PC management overhaul, and starting to plan for our biannual ILS upgrade, to take place in October.

This interview solidified the kind of advocacy that has to happen to keep a library functioning on a base level – communication between the library and it's governing body (whether an academic institution or a county or city), as well as the work that has to be done to then keep that communication afloat; interest in the project robust; and funds coming in.

View the PowerPoint slides for my presentation here, or watch the below video on my interview with Margaret E. Hazel.