Empower your community at the 2012 ALA Midwinter Meeting Advocacy Institute

CHICAGO – “Mobilizing Community Support for Your Library” is the focus of the Advocacy Institute Workshop at the ALA’s 2012 Midwinter Meeting in Dallas. The workshop will focus on engaging and mobilizing Friends and trustee groups, opinion-makers and civic organizations to support all types of libraries.

Presenters include: Dr. Jennifer Martin, Ph.D., senior associate provost and dean of the Graduate School, Texas Woman's University; Ed Palmer, chairman, Municipal Library Board, Dallas, and Rocco Staino, retired director of the Mary I. Keefe Library, North Salem Central Schools, N.Y. and contributing editor, School Library Journal.

The Institute will take place from 1 to 4 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 20, 2012 at the Omni Hotel Dallas. Advanced registration is priced at $50.

It is offered in conjunction with The Association of Library Trustees, Advocates, Friends and Foundations’ (ALTAFF) morning program, entitled “Teeter-tottering on the Edge of the Future: Transforming Libraries,” with keynote speaker Dr. Ron Heezen, executive director of the Shreve Memorial Library in Shreveport, La. The first 50 people to register for the Nuts & Bolts for Trustees, Friends, and Foundations and the Institute will save $25 off their combined registration.

Friday’s events are the first in a series of presentations on empowering communities and library transformation. On Saturday Jan. 21, and Sunday, Jan. 22, join David Lankes, professor, Syracuse iSchool and ALA President Molly Raphael for two afternoons of deep conversation about the evolving needs of our communities and how we can transform libraries to meet the challenges our communities are experiencing. Both sessions run from 1 -3 p.m. at the Dallas Convention Center, Room DCC-A1 and are open to all Midwinter Meeting attendees; watch for sign-up information. Picking up and continuing the conversation as the featured speaker in President Raphael’s President's Program from 3:30-5:30 p.m. on Sunday in the DCC Theater is Rich Harwood, who is described as “one of the great thinkers in American public life.”

Mobilizing Community Support for Your Library: An Advocacy Institute Workshop is sponsored by the Texas Library Association. It is presented in partnership with the American Association of School Librarians (AASL), ALTAFF, and organized by the Advocacy Training Subcommittee of the ALA Committee on Library Advocacy, in conjunction with the ALA Office for Library Advocacy.

For more information and to register, visit the Advocacy Events page on the ALA website.

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