Tuesday's Topic: Library Advocacy Programming

   I work and live in NYC, which is experiencing a major budget crisis. I work for Queens Library and we would experience a 30% cut if the City Council doesn't help us out (and Michelle won't be able to get a new pair of shoes when she gets laid off). In all seriousness, we decided to do library advocacy to reach out to our council people, to get them to try to help us.
   One program idea I had and has been done in other libraries across NYC, is a Save the Library design a postcard program. We did this yesterday and received 30 postcards. This is how it worked. We found a postcard template, added in the councilman's information, added in a box that said..I Love my Library because... We encouraged the children to draw a picture relating to libraries on the front and a message on the back. We added their first names and the library's address. They had fun with this and we will do it again on Wednesday.

  Have any of you experienced any budget cuts that threatened the following: your job, book budget, hours and other staffing and programs? If so, have you done any advocacy to try to help prevent the cuts?

 The importance of libraries needs to be heard across the US by our politicians. Whether you do or do not experience budget cuts (and most of you out there probably do), please email or write your politicians and explain how important libraries are to you. Thank you.