As an introduction to the revised edition of the popular “Small But Powerful Guide to Winning Big Support for Your Rural Library,” this one-hour webinar was indeed “Small But Powerful.” It packed a punch of great insights and ideas that will help small libraries stay strong, relevant, and vital to the communities they serve.

Jennifer Peterson, community manager at WebJunction, ARSL board member and chair of ALA Rural, Native, and Tribal Libraries of All Kinds Committee, kicked it off with suggestions for “amplifying the value” of libraries every day and everywhere through the use of technology tools and data resources. Reach beyond the library walls with cool tools like digital frame slide shows, social “satellite” sites (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), library calculators, and videos of non-library people expressing what they value about the library.

Susan Hill Pieper, director of the Paulding County Carnegie Library (OH), shifted the presentation into high gear with her no-nonsense advice and first-hand experiences that have built a community of patrons who “cannot imagine life without the public library” and will rally enthusiastically to support it. Counseling that “your library must show excellent service consistently” in order to garner ardent support, Susan discussed a host of strategies and tips for sustaining a “modern library”—no matter how small—and for broadcasting its value loud and clear. She urges libraries to be willing and ready to adopt new technologies but to examine them for relevance and meaning to each community. The audience appreciated her example of scrutinizing “self check-out” for its detraction from the one-on-one interactions that may be the soul of the rural community library.

Marci Merola, director of the ALA Office for Library Advocacy, wrapped up the session with a quick tour of the substantial aggregation of resources that ALA has amassed on behalf of library advocacy efforts. Their Advocacy University is a potent collection to get you amplifying your library’s value on multiple fronts.

This is just an appetizer for the full meal of possibilities. Go to the webinar archive page for:

• Link to the Small But Powerful Guide (it’s free to download or you can order print copies)
• The archived recording of the webinar
• The webinar chat log (lots of ideas shared and questions answered in the sidestream)
• Links to related resources

I geek movies, Italian food, making new friends and mystery novels. What do you geek? This is the question asked by the Geek the Library community awareness campaign.

If you haven’t heard about the campaign yet, here is your opportunity to find out more. This distinct awareness campaign—that focuses on highlighting the critical role public libraries play in every community and the continued need for sustained funding—is one fun way to help raise awareness about the amazing ways your library supports all the ‘geeking’ that goes on in your community. Many U.S. public libraries have signed up to implement the program locally, and positive results from the pilot campaign conducted with public libraries in Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Wisconsin are fueling momentum.

Geek the Library’s look and message are catchy and definitely grab people’s attention. A new OCLC membership report confirms this—there was impressive awareness of the campaign in surveyed pilot communities and high likeability. The best news is that Geek the Library doesn’t only get people’s attention; it also helps change people’s perceptions about public libraries and public library funding. According to the report, residents in pilot communities took positive steps to support their public libraries after being exposed to elements of the pilot campaign.

Geek the Library is an opportunity for public libraries to surprise their communities with an unexpected approach and connect with residents in a new way. The campaign encourages a personal connection to the library that leads to awareness and, hopefully, continued support. It also starts important local conversations. Essentially, it can help libraries develop community advocates who understand the value of the library, but also appreciate how funding works and recognize the need to keep it top-of-mind in community discussions.

Geek the Library certainly got the pilot communities talking about libraries and we can’t wait to see where the conversation goes in the new communities that are getting their geek on.

Curious if this could work in your area? Geek the Library is now freely available to any U.S. public library. Download the report and visit get.geekthelibrary.org for more information.

The initiative includes 3 parts, all available here http://www.imls.gov/about/21stCSkills.shtm:

1. The Online Self-Assessment: a brief interactive survey that quickly analyzes an institution’s 21st century strategies and describes next steps for action.

2. The Report: outlines a vision for the role of libraries and museums in the national dialogue around learning and 21st century skills and includes case studies [be sure to read these case studies!] of innovative audience engagement and 21st century skills practices from across the country.

3. The Self-Assessment Tool: allows museums and libraries to determine where they fit on the continuum of 21st century skills operations and programming.

I found numerous parallels to the efforts of the initiative with those of Project Compass and thought it would be great to start a discussion about the long term goals your library has to support the development of patrons’ 21st Century Skills beyond the current workforce challenged economic climate and on into the future.

The report identifies the differences between 20th and 21st Century skills, and provides a framework including four skills areas:

• Learning and Innovation Skills
• Information, Media, and Technology Skills
• Life and Career Skills
• 21st Century Themes, including: Global Awareness; Financial, Economic, Business, and Entrepreneurial Literacy; Civic Literacy; Health Literacy; Environmental Literacy

You can see the skill sets cover many of the areas we have traditionally focused on. I’m very excited to see how this framework might help libraries clarify our role and forge potential community partnerships to build 21st C. skills in our communities.

I found these 3 quotes to be particularly powerful:

First an overall call to collaboration:

All libraries and museums—and the people they serve—stand to benefit from becoming more intentional and purposeful about accommodating the lifelong learning needs of people in the 21st century, and doing this work collaboratively in alignment with community needs.

And then more focused on learning, specifically the role we as libraries can play in informal learning to help our communities…

Skills like critical thinking and problem solving are not only relevant for K-12 students and schools. There are millions of adult learners not in formal education programs looking to refine workplace skills. Even school-aged children spend the overwhelming majority of their waking hours in non-school settings, and increasingly they spend this time in organized out-of-school settings such as afterschool, museum, and library programs. In these settings, they develop important skills—such as problem solving, collaboration, global awareness, and selfdirection—not only for lifelong learning and everyday activities, but also for use back in K-12 schools and college classrooms.

And I loved this one that encourages us to

The report itself is loaded with other excellent information that can both guide programming as well as advocacy efforts, with clear articulation of the critical value of libraries. I’ve yet to dive deep into the assessment tools, but kudos to the task force and team member who pulled together the launch of this outstanding initiative!

Read it and tell me what you think!

For more information on the program and how to apply, see the USDA Rural Development fact sheet.

Applications are handled by USDA Rural Development field offices. To reach the USDA Rural Development contact for a specific state, visit www.rurdev.usda.gov/ – adding the two-letter initial of the state to the end of the URL.

• What is the social contract…our obligation to keep our skills current.
• Training budgets are seen as an easy mark in cuts to save money (they keep staff, but cut training)
• What does it cost to keep skills current?
• Investment necessary if we’re going to keep up-to-date.
• How can you stay vital and active in your community? If the resources you work with are getting trimmed back, you may need more in your bag of tricks.
• Who’s responsibility is “learning”? The individual’s? The organization’s?
• Your organization may help you keep your skills up to date, but you need to take the responsibility to act upon the knowledge you’ve acquired and apply them to the goals of the organization.
• How can we move toward a state where learning is something we all agreed to do? …to see learning as an opportunity to help each other be more successful, instead of staying in our own little silos.
• Ask yourself: What can I learn or contribute to help others learn to do their job?
• And be willing to go to others with your suggestions AND for them to not take it as a criticism of their work or inability to do the work. Acronym to remember: Q-TIP (quit taking it personally)
• Learn how to transpose what you’re learning in other spaces to your work in the library (eg. customer service you receive when shopping)
• One of the ways to tell if you’re doing a library job right is if you’re learning something.
• Learning has intrinsic awards.
• Learning is not penance.
• Management: your support for learning helps your staff feel engaged.

Bravo, George and Joan!