Tag Archives: advocacy

The 10-Minute International Librarian #61: Think of the last time you attracted a non-user

 As part of libraries’ mission to serve every member of their communities, a key question is how to bring in new users.

Among those who do not currently regularly visit library buildings or websites, there may be some – or many even – who are missing out on opportunities that could help them.

To address this, we need to be able to identify what is holding them back from using libraries, and how to overcome any barriers that might exist.

What works in helping them to understand how coming to the library – or its website – can benefit them? What assumptions or concerns need to be tackled?

This is also helpful in advocacy, when you may well also be trying to convince people who do not use our institutions – or have not done so for many years – of why they are so important.

So for our 61st 10-Minute International Librarian exercise, think of the last time you attracted a non-user.

How did they find out about the library?

What had prevented them from using the library before, and what made them change their mind?

Think about what lessons you can draw for wider efforts to engage non-users, including among decision-makers.

Share your stories in the comments box below.

Good luck!

 

This idea relates to the IFLA Strategy! Key Initiative 3.3: Empower the field at the national and regional levels.

As we publish more ideas, you will be able to view these using the #10MinuteInternationalLibrarian tag on this blog, and of course on IFLA’s Ideas Store! Do also share your ideas in the comments box below.

The 10-Minute International Librarian #59: Think how you can amplify your voice

If decision-makers are to make choices that favour libraries, it’s important that they know about you.

It is a cliché, but often it will be those who shout the loudest who gain the most attention!

Of course, you need to be smart about your work to advocate for libraries.

You should ensure that your arguments are based on fact, and avoid exaggeration.

But our institutions have a strong case to make, and one that’s worth being heard!

We’ve already had a few exercises about the possibility of working with partners who can speak up for you (exercises #5, #18, #24).

But you, based on your understanding of where you live and work, will have an idea of what works best.

So for our 59th 10-Minute International Librarian exercise, think how you can amplify your voice.

How do other people involved in advocacy manage to do it? What is the most successful advocacy effort you are aware of?

What options do you have to reach out, effectively, both to decision-makers and to the people that influence them?

Let us know the most original way you have used for ensuring that the voice of libraries is heard!

Good luck!

 

This idea relates to the IFLA Strategy! Key Initiative 1.3: Work with library associations and libraries to identify key legal and funding challenges to their work, and advocate for action.

As we publish more ideas, you will be able to view these using the #10MinuteInternationalLibrarian tag on this blog, and of course on IFLA’s Ideas Store! Do also share your ideas in the comments box below.

Dreamers and Schemers: a simple recipe for library advocacy

Studies of human behaviour are often characterised by a distinction between idealism and realism, between emotion and logic, or between the heart and the head.

Some decisions and actions we see as being driven by instinct, optimism or by a broader sense of values, while others seem to come down to cold, hard rationality.

A Nobel Prize for Economics went to Daniel Kahneman for his work on the difference between choices made rapidly, based on feelings, and those made after deep consideration.

International relations also traditionally differentiates between realists (who argue that countries follow their own interests and use their power freely) and idealism (who argue that states promote their domestic values in their international activities).

How does this relate to library advocacy?

Previous blogs, notably in partnership with OCLC’s WebJunction, have explored the idea of how a range of individual strengths (described as personality types) can come together in order to make for effective advocacy.

At a simpler level, however, we can see library advocacy as requiring a combination of idealism and realism in order to achieve its goals. In other words – as set out in the title of this blog – we need both dreamers and schemers in order to succeed.

Why we need dreamers?

Idealism remains a powerful motivator of action. Fortunately, libraries tend to have this in abundance!

Our institutions are strongly based on values – the importance of equitable access to information, of service to all, of safeguarding heritage for the future, all without the motivation of profit or private gain.

Where these values – and the budgets needed to deliver on them – have been challenged, libraries have become stronger and stronger in defending them.

We have produced communications materials, brought together stories and examples of how libraries contribute to development and other community goals, and build networks of friends and supporters.

Work based on idealism helps to create a positive feeling around libraries, raising interest among decision-makers and voters alike. Even in less democratic systems, those in power often rely on the support of the people for legitimacy, and so will care about what they feel.

Done effectively, it also helps make the step from sympathy to active support among – something that is crucial if libraries are to benefit from the funding and laws they need.

Why we need schemers?

However, idealism does not always solve everything. The fact of acting in the public interest, or delivering on well acknowledged values, is not necessarily enough to bring about adequate funding or favourable reforms to libraries. Understandably, this can be disheartening.

However, we can respond by complementing idealism with a dose of realpolitik. We need to be both dreamers and schemers.

Sometimes, it’s a question of knowing where, when, how, and to whom to make your points most effectively.

For example, a campaign in favour of libraries in the months before a key decision is taken is clearly more useful than one just after.

The answer is to build up your understanding of how decisions are taken, and ideally your relationships with key people involved in the process. If you look, you may well find someone who feels warmly about libraries, and so who can help you. In turn, their advice and insights can help you increase the impact of your work.

There is also the reality that decisions to support additional funding, or favourable laws for libraries, are not always simple. There can be opposition, for example from those resistant to spending in general, other potential beneficiaries of money, or those who feel that better laws for libraries will disadvantage them.

This opposition can be based on values, or simply on concern about profit margins. It is important to think about the arguments that can be made against stronger support for libraires, and how you can counter these.

Of course, in doing so, it is usually best to avoid looking like you do not care about the views of others. Decision-makers often want to avoid ‘picking sides’ in order not to lose support. However, you can usually make progress by showing that supporting libraries brings benefits for all.

 

As highlighted earlier in this blog, libraries are often already strong when it comes to being ‘dreamers’. We know that our work is based on values, service, and the wider public interest, and are becoming better and better at articulating this.

A key area of development is therefore around how also to become ‘schemers’ – how to understand the processes that lead to decisions being taken about libraries, and how to influence them most effectively.

This is far from the world of pure private lobbying, centred on how to maximise profits for a particular sector (or its shareholders). Throughout libraries’ engagement in decision-making, our values can and should shine through – this is what sets us apart.

 

In short, we need both to be dreamers and schemers in order to make the best and most effective case for libraries into the future.

The 10-Minute International Librarian #47: (Re)read the Sustainable Development Goals

It’s clear – sometimes high-level policy documents can seem a long way away from day-to-day work.

They deal in big ideas and big concepts, and can feel too much to do much about on your own.

At the same time, they can also offer an opportunity to think into the long term, as well as understand the ideas – and words – that preoccupy those in power.

As such, they can be a motivator for action, as well as a tool for advocacy.

There are few better examples than the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – 17 high level objectives, running over 15 years.

While the overall 2030 Agenda, set out in a UN Resolution from 2015, comes to over 30 pages, the goals themselves are easy to read and understand.

So for our 47th 10-Minute international Librarian exercise, (re)read the Sustainable Development Goals.

You may well already have gone through them once or twice, but it can be surprisingly useful to refresh your memory.

Sometimes you will spot possibilities or connections you did not see before. Sometimes it’s just useful to have the reminder of the global goals that all governments have committed to work to achieve.

By looking through all of them, you can also think about how wide the contribution of great libraries to societies, economies and culture can be.

Share your experiences of using the SDGs in your thinking and planning in the comments below.

Good luck!

 

This idea relates to the IFLA Strategy! 1.1 Show the power of libraries in delivering the Sustainable Development Goals.

As we publish more ideas, you will be able to view these using the #10MinuteInternationalLibrarian tag on this blog, and of course on IFLA’s Ideas Store! Do also share your ideas in the comments box below.

Highlighting the Role of Libraries in Protection and Promotion of Diverse Cultural Expressions

2021 is the International Year of Creative Economy for Sustainable Development, and IFLA has been helping libraries identify where they fit in – and how they can advocate for their role.

The UNESCO 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions is an international framework in which Member States commit to promoting conditions that will allow creativity and the creative economy to thrive. You can learn more about this Convention with IFLA’s Get Into the 2005 Convention Guide.

We have examined some of the broader ways in which libraries open the door to cultural participation in a recent article. Key values upheld by libraries which allow cultural participation and protection include providing access to information, education, and lifelong learning opportunities, promoting digital, media and information literacy skills, and carrying out cultural heritage preservation.

Through our advocacy, which highlights how libraries connect their communities to all forms of cultural creation and participation, we can help build awareness of the important role of libraries in society. To do this effectively, there are four useful steps you can take:

  1. Set an advocacy goal
  2. Identify your audience
  3. Clarify your advocacy message and ask
  4. Provide examples that support your advocacy message

This article will walk you through these steps and suggest actions that you can take to advocate for the role of libraries role in cultural participation. You will be strongest working with your association if this exists, but of course contributions from individual libraries will add to this.

Step 1: Defining your Goal: Including Libraries in National Reporting

From the beginning, it is important to have an objective for your advocacy in mind. In this case, you will want to ensure that libraries and examples of relevant library programmes are included in your country’s next Period Report to the 2005 Convention on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.

This document is a result of the fact that State Parties to the 2005 Convention are required to submit a report every four years. These reports detail the policies and measures they have put in place, as well as any challenges they have encountered.

These reports are an important way for civil society and other stakeholders to engage with government officials and demonstrate progress being made towards implementing the Convention. Find out more.

Periodic Reports in 2021 and 2022

The following countries will be preparing Period Reports in the next two years. Note that the 2021 deadline for State Parties to submit their report to UNESCO is 30 June.

2021: Afghanistan, Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, Comoros, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Guyana, Iraq, Morocco, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Qatar, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Serbia, Turkey, Venezuela

2022: Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Czechia (Czech Republic), Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Lesotho, Malawi, Republic of Korea, Trinidad and Tobago, Ukraine

Step 2: Identify your Target Audience: National Points of Contact

A next step in effective advocacy is to identity your audience – in particular who will take the critical decisions, and who might influence them.

In order to achieve the goal of including libraries in your country’s next periodic report, your main audience would be your country’s National Point of Contact for the 2005 Convention.

National Points of Contact

State Parties to the 2005 Convention have each designated a point of contact responsible for information-sharing with relevant Ministries and public agencies. These contact points gather information from both governmental and non-governmental sources and assist in the drafting of the quadrennial periodic reports.

Find your National Contact Point here.

You may also want to understand who can help you in convincing the national point of contact. These may be decision- and policymakers at the local or national level, institutions, civil society organisations, inter-governmental organisations, or other stakeholders. For example, are there specific libraries which could help, cultural associations which make strong use of libraries, or key journalists or thinkers?

 

Step 3: Clarify your Message and Ask: the Recognition of Libraries

With a clear goal and understanding of your target, you can then work out how to clearly state why your audience should consider libraries as important to their work (that is your message). This will be at the heart of your advocacy, in meetings, preparing blogs or articles, on social media and beyond.

You should also define clearly what you would like them to do, in order to make things simple for the decision-maker(s) (that is your ask).

You will want to define and draft these in a way (and a language) that is appropriate for your setting, but you can use the below as a starting point.

Message:

Libraries and their staff have a key role in preserving and providing the widest possible access to culture. They can foster an environment where diverse cultural expressions are encouraged, valued, shared, and protected – an environment in which a strong creative economy can thrive. Core values that the Convention upholds are also values that libraries champion and enable. These include freedom of information and expression, participatory democratic societies, linguistic diversity, the fundamental role of education, and recognition of the importance of the digital environment in education, creating and providing access to culture.

Ask:

That in preparation of the upcoming Periodic Report, the National Point of Contact considers including examples from your country’s libraries which demonstrate how libraries have had a role in implementing the 2005 Convention and addressing challenges.

 

Step 4: Provide Examples of Libraries Contributing to the Convention’s Goals

Backing up your message with a selection of examples from your experience and that of other libraries adds power to your advocacy.

In this case, it would be a good idea to align your library’s examples with the goals of the 2005 Convention. Finding examples that align with the four goals set out in the Convention can help make a strong case to your National Contact Point for their inclusion in the Report.  The reporting period is four years, so examples can come from within that time frame.

Goal 1: Support sustainable systems of governance for culture

This might include examples of programmes, initiatives, or services that:

  • Promote information and awareness-raising activities for the culture and creative sector
  • Build capacity and/or provide training for artists and cultural professionals
  • Give support to medium, small, or micro-enterprise creative industries, such as promoting local authors and publishers, making space for art marketplaces or hosting writers or artists in residence
  • Contribute to participatory decision-making regarding cultural policy, such as making spaces for dialogue with government authorities (i.e. meetings, working groups).
  • Support digital literacy and promotion of creativity and cultural content in the digital environmental (skills and competences, creative spaces, innovation, research and development, etc.)

Goal 2: Achieve a balanced flow of cultural goods and services and increase the mobility of artists and cultural professionals

This might include examples of programmes, initiatives, or services that:

  • Connect potential beneficiaries of mobility funds to related information resources or training services
  • Participate in writing and other arts residencies or cultural events like festivals that host travelling artists or cultural professionals – notably from developing countries
  • Celebrate potentially little-known works by a diverse range of writers and other creators

 

Goal 3: Integrate culture in sustainable development frameworks

This might include examples of programmes, initiatives, or services that:

  • Promote the inclusion of culture in sustainable development plans and strategies
  • Support or facilitate cultural programmes at the regional, urban and/or rural levels, especially community-based initiatives
  • Help to ensure the right to participation in cultural life and access to culture, especially addressing the needs of disadvantaged or vulnerable groups.

 

Goal 4: Promote human rights and fundamental freedoms

This might include examples of programmes, initiatives, or services that:

  • Raise awareness of the right to participate freely in cultural life
  • Support women’s full participation in cultural life
  • Collect and manage data related to gender equality in the cultural and creative sectors
  • Advocate for writers and other artists and take a stand against limits to artistic freedom of expression

Next Steps

When you are prepared with your advocacy message, ask, and examples – it is time to reach out to the contact person you have identified. You could use the below message as a template:

Dear Sir or Madam:

I am contacting you from [LIBRARY ASSOCIATION/LIBRARY], located in [CITY]. I have noted that our country is a State Party to the 2005 Convention for the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, and that you are due to submit a periodic report in [YEAR].

In order to best demonstrate the work within [COUNTRY] to protect and promote diverse cultural expressions, it would be beneficial to include the work that libraries have done in this area over the past four years.

Libraries and their staff have a key role in preserving and providing the widest possible access to culture. They can foster an environment where diverse cultural expressions are encouraged, valued, shared, and protected – an environment in which a strong creative economy can thrive. Core values that the Convention upholds are also values that libraries champion and enable. These include freedom of information and expression, participatory democratic societies, linguistic diversity, the fundamental role of education, and recognition of the importance of the digital environment in education, creating and providing access to culture.

Some examples from our country that impact on the goals of the 2005 Convention include:

[Goal number: List examples, be brief but specific. Provide links to more information if possible]

On behalf of [LIBRARY ASSOCIATION/LIBRARY], I hope that you will consider including these examples, as they contribute to the implementation of the 2005 Convention and showcase the dedication of the nation’s libraries to this work. I remain available to answer questions or provide additional information.

We can help!

Do not hesitate to reach out to IFLA for support in your advocacy. If you have examples in mind but would like further input or require addition support in crafting your advocacy approach – be in touch. We are happy to help.

Start by emailing: [email protected]

The costs of non-access (part 2): why it matters when uses of works are prevented or complicated

In a post last week, we looked at the importance of being able to explain why non-investment in libraries matters.

As highlighted, in difficult budgetary times, governments are faced with the challenge of how to make cuts while causing least pain.

Being able to explain the harm that reducing or freezing library spending can create is therefore an important part of advocacy.

But as set out in another blog, decisions about funding are often just one side of the same coin as decisions about what libraries can do with their funding, notably as regards copyright.

A generous budget with highly restrictive rules on how resources are used can lead to a library having the same impact as one with a much smaller budget, but one where there are much broader possibilities to use works.

So just as we need to be able to talk about the cost of not investing financially in libraries, we should also learn to set out the harm done when library users are not able to use works.

There is a particular need for such arguments when it comes to copyright, given that the argument will often be made that the sorts of exceptions and limitations that allow library users and libraries to carry out such activities come at the cost of sales, or at least licensing revenues.

Such arguments are even used in the case of books that are no longer on sale at all, on the premiss that they may at some time in the future come back into commerce.

Of course, the evidence of such library activities actually causing harm is limited. The European Commission’s impact assessment on the draft Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market made clear that allowing libraries to preserve works, or library users to carry out text and data mining would not cause any significant damage.

This does not mean that there is no cost to rightholders from such acts. It isn’t possible to prevent a reader from borrowing a book or copying a couple of pages just because she or he could also buy it – this would be to turn against the universalist mission of libraries.

Similarly, there will often be a collective management organisation ready to invent a licensing offer for a new type of use, and so claim that copyright exceptions cost revenue.

To convince decision-makers to legislate in favour of copyright exceptions and limitations, we therefore need to be show that the cost of denying or complicating access is higher. So what arguments can be used?

Lending: when libraries are not able to lend books, this effectively condemns those who are not able to buy them to exclusion from access to culture. It can also choke off a means for new authors to be discovered by readers. Preventing digital lending will tend to exclude readers who are not able to get to a library, for reasons of disability, health, distance, or – obviously enough – COVID-19 restrictions.

Research (TDM): allowing uses of works for text and data mining improves the quality of the results of mining activities, thereby advancing science. Preventing such uses will have the inverse effect. In particular in the case of machine learning, there is growing awareness that limiting the range of works that can be used for learning can lead to biases and problems.

Education: teachers and learners benefit from being able to use the best suited materials for the context and situation, in order to achieve the best results. When teachers are obliged to take time to find works they can use – or rely on a limited offer – then they are less able to do their jobs. Similarly, a lack of adequate exceptions can restrict the production of open educational resources.

Preservation: this is a core function of libraries, ensuring that the works of yesterday and today are available into the future, recognised in international law. Where it is made more difficult, fewer works can be preserved. Ironically, the imposition of restrictions on preservation copying, motivated by a desire to sustain revenues, can risk reducing the chances of the work itself surviving into the future.

Document Supply: while a traditional activity of libraries using physical works, not all copyright laws allow for digital document supply. This has an obvious impact on those whose research is facilitated by being able to access often unique books held far away. Without this, the scope of research is unnecessarily limited to the works that are available on site, defeating the object of research in the first place.

Access for People with Print Disabilities: the challenge tackled by the Marrakesh Treaty was the book famine – the tiny share of books worldwide which are available in accessible formats. A failure to allow exceptions left the choice (and responsibility) for making such copies available in the hands of rightholders, often themselves unable to make the switch. The failures caused by a lack of reform led to violation of the right of people with print disabilities to education, and to participation in scientific and cultural life.

 

As in our first blog on the costs of non-access, such arguments should be used relatively sparingly. It is important to be positive as well, focusing on how reforms could lead to better services to – and support for – communities. Yet being able to underline costs can be helpful in making it clear that there is a problem that needs to be addressed.

As part of your advocacy, you are therefore encouraged to gather stories of problems – of the costs of non-access.

Fostering creation of Open Educational Resources

From 1 to 5 March 2021, libraries take part in Open Education Week alongside educational stakeholders.

In November 2019, UNESCO adopted a recommendation on Open Educational Resources (OER). This recommendation, a result of a consensus among 193 Member States, recognises the importance of supporting the development, sharing and use of openly licenced educational materials to improve access to education for all.

Libraries, as a driving force in educational issues through their missions of access to information and education, have a role to play in fostering the development of OER and thus in advancing this work.

The UNESCO recommendation is divided into five areas of action:

Building the capacity of stakeholders to create, access, re-use, adapt and redistribute OER;
Developing supportive policy for OER;
Encouraging inclusive and equitable quality OER;
Nurturing the creation of sustainability models for OER; and
Promoting and reinforcing international cooperation in OER.

These 5 areas of action make it possible to identify areas for action by all educational actors, including libraries. They include two levels of action, at the structural level and at the practical level. Libraries can engage in both.

At the structural, or policy level, libraries can work to influence the development of favourable open educational resource policies (many of which will be supportive of wider library missions). Crucially, the Recommendation represents an acknowledgement from countries that education is key and should be open to everyone without regard to their wealth, where they are born, the colour of their skins, their gender, their religion, age or abilities. Knowledge must be open and freely accessible. This is a powerful message.

At the practical level, libraries can also contribute to building a stronger Open Educational Resource chain. This chain involves the creation, access, re-use, adaptation and distribution of OERs, but also the development of institutional policies needed to structure these resources, including national and international platforms.

Here are some suggestions:

  • Identify the different actors that can play a role in the development of open educational resources, including the library team, the educational team, teachers, researchers.
  • Mobilise these actors through different actions: presentation of the objectives of the development of open educational resources, why it is important to tackle these issues of openness and the benefits this can bring to the library, the university and users in general.
  • Create opportunities to raise awareness of these issues or develop resources: webinars, meetings, design workshops,
  • Create opportunities to start creating OERs together: design templates, provide workshops to take the time to focus on the creation of OER but also how to re-use and distribute them.
  • Identify resources or professionals working on the same topic and contact them to exchange practices. Become part of a network or set up a discussion group to exchange good practices or existing structural elements that will enable you to move forward.
  • Identify internal or external platforms that could bring together your institution’s resources in order to facilitate their discovery by users.
  • Draw on the potential of open educational resources to fulfil the primary mission of libraries and knowledge dissemination centres: to build a sustainable means of providing quality open educational resources.
  • Bear in mind the reputational dividends: the constitution of quality open educational resources (materials or courses) by recognised organisations can give considerable visibility to the institution, especially if we consider the impact on the visibility of open access items.
  • Invite external professionals to raise awareness on this issue within your institution: working with an external contact person allows you to combine neutrality but also a national or international perspective.

Discover the document of SPARC Europe on Open Education in European Libraries of High Education.