CPD23 – Thing 16: Advocacy and speaking up for the profession

Ok, so I’ve been stalling on this one a little. I just wasn’t sure I could write advocacy without it spilling over into a discussion on activism and there’s been enough debate about that elsewhere (both interesting posts, read them!). I agree with many that whenever we think of advocacy and libraries it does tend to be public libraries we’re talking about. This is perhaps unsurprising as by definition advocacy is “public support for or recommendation of a particular cause” (OED, 2011) and public libraries are the most visible cause to the public so public library advocacy (and activism) is most visible also. I’m not a very good advocate for public libraries perhaps but I’ll come back to that later…

I work in an academic library so I would say a part of my role is to promote the library across the University – both through involvement in enrolment events and open days and through engaging with staff in other departments. I see this more as marketing and promotion rather than advocacy. Perhaps I’m getting tangled up in semantics… When reading some of the blog posts and comments about this thing I noticed a few people suggested that by providing a good service to library users we are advocating. Surely that’s just doing my job… However, if this means students will tell their friends about the good service they’ve had from the library perhaps we are gaining advocates for the library in our users.

I really do think that the best advocates for a library service (public, academic, or otherwise) are its users.  And maybe that’s why I’m not the greatest advocate for public libraries. I only use them occasionally (and never used them for years before I started my MA) so I feel a bit hypocritical waxing lyrical about the benefits of a service I make little use of myself.