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November 19, 2003 Virtual Seminar
*Note: The following is from our archived collection of older documents, and may not reflect the most current information.
November 19, 2003 Virtual Seminar
| Your Virtual Seminar Leader. Judith A. Siess is a recognized expert in one-person librarianship and interpersonal networking. For years she has been telling librarians that they need to sell their libraries and themselves. Recently the American Library Association took notice of this and asked her to write a book on advocacy and marketing as a way to keep your job. From this book came the workshop of the same title. Description In the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, libraries are no longer a given. Some librarians have known this for a long time. For example, hospital accreditation rules used to require a library on-site and a degreed librarian on staff. However, recent changes in the accreditation guidelines only require “access” to medical information. When Baker and McKenzie, the largest law firm in the United States, closed its library, law firms all over the country followed suit. The not-for-profit sector is not immune. Branches of public libraries are being closed, school libraries merged or combined with the public library or even eliminated. Even in the “safe” academic library, positions are being eliminated and branches or departmental libraries closed. Why is this happening? Because librarians have not marketed themselves and their services to management—to the decision makers. We have also not been good at advocacy. We don’t speak up for ourselves and recruit others to do the same; we don’t acquire and use library champions. Why don’t we market and practice advocacy? There are several reasons. 1. We don’t realize how important it is to our continued well-being and even survival, even though we’ve been told to market over and over. 2. We don’t know how. 3. We don’t have time. Libraries have been threatened before and they have survived. Why should we be more concerned now? There are several reasons 1. The rise of the Internet. 2. The apparent popularity of end-user searching. 3. Many libraries are going “virtual,” that is, eliminating their physical presence in organizations.
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