Hi there! Errin Morrison here…Executive Director of the BC Library Trustees Association (BCLTA) and novice blogger. As part of the WJBC team, I will be trying my hand at the odd post on BlogJunction BC and I hope you’ll bear with me as I find my online voice…
Before my current stint at BCLTA, I worked at the Union of BC Municipalities in policy research. This previous life gave me some great exposure to the world of government advocacy, which is my topic of choice for this inaugural blog posting. Advocacy is ideally built into your library’s regular cycle of activities. You see the need to promote the library and remind both patrons and funders of its value and its central place in the community. You organize events which enable you to invite and welcome local, provincial and even federal politicians into the library; you promote library programs and services online and through brochures, posters, and articles in the local newspaper; you hold fundraisers that raise the profile of the library among key supporters and potential supporters (e.g., the business community); you make an effort to communicate your library’s contribution to the local economy – especially to your mayor and council or regional district chair and board. These are all part of your regular activities….right? : ) Okay, in an ideal world they would be…however we all face constraints that can end up pushing advocacy work aside in favour of more pressing priorities. But allocating time to advocacy now means more resources and support for your library in the long run. And the longer we put it off, the less time we eventually have to fit it in due to dwindling support from stakeholders.
Advocacy is one of BCLTA’s key strategic priorities. Our mandate is to represent the interests of libraries and increase public and government awareness of the library sector by communicating value to key stakeholders and assisting our members to do the same. One of our main priorities over the last few months – and for the coming months – is to assist local libraries and governments to renew and/or upgrade BC’s library infrastructure. We are currently in the midst of a province-wide public library infrastructure study, the preliminary results of which will be made available this summer. We are also encouraging our member libraries to host MLA Receptions over the next couple of months – inviting elected representatives into local libraries to show them the value of the provincial government investment in BC’s public library sector. This is especially important in light of rumours of impending government cutbacks to be announced in the fall budget – even as we struggle to provide library services to an increasing number of patrons turning to us in these difficult economic times. And let’s not forget the very significant local government contribution to libraries, which BCLTA, BCLA, and ABCPLD will be honouring at a special reception for local elected officials held in conjunction with the 2009 UBCM Convention in Vancouver this coming fall.
I would also call your attention to the advocacy section of BCLTA’s website, where we provide a number of tools for public libraries to draw on in their own advocacy activities. You’ll find a Library Primer you can use in communicating the value of your library to your local government and the public; we have a Libraries in Tough Economic Times page; a link to the Beyond Words project; a list of online Advocacy Resources for libraries; and more…
And let’s not forget WebJunction, which is a great resource for advocacy-related materials…here are a few of the links I came up with in a simple search for “advocacy” from the WJBC homepage (see the search box in the upper right corner of the WJBC logo bar).
Have a look at these resources or try your own search and see what kinds of courses, interest groups, discussion forums, and materials come up. Make the most of your WJBC membership – and don’t be afraid to call on your neighbouring libraries, your federations, your provincial library associations and the wider international WebJunction community for help. Our best resource is always each other – and there is a host of untold and untapped expertise, wisdom and experience out there in the library community…
Happy advocating – and may the rewards you reap more than make up for your efforts!
In the famous words of the only arachnid I have ever looked upon with a smidgeon of respect (Spiderman not included… webcrawler he may be, but he’s only got 4 appendages!), I think now is the time for me to say ‘salutations!’ Hi, my name is Kyle, and I am not what you might call an avid blogger — shifty-eyed behind-the-scenes lurker might be a more appropriate title — but I felt the urge to introduce myself and take up the mic today to bring to your attention some of the information that is stored here on WebJunction.
I’ve noticed a fair bit of chatter between libraries of late regarding the topic of wireless networking, and I got to thinking, “Hey, a DQ Blizzard would really hit the spot.” OK, not so helpful. But then I thought, “Hey, people want to know how the wireless issue is being handled at other libraries. WebJunction has an entire section on the issue with info and reports from libraries all over North America. I should tell someone about this. Mmmmm, DQ Skor Blizzard goodness.” So after a refreshing break, I made up my mind to take hold of the conch and get the word out, to bring attention to both the resources available on WJ and our darling little BC blog.
Of course, the beauty of blogging is that anyone, yes anyone, can reach the far corners of the province/country/world, on a topic of their choosing, just by standing on their little soapbox and making their point. Our BC soapbox is still rather small and comely, but I like to imagine this will someday be a great resource and awareness-maker for BC library staff, with contributions coming from all over the province! For now, though, you’re stuck with me, and I do apologize. But I digress.
Back to my hot topic. Now, the beauty of WebJunction is that not only does it have a wealth of information on various hot library topics such as wireless networking, which you can peruse and digest at leisure, but you can take it one step further by building your own policy or training routine or what-have-you, based on what you find, and then share it with everyone. Need to know what kind of hardware you’ll need to consider in order to operate your wireless network? We’ve got that covered. Just getting started and looking for a glossary on common wireless terms? We’ve got that too! How about some happy stories from libraries that’ve made it work for them? Bingo. Take what you need and don’t be afraid to share. We’re the first Canadian community on WebJunction, and we want our voice to be heard!
And lastly, a shameless plug for our online self-paced courses, which include 15 courses that relate to the topic of wireless technology (just search for ‘wireless’ in the catalogue search). These courses are currently available at no charge (while our promotional supplies last) to WJBC affiliate members, so get signed up now! Not a WJBC member? No problem, even lurkers like me and this guy can view all the content on the site, but to take any courses you need to be registered. See if you belong, then sign yourself up! As Charlotte would probably say, this community is Terrific!
Yesterday, I referenced a Talking Heads song, Once in a Lifetime. In the course of rummaging around the web for links to the lyrics I re-came (I know it’s not a word, but I like it) across David Byrne’s Journal. I was amazed and delighted to read a recent post that mused on the tension between various manifestations of culture. In the specific example, he wrote about a public library that was closed and became an art gallery. Which one is better? Well, that’s a tough one for culture keepers, isn’t it?
I encourage you to read his essay. It’s dense but well worth the effort.
One of my favourite bands was…is…Talking Heads. I still think they’re brilliant, as ageless as Sophia Loren. The title of this post is from “Once in a Lifetime”, a burned-in-the-brain tune, for sure. The last line of the first stanza is “And you may ask yourself-well…how did I get here?”
You may not have asked yourself how WebJunction BC came to be “here.” But I think about that often, as one of the members of the cross-organizational team that believed BC library staff needed and deserved a central web place to gather and find useful content.
So I decided this web post is about how we got here.
The sponsors of WJBC are BCLA, BCLTA, BCTLA and PLSB. But behind those acronyms are people who are seeking ways for members and constituents to benefit from Web 2.0. We want people–where ever they are in British Columbia–to feel part of the library community, to be able to connect with colleagues, to be able find useful courses and content, to share opinions, and to do this in a space that does not divide us into silos, but unites us.
Here’s the people behind WJBC. There’s me, Executive Director of BCLA. My colleague, Allie Douglas, Office Manager of BCLA. Errin Morrison, Executive Director of BCLTA. Heather Daly, President of BCTLA. Kyle Armour and Ene Haabniit of PLSB. A hat tip to Trish Rosseel, now at UBC but at PLSB during the early decision making days, and Tania Alekson, a soon-to-be-graduated student at UBC’s SLAIS who is on board for the summer to help us out.
How we got here is…is…hmmm…well, how we got here is through nothing that looks like a committee. It’s a small enough group in a small enough pond that we started out by agreeing on certain fundamentals and extrapolating from there…OK, if we believe that, how do we get there? The spice of lack of staff and lack of funds (for the 3 associations) contributed to our creativity stew.
And there we are! Ad hoc structure, a willingness to be comfortable with ambiguity and lack of documentation and guidelines, and a commitment to the goal of providing a rich content environment to BC library staff drives us forward.
Where will we be a year from now? I hope we will have found funding for continuing WJBC. I hope that the community will have seen clearly the value of a shared BC library space.
And I hope you enjoy this Muppet version of “Once in a Lifetime” . It’s brilliant.
Getting the full benefit from WJBC is a two-step process. First, you need to create and account and a profile (this can be very brief or quite detailed). Then, you need to seek affiliation with WebJunction BC. This latter step allows you into the inner sanctum of WJBC where you can use the full site–including the free (for now) courses. When the free courses are gone, affiliation will give you a big discount on courses ($20USD instead of $40USD).
You are eligible to affiliate with WJBC if you are:
a) an employee or volunteer at a public library in BC
b) a member of the BC Library Trustees Association (all public library trustees belonging to BCLTA member library boards:
c) a BC Teacher-Librarians’ Association member
d) a current member of BCLA
To affiliate:
- Sign in with your current username and password.
- After signing in, click on *Edit Account* and then on the *My Affiliations* tab at the top left. You’ll see all the other community partners listed and down the botton of the page is the place to put a check in the *British Columbia* box and then click *Save.* This sends a message off to the humans on the WJBC team who personally look at each affiliation request to make sure you’re eligible (see a, b, c and d above). If we can’t tell, you’ll get an email from one of us (probably Kyle) asking for some more information. This should take hours usually, a day at most.
- If you have bookmarks, RSS feeds, or discussion watches already set, you can still access these subscriptions in My WebJunction (http://bc.webjunction.org/mywebjunction)
- After you take a look around, we?d love to hear from you about your experiences in the member center (http://bc.webjunction.org/membercenter)
- Need help? Find help and support in the member center, or you can always contact us (http://bc.webjunction.org/contact).
Come on in and join us!
There’s been a lot going on here in BC Libraryland, so we have been a bit slow to get blogging to our WebJunction BC community. But here we are, live and alive!
Welcome to Blogjunction British Columbia! This is the place that the people behind the WJBC project will use to talk to you and we hope you will talk back.
First, who are “we?” We are the people at four organizations who are committed to providing training and educational opportunities to our constituents in a big province with a spreadout population of library staff…as well as to providing a central place for people to “e-gather” and find assistance and support and information–and friends, even!
The four organizations sponsoring WebJunction BC are BCLA, BCLTA, BCTLA and PLSB. The people on the small team who have been working on the look and feel of WJBC, and making decisions about content, since January are me (Alane Wilson, Executive Director, BCLA), Allie Douglas (Office Manager, BCLA), Errin Morrison (Executive Director, BCLTA), Heather Daly (President, BCTLA), Ene Haabniit and Kyle Amour (PLSB). Trish Rosseel, formerly of PLSB, and now at UBC, was a member while she was at PLSB and, I am glad to say, remains part of the team. And Zola Maddison, from WeJunction is our Partner Services liaision. I’d like to say thanks to Debra Karby, a Vancouver-based design consultant, for creating the beautiful WJBC banner.
WebJunction BC is the first Canadian Community Partner, and we join 15 US states. You might want to take a look at some of these state Partners here.
It has been both fun and instructive becoming familiar with all the great features and content in WebJunction Central that we now have available to us all in the WJBC portal. I’ll be writing more about specific features, services and content in posts to come. But my very next post will be on how you join and affiliate with WJBC and so take advantage of the free courses (while they last!) and all the other rich content there.
I hope you become active in WJBC….the more participation, the better the portal and the experience for everyone!
