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February 10th -- An Important Day for Libraries!
All libraries in Illinois should plan to participate in "Snapshot of a Day in the Life of Your Library" on Wednesday, February 10th.
Snapshot Day
What is it? A celebration of the value of libraries and an opportunity to share with local, state, and federal legislators and other stakeholders just how important and valued libraries are.
When is it? February 10, 2010 has been chosen by the Advocacy Committee of the Illinois Library Association as the day to take a snapshot of what services and programs are provided by libraries that are important to users in public, school academic, and special libraries.
How Can My Library Participate? By collecting data on library use that day and completing a short ILA survey. Here is a form libraries may use on February 10th to record information.
By encouraging patrons to fill out a form on why they’ve come to the library and commenting on why they think the library is valuable. These will be sent to ILA as well.
Why Should My Library Participate? In this time of low budgets for almost all human services, it’s extremely important that the library voice is heard. If we’re not in the conversation, we’ll easily be left out of funding and other types of decisions impacting libraries.
There will not be a 2010 Illinois Library Day in Springfield. Rather, our efforts will be directed at the district level and establishing those personal relationships. Our major vehicle/effort to establish those personal relationships, to encourage those visits at the district level will be Snapshot Day.
The success of this day will be determined by broad participation across the state. While ILA’s Advocacy Committee is viewing this as a direct effort with our elected officials, we can also assume that the ILA Marketing Committee might be viewing this effort from a different perspective --- possibly a broader view of telling our story to the general public and media.
