APSIG newsletter no. 63: March 2007

PIALA's second Library Advocacy Workshop

A very successful Library Advocacy Workshop was recently held at the Pacific Islands Association of Libraries and Archives (PIALA) 2006 Conference in Koror, Palau on November 14-15, 2006. Supported with grant funding from both IFLA and the American Library Association, 16 participants were invited to attend from throughout Micronesia, Kiribati and Papua New Guinea. The workshop was designed to train library association leaders in the Pacific Islands in library advocacy and policy development.

Sessions were presented by Keith Fiels, Executive Director of the American Library Association and Chair of the IFLA Management of Library Associations Section; and Michael Dowling, Director of the American Library Association International Relations Office, who both travelled to Koror, Palau from Chicago, Illinois. The workshop consisted of lectures and breakout sessions, peppered with personal library advocacy "success stories." Prior to the workshop, the participants were asked to define issues that could be addressed by advocacy action plans. Then, during the workshop these themes surfaced as issues ripe for advocacy action plans:

1. Increased government funding for library materials and technology.
2. Funding and resources for school libraries and librarians.
3. Need for national libraries and archives 4. Extension of services for un-served regions and islands and
4. Increase public awareness of value and benefit of libraries.

During the small group breakout sessions, participants were grouped together by their islands and asked to begin developing an advocacy action plan, directed to a specific group, for one of the issues. Many of the groups picked increasing public awareness of the value and benefit of libraries and began working on their advocacy action plan. Participants all committed to continue work within their islands on implementing their advocacy action plans.

This was the second Library Advocacy Workshop presented at PIALA. In 1997, Tuula Haavisto from the Finnish Library Association presented the first workshop at the PIALA Conference in Pohnpei. But, much has changed in the library and information world since then and thanks to the generosity of the IFLA Action for Development through Library Program (ALP), the IFLA Management of Library Associations Section and the American Library Association, this second workshop was held.

(Arlene Cohen)