Now, the program is available @ your desktop. Sponsored by the Canadian Association of Public Libraries, this on-line advocacy training is designed for public library staff and trustees. It is, of course, adaptable in any library situation.

To advocate you first need to find out what you bring to advocacy and how, in working with others, you can define the specific values, purpose and function of the group within the larger context of the community. You need a cooperative, not competitive mutually respectful partnership. Advocates, like writers, experience blocks to the process of expression.

You need to re-connect with
the authentic and passionate
parts of yourself.

The Library Advocacy Now! program consists of background material and exercises that will make you understand your own passion for libraries and how better to tell the library story to others.

It also has a step-by-step advocacy planning component. Links are provided to other advocacy resources. Go at your own pace. Enjoy!

This a work in progress. It will continue to improve with your feedback. Features that will be added:

• Quotable quotes about Canadian Libraries
• Your success stories
• List of trained advocates and advocacy trainers
• ALA's @ your library campaign
• and more...

Advocacy is a planned, deliberate, sustained effort to raise awareness of an issue. It's an ongoing process in which support and understanding are built incrementally over an extended period of time and using a wide variety of marketing and public relations tools.

Advocacy is about saying to decision-makers, potential partners, funders, any stakeholder, "Your agenda will be greatly assisted by what we have to offer."

Over 500 hundred librarians, technicians, library staff and trustees have taken CLA's Library Advocacy Now! Training program. Without exception, it has received rave reviews: from teacher-librarians in BC; the Northwest Territories Library Association; library staff and faculty at the University of Calgary; trustees in Saskatchewan; Ontario Library Services North; Quebec Library Association and the Atlantic Provinces Library Association.

Until now, this program has been available only at conferences. This meant that only those who attend conferences could register for a Library Advocacy Now! pre-Conference training session.