The Public Relations & Advocacy Committee met during the 1999 ILA Annual Conference on October 7. Those present included: Kevin Booe, Cora Caldwell, Jim Fullerton, Pat A. Hamilton, Anne Hankins, Erin McCusker and Anne Abrams as the ISL Liaison. Sue Wagner has agreed to be a member of the committee, but was unable to attend.
During the meeting, committee members decided upon four courses of action to undertake over the next year. These paths were decided upon after studying the ILA Constitution, Policies & Procedures and the Strategic Plan.
The PR & A Committee will be a resource for Idaho librarians and the ILA community for public relations and advocacy issues. Committee members will help with PR and advocacy issues and give suggestions. The responsibility for press releases rests with the executive board, divisions or the individual committees of ILA that are pertinent to the topic. If someone needs help with these types of issues, they should try to contact a committee member in their region.
In cooperation with the Membership Committee, the PR & A Committee will develop a plan to recruit members. This year, the committee members will distribute membership brochures to attendees of the Spring Conference and will ask that the brochures be taken back to hometown school librarians and paraprofessionals to personally invite this population of Idaho’s library community to ILA. Anne Abrams will include a membership reminder in the ISL newsletter.
Several ideas were generated to advocate for Idaho’s libraries.
1. Articles for the Idaho Librarian will be generated. Anne Hankins will write about testifying before the Idaho Legislature. In the issue before the next annual conference, Jim Fullerton will write an article on the benefits of trustees attending the conference.
2. In order to promote the need for continued support for the LiLI-D project, a plan to distribute LiLI-D candy bars to state legislators was devised. Librarians will commit to deliver candy bars to their local legislators with information and thanks before the next session. During the session, librarians and friends of the library community will deliver little candy bars to legislators on Valentine’s Day. A postcard will go out to ILA members to remind them to invite their legislator to Legislative Day. On ILA Legislative Day, lilies (or some type of flower) will be delivered to legislators to remind them of LiLI and the LiLI-D project.
3. A direct mailing to ILA members and the education community will go out before the registration packet for the next annual conference advertising an advocacy speaker that will be presenting at the conference.
4. Speakers and program ideas will be shared for ILA conferences, annual and Spring.