Library Advocacy Day...

Yesterday I attended my first ever New York Library Association's Library Advocacy Day up in Albany, NY at the state capital building. I took a bus up (At the ass crack of dawn) with a bunch of other librarians and library advocates from the county to attend meetings with individual Legislators to voice our concerns and try to gain support for funding and policies that benefit libraries (Which FYI has resulted in over $7 million dollars in additional library aid since 2011).

Since I had never attended before and no one from my library had gone in a while I had no idea what to actually expect, so I ended up sticking close to one of the librarians I knew from another library who has gone every year for the past fifteen or so years -- Which in my opinion was a good move.

We attended a bunch of very short meetings with a bunch of Legislators who pretended to care about libraries, got library cards from the New York State Library (Which happens to be in the same building) and attended the big librarian rally in the Legislative Office Building.

It was a long day but it was a very interesting experience and I think I'll attend next years Library Advocacy Day if my Director will let me.

NOTE: According to the New York Library Association's website over 800 library advocates participated and all together there were meetings with over 45% of members of the New York State Legislature.