Librarians, competitive? - you bet! No sooner had I pressed the ’send’ button and my mail box was flooded with responses from colleagues across the country boasting of the vastness or smallness of their library.

Cheryl Dodson, Marketing and Planning Librarian at Liverpool City Library submitted our first entry in the ‘big’ category (and Cheryl is certainly living up to her job title). Liverpool Central Library is an impressive 5,600 sq metres; you can get some idea of the great spaces looking at these photos. As many of you will be aware Liverpool City Council suffered extensive fire damage to its administration building a few weeks ago but thankfully all is well at the Library.

The sculpture at the entrance to Liverpool Central Library

Space as far as the eye can see!

From Liverpool (population 176,903) lets move to Balingup (population 4741) an historic village in SW Western Australia, 3 hours drive from Perth. Kim Fee from Bunbury City and Regional Library describes it as ‘very cute’ and Balingup Librarian, Narelle Leatherbarrow has confirmed it is 8mx8m. Narelle hasn’t been able to send us a photo but having done a little bit of surfing the area is definitely on my agenda next time I’m in WA!

Alexander Mills, Customer Services Librarian at Muswellbrook writes ‘ I think Cassilis Branch of Upper Hunter Regional Library may be in the running for the smallest library, it’s the smallest I’ve ever visited’. At 3.83mx3.90m it’s certainly in the running! (are you now loving your space at Balingup Narelle!). Cassilis has a population of about 100 people and is located just off the Golden Highway on the Munmurra River, 43km north-west of Merriwa, 86km north-east of Mudgee and 358kn north-west of Sydney.  The main  streets have been declared an urban conservation area. 

Cassilis Library Floorplan

Shelving with circulation desk in the foreground

Whatever the size it’s the service that counts!  Thanks Cheryl, Kim, Narelle, Alex and George (my agent in WA). Keep your examples coming on in, I’m sure we can manage state awards as well (I’m in one of those ‘every kiddie gets a prize’ moods).

Off to calculate the size of my smallest branch at Manildra.

Cheers

Jan

Jan Richards, Chair, PLAC

Lynne and Chris prepare to cross!

As Children’s Book Week 2010 draws to a close I’m sure many of you are taking a deep breath and planning a weekend of feet up. It’s certainly a major date on the public library calendar. At my library it’s been the usual whirlwind of activity played out against the backdrop of winter ailments which somewhat depletes the staff and some of the participants (often feel CBW would be better in a more ’seasonable’ term).

Given the effort we’d put in we were a little dismayed to receive an email criticising us for having no mention of the Week on our web site. In actual fact we did and we were able to direct our correspondent to the right spot but as you can imagine it unleashed a fair degree of conversation as we toted up what we’d done, how we’d promoted it and the effectiveness of the celebration.

This in turn led to a discussion of times past and how indeed the focus of CBW in our community has changed from the public library to the school environment. Where once we might have seen class after class pass through our doors the restrictions on travel (and the associated expense) has seen the Week become an in-school celebration. Instead we’ve paid attention to pre-schoolers, their parents and carers.

Not that we see this as competition, more a rationalisation of roles and responsibilities. With competing agendas supporting each other is important. So we’ll get over our bridge (borrowed from a local garden centre) , and put aside our disapointment at having our efforts criticised.

Not that competition is dead! Pictured below is the Golden Gate Bridge replica in the window of a local bookshop. There’s a fair bit of friendly rivalry between us and they have been scathing of our easy way out. Time to plan our next campaign

Boomers take on the Golden Gate Bridge

I look forward to catching up with you in Brisbane in the shadow of that other Storey Bridge!

Jan

Jan Richards

Chair ALIA PLAC

We’re working on new advocacy materials for ALIA members post-Summit and of course we wanted to see what other organisations were doing on this front. Searching the web, we’ve found lots of really great advocacy ideas and resources, ranging from heavy-duty political lobbying, through to lively consumer campaigns.

Here are a few that caught our eye:

Illinois Library Association has a 16-page document devoted to library advocacy (similar in style to the new one we’re putting together). We especially liked the section about handling tough questions – www.ila.org.

The American Library Association (www.ala.org) has a whole section on issues and advocacy, including a toolkit for advocating in a tough economy, and a link to its own public-facing website – www.ilovelibraries.org.

For school libraries, we found www.crbsls.org/slsa/, the School Library Systems of New York State website, which features the Sunflower Avalanche campaign – fun logo with a serious message attached.

From the Canadian Library Association, there’s Library Advocacy Now! www.cla.ca/divisions/capl/advocacy/, a training program for public library staff and trustees.

And www.youtube.com is a source of inspirational stories and examples of library advocacy. Keeping Your Community Connected is two years old, but still worth a look, Wow-That’s a Library starts off slowly, but warms up about halfway through, and Advocacy Keeping Libraries Open Part II, linked with www.savequeenslibrary.org is a good one to bear in mind if the unthinkable happens and one of your libraries comes under threat of closure.

OCLC’s site www.oclc.org/reports/funding/default.htm has a solid document entitled From Awareness to Funding: A Study of Library Support in America, exploring attitudes and perceptions about library funding. The company used the research to get US$5 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to run a public awareness campaign, which is an admirable example of turning research into action.

The campaign is called Geek the Library www.geekthelibrary.org  and it’s a fantastic site, Web 2.0 at its best.

The new ALIA advocacy materials are a work in progress, but should be up on the website in a matter of weeks. Meanwhile, the Little Book of Public Libraries has gone to press and will be arriving in the ALIA office on 13 July, ready for the Public Libraries Summit. We’ve already had requests for 20,000 copies but it’s not too late to place an order – just go to the Summit home page on this site and download the order form.

Sue McKerracher
ALIA project officer