And I'm going to pass it on over to Anna Shelton who will be hosting today's session.
>> Thank you, Jennifer.
I'm joined by my comoderater, Mary Hirsh, Public Library Association, and by today's fantastic presenters.
We have Ava Ehde from Manatee County Public Library.
Barbara McGary, Barbara will be moderaing chat.
We look forward to seeing your thoughts and comments from all of you there.
We are welcoming our presenter, Cathay Keough from Delaware division of Libraries and Delaware library association.
Julie Meredith, Lance Werner, and Mary Lou Carolan.
Thank you again to all of the presenters.
We are looking forward to hearing from all of you and to seeing all of the chats and comments from those of you joining us today.
Mary, I will hand it over to you.
>> Thank you, Anna.
Hi everyone.
My name is Mary Hirsh, I work at the Public Library Association here in Chicago, Illinois.
Beautiful hot day in Chicago and I'm excited to be here with you this afternoon.
As you will hear hear from our superstar presenters, amazing things are happening in libraries across the country.
Libraries from around the country have seen a variety of wins in efforts of Turning the Page and Geek the Library.
A few examples of wins that people have seen -- we want to give you a quick tour today of two newly revised resources that can help you begin to achieve these kind of outcomes at your library.
First is Turning the Page.
Has anyone participated in Turning the Page?
Let us know in chat.
If you have, share a few words about how Turning the Page helped you and your library's advocacy activities. 
What is Turning the Page?
Turning the Page is a training curriculum that is designed to give library staff, trustees and supporters skills and confidence needed to successfully advocaten behalf of their library.
When we talk about advocacy and Turning the Page, we're talking about actions undertaken to influence funding or policy decisions.
And the content is designed to help you, who already know all of the great things that are going on in your library and all of the difference you are already making in your community, provide a framework for sharing this information with the people who matter most to you.
Your stakeholders.
And it is also designed not just for you, the librarian or the library director, but for all library staff and even your trustees to advocate for your library.
Turning the Page has been in the field and evolving for about the last seven years.
It first rolled out in 2008 as a required component of the opportunity online hardware grant.
Libraries participating in that program needed to raise matching funds to get new hardware upgrades from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Training was based on the OCLC publication awareness to funding, I'm sure many of you are familiar with, describing the different levels of supporters and how best to reach them.
Over the course of two years, we trained over 3,000 librarians in 32 states.
While the in-person training was going on, we developed an online version for those who couldn't be away from their libraries for two days.
This achieved the same learning objectives as the in-person event and it is still available and accessible through PLA's web site if you are interested in the original content.
We leveraged the online version following our grant funding period to develop Turning the Page 2.0.
We were thrilled with how libraries were using Turning the Page we were looking for ways to sustain the learning in the field.
Turning the Page 2.0 was developed as an online blended six-week learning course that occurred in -- between 2010 and 2012, through this we trained an additional 1,200 librarians, including some international librarians.
Participants from as far away as Egypt.
At the end of that program, to further sustain Turning the Page, we did a train the trainer for state library folks and also a few past participants and gave them access to the content and empowered them to go out and train in the field.
Why did we do all of this?
Because Turning the Page really worked.
We saw really, really successful results.
A majority of attendees met their advocacy goals.
Another great thing that came out of this, people who attended really saw the value in the content and referred colleagues and engaged their coworkers in their advocacy activities at their library.
Needless to say, PLA was thrilled with all of these results.
And so was the Gates Foundation.
The global libraries team at the Gates Foundation saw how well Turning the Page was working in the United States and decided to take it globally to library grantees around the world.
Between 2011 and 2014 content was modified to fit local global context.
Over time revisions were made and new modules added.
Through all of these efforts, we began to build a global network of library advocates all trained in the same content, which I think is a really cool, unintended effect of this program.
All efforts have culminated in a new version, Turning the Page: Supporting Libraries, Strengthening Communities.
It is now available to anyone anywhere for free.
Yeah, we're giving it away. 
At its core, Turning the Page is an advocacy training curriculum, new version includes 15 sessions.
Five core sessions and then 10 mix and match sessions.
The topics are varied, starting with defining your advocacy goals going up to a topic near and dear to my heart using impact data for advocacy.
And you can use the sessions in any combination to fill out the specific sections of your advocacy action plan. 
Everything you need to successfully implement Turning the Page is included.
It is a product designed to implement how you see best fit.
Delivered in person or online.
Realize it is a little hard to see everything on the screen, but this is a screen shot of what is included.
It includes PowerPoint presentations, attendee handout, training implementation guide.
As I mentioned advocacy action plan work book and what I think is a cool addition and come from the global colleagues is the post-training implementation guide.
We go to trainings and get fired up and go back to the libraries and lost our momentum.
Post-training guide to help you keep your momentum going and guide you through the implementation of all steps of the advocacy action plan.
Turning the Page: Supporting Libraries, Strengthening Communities is meant to be a formal training.
If you are feeling ambitious, want a refresh on specific topic, have a team together, you could adapt the content to your needs.
It is meant to be flexible and designed for your use.
How do you get it?
A few ways to access the content.
You can download the entire curriculum with a single click, publiclibraryadvocacy.org.
There is a longer link, which includes the link to content.
We have included a list a PLA-trained facilitators.
People we have trained over the years.
This is a great resource if you are looking to implement the training in your library and need someone to help you out.
And, of course, access to turning the page online is still available.
You can get to it through our web site.
It's free and open to everyone as well and we plan to keep that going for as long as we can, if you are interested in just doing an asynchronous online version.
We will have a chance -- I'll come back on at the end of the webinar to answer questions or clarify anything that has come up, but for now, I'm going to hand it over to my friend Anna and she will tell us about another great resource, advocacy in action. 
>> Thanks, Mary.
Advocacy in action, a new collection of resources available on Webjunction.org.
And these tools and resources are designed to guide any library through a campaign approach.
You can use these to showcase the valuable role that your library plays in your community, and also help educate the public about all of those critical funding issues that libraries are facing.
The tools include many different, many different tools.
A marketing planning guide, talking points to help libraries describe how they contribute to economic development.
There is also common myths about how libraries are funded, as well as funding realities.
And there is tips for talking with local media.
Those are just a few of the resources that you can find.
And all of these are drawn from a library awareness campaign called Geek the Library.
You may be familiar with.
It was used in the United States and over 1,800 libraries during the past six years.
You may have heard that Geek the Library has recently concluded, any library can conduct a successful campaign modelled after this same framework.
Whether or not you were a geek participant, you can apply this framework again and again.
And all of the resources are built around a step-by-step campaign approach that you can use to accomplish any goal.
That might be organizing a library card drive in your community, or you may be looking to organize a campaign to reach out to and connect with a specific underserved population, or you might be looking ahead to a future funding request and wanting to lay the groundwork for that request when it comes.
No matter what your campaign goal is, advocacy in action helps to break it down into manageable phases, starting with planning, making personal connections with individuals within the community about how the library supports their passion and building on that awareness through community events and local media, and educating the community about how they can help with library funding.
Of course, even when any official campaign is over, there is the critical piece of keeping up the momentum and keeping up the framework.
So, advocacy in action organized around each of these phases with examples and documents that you can modify and adapt to fit whatever your own campaign goal is. 
And also at the page on Webjunction.org, video examples that describe real-life library campaigns that might help inspire your next campaign.
All of these materials again are available at Webjunction.org with the short link here, oc.lc/advocacy.
So, we have briefly described these two resources.
Turning the Page and advocacy in action, and we are doing this webinar together today because we believe so strongly that Turning the Page and advocacy in action go hand in hand.
Turning the Page builds critical skills and library awareness campaign can help apply those skills in your community.
Some examples, in Turning the Page, you take time to document your advocacy goal.
Early in an awareness campaign, you do an internal launch to build buy-in with staff.
In Turning the Page, you present a clear case, and learn to tailor your pitch to different audiences.
In library awareness campaigns, you get the public's attention.
Turning the Page, you can learn to tell the libraries story in conversational settings, social media.
And you can use an awareness campaign to keep up that buzz.
Turning the Page can help you learn how -- learn practical approaches to make a funding or policy request, and library awareness campaign, community members a chance to tell the story of the library through their own voice.
In a moment, we will hear from our superstars on the call today about how you might use these resources in your own library, but we know that lots of you on the call today are advocates every day for the librarylibrary.
Later in the webinar, we will tell you about an exciting video contest you can enter to feature your library story.
Lance, over to you.
>> Lance: Hello, everybody.
I'll Lance Werner from the Kent District Library.
Thrilled to be here to talk to you about our experience of Turning the Page.
I'm here to discuss planning, preparing, establishing advocacy goals.
I strongly believe that public libraries are for everyone.
So it's critical to know everybody, and critical to cultivate personal relationships.
The first step is knowing your playing field and being cognizant of your environment.
It is vital that you fully understand all players, different political factions, what's going on in the community.
Religious considerations, resource availability, municipal groups, really who are the players?
Who are the people that you are going to be establishing a -- 
and then crafting a message for.
The Kent District Library is in Kent County.
When I came here, I was warned that I would never get a millage increase passed in Kent County.
It is a conservative county, strong tea party presence, and that millage increases here just didn't pass.
The people didn't vote for them.
I didn't buy that.
I think it really comes down again to establishing that relationship.
We crafted our advocacy goal.
Ours really at the end of the day was getting our millage increase passed.
Understand the environment was critical in crafting our goal.
Support the targets.
You have to craft your message to fit your audience.
There is not a one size fits all solution.
I asked myself the following questions when I created our advocacy goals.
What is the need for us?
To support additional services.
The next question was, who am I conveying this need to?
The next, what do I know about them?
And finally, how should I craft my message to concisely express the need to this whatever group I'm talking to?
One of the groups in Kent County that we thought we would have to deal with, Kent County taxpayers alliance.
Because I went out and made sure that I met everybody and got to know who all of the players were, I had some contact with them before just in social settings.
Nothing serious.
Here is an example of some of their handy work.
You can see that they have a long record of -- they have been called in, record of calling in Americans for prosperity to get super-PAC funding.
They are scary, reviled in the county, and people in municipalities are afraid of them.
We thought we probably will have to deal with them but we were not sure.
We didn't have much money to run a countercampaign to their countercampaign, if one were to occur.
The next thing that happened, we have a wonderful headline.
45% tax increase, Kent district -- we have a wonderful reporter here, Matt is known for writing wonderful pieces about tax increases in municipal government, and causes a lot of consternation.
This came out.
We thought, oh, my goodness, we are in deep, deep trouble.
Naturally, the next day at 10:15 p.m., I was sitting on my couch at home.
I got a call from who?
My good friend from the Kent County taxpayers alliance, and they wanted to talk.
Thinking back to what I knew about them, I thought let's have a meeting.
We had this meeting.
We planned it out.
We were going to execute our advocacy plan.
What was our plan?
We knew our audience, we knew that this group was concerned with transparency and the use of money.
We came with all of our books.
It was my CFO and I and we came with all of the finances and we explained where the money was going to go and what it would be used for.
You know what they said?
They said we were the most transparent organization they they they had ever dealt with and were like a breath of fresh air.
As a result of that, wonderful meeting, they helped us with the campaign.
Tea party candidates in the county were going door to door and talking about the library as well -- we had the tea party campaigning for our millage increase, and it was because we took the time to get to know them and crafted our message so that it fit.
And the outcome?
We passed our millage.
We passed it by the widest margin, even though we had failed the last one.
And we had the new budget and everything is wonderful.
I guess my question is today what about you?
Do you know the groups or audiences that you need to craft your Library's advocacy message for?
Who are they?
Please share in chat.
>> We look forward to hearing from all of you in chat your thoughts about this question that Lance posed.
The groups or audiences that you need to craft your library's advocacy message for.
Who they are.
We look forward to hearing from you.
And I'm starting to see some responses to come in through chat.
Senior citizens is one of the groups.
That's great.
Who else are you looking to reach and know that you need to craft your Library's advocacy message for?
We look forward to seeing those answers continue to come in.
Thanks so much, Lance.
We will move on to Mary Lou. 
>> Hello everyone.
I'm Mary Lou Carolan from the Wallkill Public Library.
As you can tell from Lance, passion is important.
Your enthusiasm for your advocacy effort is contagious.
All of the planning and preparation in the world will not bring you a successful awareness campaign without your passion.
So don't curb your enthusiasm.
How did we get here?
How did we come to take over the Duchess baseball stadium, involve 19 other libraries across two library systems and ends up creating an awareness of libraries in front of a sports crowd of over 5,700 people?
Well, we did it by being audacious.
We were audacious enough to think that we could do it, and we got to this place from the Geek the Library campaign.
These tools gave me the AUaudacity that anything is possible.
Be audacious.
Change your way of thinking.
Anything that is standing in your way is not an obstacle, it is the opportunity that you have been waiting for.
Advocate, don't abdicate.
The life of your library depends on it.
Advocate for your library, create awareness, change perception.
Don't abdicate.
Manage vibrancy, innovation and community building.
This is the challenge that you need to take on. 
And community outreach marketing and advocacy, they're not relegated to large, well-established libraries.
Any library could and should use these tools for advocacy.
Because size does not matter.
My library is just 3,700 square feet.
And we operate out of an 80-year-old building in the rural Hudson Valley area of New York.
We serve just under 6,500 people.
And we're in a downtown area that is struggling to survive.
I am the only full-time staff person with seven part-time staffers.
But none of this matters.
Because people will support you if you believe.
You have tremendous influence.
You see it all begins with you, but it is not all about you.
You can do this.
Begin by gathering people around you who share your vision.
Believe in you and see the benefits of the library to the community.
Now, this could be any community leaders, it could be library supporters and champions, parents of your storytime kids.
Teachers, artists, business people.
Anyone who supports your library.
Because leaders, they need followers, especially in an advocacy campaign.
The awareness campaign that you launch will need supporters.
Because many hands make light work.
And the message is stronger every time someone besides you spreads the word.
The great thing about all of this is that you don't need to reinvent the wheel.
You don't have to go any further out of your comfort zone.
You already have what you need to get started with the tools that we were talking about earlier, the Turning the Page and advocacy in action.
They're easy to use tools and they give you examples that are available to you to help you customize your library awareness campaign. 
So, rule number one.
Don't be intimidated.
Create a team that is fun and empowering.
Work together to inform and empower your colleagues to build community.
Cultivate pride for what your library does really well.
Look at what you accomplish in your library.
Be proud of all of it.
Plan your campaign launch and take the first step.
Make a commitment.
Select a date.
Select it right as this webinar ends.
Make that date in your book and move forward.
But you're going to need buy-in.
Your project can sink or swim on this aspect alone.
You've got to involve supporters and staff, meet with them, explain the project to they will and train them.
Gather them all together.
Help them to share your vision.
And the -- I can't stress enough the importance of training them to carry the message to tell their story, their library story, and reach out to other libraries.
Businesses and community leaders.
Show them how doable this is and how important it is to do for the community.
Help staff and supporters shift their perception of libraries and themselves.
Change comes from within.
If your staff doesn't believe or support you, the community won't either.
So, take the time to train them.
Model behavior and talking points.
Empower the staff to innovate and be free to try new things.
Let people practice and find the right role.
You may not be the best, most articulate or dynamic spokesperson.
Maybe it is the children's coordinator or a board member or one of your best volunteers. 
But you know, we took over a baseball stadium.
Don't limit yourself or your library.
Go big.
Create a plan to engage volunteers and community members.
From the beginning, look for ways to partner with other libraries.
Not everyone will join you.
And that's okay.
But do it anyway.
Be bold.
You can do this. 
So, I have to leave you with this question.
What is holding you back?
And how can you turn that around?
Please share your answers in our chat.
>> Thank you so much, Mary Lou.
And we really look forward to seeing from all of you in chat.
We look forward to your honest answers to this question about what's holding you back and how you can turn that around.
We know this is a great space for all of us to learn from each other, and we really appreciate it is a safe space to say what's keeping you from taking that next step and maybe you will hear an idea from someone on he webinar or attending who can help you in tackling those challenges.
Starting to see some of those challenges show up now in chat.
Time, leadership, lack of staff, needing to energize volunteers.
The difficulty of actually taking that step to make change.
Change can be really hard.
Those are all really common examples of things that different libraries might be facing.
We look forward to hearing from all of you in chat as well.
Any ideas you have had.
If you have faced these same challenges, if these things have held you back in the past, how you tackle them.
We will move on to Ava.
>> Hi, there.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk more about creating awareness.
Everybody in libraries knows how difficult it is to market their libraries.
It doesn't seem to be something that comes naturally to us.
For us, in Bradenton Florida, we have Manatee -- we have the oldest living Manatee in captivity and we decided to feature him on our vehicle with a rap and you can see on the slide, our Manatee, he geeks lettuce.
We decided getting out in traffic was really important.
Our delivery vehicle, which goes to all six of our libraries, we thought it was a very natural place that we would pay once for the rap and get a great deal of use out of it and we have.
We really recognize that we needed to get out to places people didn't expect us to be.
And so we had a 15 second movie preview at our local 20.
And we had a -- we decided that the group that probably could benefit the most from that road  -- we know that often libraries are taken for granted.
We made sure we got a seat at the table.
A booth at the fair, the market, any place that we could, birthday parties, whatever it could be, we showed up at.
We came up with interesting events, such as a comic convention.
Our fifth annual convention last October drew in 1,400 teens.
Audience we're always trying to reach and that keeps building with social media.
We have done recycled fashion shows and recycled robot programs and a touch a truck program to bring the dads in with the kids.
We knew that if we put together some great PSAs and videos we could get on to cable and market ourselves together.
Local educational TV station helped us with that.
We also looked at contests.
We realized that people in our community are deeply invested in their library, and they loved having a forum to showcase their talents.
We came up with some great library contests.
A logo motto contest.
It was a really important way for us to see some of the artistic talent and that kind of thing in our community.
We had an essay contest on how the library has saved me money, and that was a great way for us to get stories from the community about how the library had impacted their life.
We shared those stories with our commissioners and with our legislators and who better to tell the story than our own users.
We had a teen comic strip convention which was a lot of fun as you can see from the results on the right.
We continue to have that with the teens.
What greater way to get that information out of a group that doesn't readily offer it.
Stephen King came and he presented for us last year.
Beforehand a contest for the first paragraph of a previously unpublished mystery thriller, and the winning prize was a ticket to the event. 
A lot of these contests can be very reasonable if you get donations of prizes from local businesses or perhaps in kind things such as free advertising or poster printing, and, you know, you're going to have a lot of staff support, but you are going to use your friends groups and you can even get little small prizes.
Taco bell, Culvers ice cream gave us ice cream give-aways.
I had looked at the media outreach and planning from Turning the Page and got important steps that I thought would help.
I think if you refer to that, you will learn a great deal from it.
We had geeked our local journalist, Dennis Maley, he responded by putting his geek poster in the press that was online and it really helped sell us.
You are always going to want to be specific about using your message.
What is so terrific about your library program, resource.
What is your objective?
Who do you want to reach?
Why is it newsworthy?
You will build a list of talking points and answer those important questions that Lance talked about earlier who, what, when, where, and why?
Put together a press kit with stats and anecdotes and visuals and select somebody on your team that will be a great spokesperson.
Hopefully somebody who can speak off the cuff and doesn't mind being in front of a camera.
Turning the Page, a great set of media reminders and tips to use.
Be sure to look there.
Be concise, persistent, enthusiastic.
I keep an updated list of media reporters and outlets and quality of interactions with them.
Some of them maybe you don't want to go back to.
Your individual passions, whether internal or external are huge.
You can get a great list of community leaders.
The OCLC site, and you can find great PR tips and campaign advice on the create awareness page.
Learn more about individuals that you interact with daily.
Whether it is your lunch server, or your volunteer, I learned that my local hairdresser, her daughter works at the local science center, and she is really passionate about educational programs.
So that helped us to find a new way to work together with them and this collaboration has led us further.
We have found that community service is a part of most professional athletes and larger corporations, which expect their staff to perform in this way.
And, so, we make the connection with them and we get this amazing free service from them.
So, show your enthusiasm as Mary Lou said, your passion.
Enthusias can be so contagious and it makes you a much better teacher and spokesperson.
You often learn when you help others, they're going to be more interested in helping you to collaborate, to fund raise and get to know you better.
Make it your mission to help others with their mission and remember every customer interaction is important and everyone can be an advocate.
We love the outreach opportunities.
But we don't send just the people that want to go out and give details about how many books we have.
Musicians from staff, crafters, programmers, story tellers.
Anyone a sense of fun or enthusiasm.
We loved having our local foundation president geek.
She geeks philanthropy and she has that poster in her office where the donors come and visit with her and ask her about it and what better place for them to have us in their mind.
Enable and facilitate new adventures and keep creating that awareness.
And I think my question for you all is what's the current community perception of your library?
Please share in chat and tell me.
>> Thank you, Ava.
A great question.
Interesting to see what our libraries look like through the eyes of our community and it can help direct our action.
We look forward to hearing from all of you.
What do you think?
What is the current community perception of your Library right now?
Thanks for your thoughts.
We will go ahead and move on to Cathay. 
>> Hello everybody.
I will advance the sign here.
I'm Cathay Keough, Delaware Division of Libraries and executive director of the Delaware Library association.
In Delaware, I have an opportunity to network with a wide variety of libraries and all different types of libraries.
Hearing Lance, Mary Lou, and Ava before me, I really, you know, want to reiterate that we're moving from identifying an advocacy goal, which can often be presented like in Lance's case, and then the planning and preparing of it with passion.
And we're really seeing this come up, the enthusiasm, and then creating and building awareness.
I thought that was excellent showing how that may happen in the take-aways of like the contests.
I am going to talk about how to encourage action and really generate participation.
And bringing that -- one of the things I saw even in chat is that in the comments, sometimes we feel kind of alone in what we're doing.
Especially when we're looking at the problems and thinking that it can be overwhelming, and as Mary Lou had mentioned, it is really, you know, not the size or if you are full-time or sometimes not even the number of people that you have, it's the enthusiasm and figuring out what you can do.
Your options.
So, my first slide is an appreciation for everyone in Delaware who has been supportive and actually nationally.
We all really represent each other.
We share with each other.
All of the people involved with the Library associations and PLA and Webjunction -- I mean, I could go on and on with the appreciation of all of us just collaborating on advocacy and helping each other and sharing ideas.
And even to go back to Andrew Carnegie, and this quote, too.
So, why would we want to advocate for libraries?
Why is it important?
I think that is really the foundation.
And personally I think it's because libraries are important to our communities and schools.
And that a free public library is essential to a functioning democracy.
It is foundation for our country.
Personal reasons why we are involved with libraries, whether we work in or for libraries and or use it for personal learning and enjoyment.
My journeys learning about library advocacy, one thing that stood out for me is the need to understand why our community members and potential advocates use our libraries.
I learned about my own story, why this was important to me.
And I wanted to learn why people within my community would find this important, too.
Asking questions like what is important to our communities?
Funders, stakeholders, about our libraries?
And I think the more that we can understand this, the more we connect on the value of our libraries to each person in our state and around us.
So, when I began to think about the education of future and existing advocates, I was considering how to share what I learned.
It was quickly obvious that everyone who worked in a library could benefit from Turning the Page.
It is not just those who work in our libraries.
Think about who you can reach out to in order to help them learn advocacy skills.
Who around you?
Who in your communities?
Who in your parking lots?
Or the stores that you frequent.
Who do you reach out to?
And Ava mentioned even her hairdresser.
I think we all talk to our hairdressers, too, about all of this and network. 
I think also stakeholders are everywhere.
And that, you know, one of the things that Turning the Page helped me with was to be prepared so that I had kind of a parking lot speech, you know, which was a development of like an elevator speech in my pocket.
And it was really a kind of an instant way to connect and network with somebody.
Really the advocacy plan gives you the confidence to be able to speak out and network and engage people.
And bring that enthusiasm into some kind of articulation.
So, one of the things that we learned about in Turning the Page is to find out who are our super-supporters and who are our probable supporters.
Can you share in chat who you think your essential stakeholders would be? 
And where do you find these stakeholders?
Where are they?
Go ahead and add them in chat here. 
Some of the messages, too, about what to share I think is really important.
So, I'm going to talk about my personal story here, and during a library event in which library staff and trustees, administrators, political supporters and friends often attend, it's called the Library Town Meeting, which we usually have biannually.
I was invited to share key elements of Turning the Page at one of them.
We mainly worked together on these four areas shown on the screen.
Many walked out of the day-long event, like a mini workshop, with a parking lot speech and most importantly confidence and ideas and enthusiasm for how to advocate for their libraries.
And these main keys to the plan were pretty essential for that.
Yeah, preschool moms I see some others coming up here.
That's true.
So, it was also my turn at this time to take a real live chance with my own parking lot speech and kind of put my own words into action.
I think that's the hardest part is that first step, is to say I can do this.
I can do this myself.
I wanted to practice what I had learned.
A candidate for state representation in our state legislature who was going door-to-door in my neighborhood.
He knocked on my door.
After our initial greetings, I asked him what he would do for libraries?
And he kind of hemmed and hawed for a moment and looking down and thinking and he looked me in the eyes and he said, well, of course, he would have a committee of people who would be knowledgeable about such things and they would advise him and he would get back to me.
Ah-ha, okay.
I gave him my parking lot speech and focused on what I thought would be good for him to know about this is what libraries have been doing for jobs.
Having some specific information there.
Also considering where he was coming from as a potential legislator, too.
So I talked about jobs, careers, life-long learning, for example.
Meanwhile, while that was going on, then we all kind of made a buzz behind the scenes, and when I say we, I talked to my boss and the state librarian and other people in my community, and we all kind of started buzzing about this, and the friends and trustees and supporters were talking about to one another about upcoming candidates and the upcoming election and we were sharing our encounters, and unifying our efforts in this way, too.
Sharing our information this way.
So we talked about what we could say to the candidates if they came.
And came back, you know, to our doors, and I mean think about this.
You know, I'm going to come back to this kind of question, too, like how you can create a buzz in your communities about this.
But it was really amazing, almost like the crowd sourcing idea where we were actually all working together in a concentrated effort.
And it really works.
When the candidate that came to my door returned for another round, close before election day, he said I never knew there were so many librarians in my district.
That was kind of funny and we all had a good laugh.
He had a much better understanding of libraries through his interactions and he also became a strong supporter because he saw how important this was to the members of his community.
Luckily he was elected and he is now in his second term.
And I think some day he may even run for governor.
His understanding about the importance of libraries really has grown.
We asked him to be a keynote speaker for our annual legislative day.
And he did that.
He's really been a champion for library legislation, including a bill to get a librarian in every public school in our state.
Really I think every supportive relationship we develop, every person we touch in positive way is another gem for library advocacyadvocacy.
This image, I love my library award winner of 2015.
One of the pictures is on the lower left corner, is one of our school librarians, too, and she won that award last year.
Ways that we network and represent each other.
The things that we do.
We just keep at it and keep each other motivated.
And it's really never ending.
We keep going on this.
Advocacy efforts don't end with one story of success.
We build on each other's successes.
We began Turning the Page with 1.0, version 1.0 and we will continue to learn with the new versions.
I love that it is available online now to everybody and anybody.
It gives us new ideas and new ways to promote libraries everywhere for the future and all of the future generations.
So, with that, I ask you how do you keep the buzz alive year round?
How do you do this yourselves? 
>> Cathay, thank you so much.
While the responses are coming in in chat to that question of how you keep the buzz alive, Barbara, I'm wondering if we can go to you.
I know chat has been really rich with lots of wonderful comments.
Is there anything, Barbara, that you would raise at this point as points that we should come back to later in the webinar? 
>> Barbara: Hi, yes, there were several amazing points made.
And I really appreciate everyone chiming in on their different experiences.
But I think one request that we really should think about and discuss is how we -- how we communicate that services are not free to us in the community. 
>> Thanks Barbara.
We will look forward -- we have seen some beginning responses about that in chat and we will look forward to hearing from others of you in chat throughout the rest of our webinar and maybe during our question and answer period at the end about how you communicate that important distinction about how libraries are funded and the fact that services that are seen as free actually have a cost associated with them.
Thanks for raising that, Barbara.
And we're also seeing some great responses come in about how you keep the buzz alive.
Social media, wow, one person posted in chat that they have over 6,500 followers, and, yes, it is really important to keep those channels vibrant.
Not just with news, but with fun things as well.
Cookies every Friday, and -- 
great ideas about keeping the buzz alive.
We look forward to hearing from all of you about how you keep the buzz alive.
How you keep generating engagement and with that we will move forward to Julie. 
>> Hi, I want to give you a back story about what our situation was.
The law under which our library was established was repealed in 1976.
We were grandfathered in -- the last step in the process was to secure voted funding, but because our original law had been repealed, if our funding proposal failed, our library would legally dissolve and close five days after the election.
Failing to advocate adequately for our library had some pretty significant penalties.
To put your mind at ease, we did pass with 68% of yes votes, all precincts -- it was a wild ride.
I want to talk about the nuts and bolts about how we got there.
So, one of the first things you want to do as Cathay mentioned, create your elevator speech.
You need to know your funding sources.
You want to create four to seven critical improvement list of things.
I say four to seven because what we publicize were four main ones.
We had a longer list of seven, every once in a while you will have somebody say you are asking for this big chunk of money, but those four items that is a lot more money than what you would need those for.
You want your key points, expand your hours, expand collections, replace computers and you want to talk about the bigger ticket items, going forward, thinking about the parking lot, roof, building, things like that.
You need to know your key library services and choose the one to tell that person that is in front of you -- you don't necessarily tell the business owner about story time.
You tell them about your business resources CHT you want to have an engaging real-life story about the impact of each key service.
My example that I like to use is about a time when I was working out at the information desk and I a young woman came in and visibly stricken, grieving, her face was red and had a two-year-old by the hand.
She came up to me and she said my father just passed away and I have to figure out how to explain this to my two-year-old.
Those are the kind of moments that you have every single day in your library.
But the public doesn't understand.
To us it is the cost of doing business.
What we do every day, part of our regular job.
I walked over to the children's department with this woman and found something with the two-year-old to do.
We went over the books together.
She wouldn't have gotten that from an internet search.
And those are the kinds of things that move the public.
When you're going to be doing this elevator speech, you need to practice, practice, practice.
My Labrador retriever knows more about -- if I can't keep his interest, you can't keep anybody else's interest so you need to keep moving and think about those things.
You need to empower other people with the same skill.
You cannot do this alone.
As Mary Lou pointed out, your passionate and other people are passionate, too, and you need to empower them with the tools and resources to do this exact same thing. 
For those people who are not comfortable with doing an elevator or parking lot speech, you want to create simple message and talking points.
Do four or five easy to remember key points.
Create a cheat sheet with one sentence answers to frequently asked questions about your situation.
You want to empower your library board, your staff, your friends of the library, library supporters throughout the community to carry this message for you.
And one of the things that sometimes you get tired of doing but you have to do, you need to repeat these talking points again and again and again.
Staff will especially get tired of hearing you say it.
But after a while, it gets into their heads and you will hear your words coming out of their mouths, and they're -- all they need is that empowerment and encouragement.
Sometimes they don't know the words to say.
They are excited and passionate about the library but you need to help them say the right things at the right times.
Professor in college, five repetitions for memory and 35 repetitions for mastery.
You just need to keep saying and saying it again -- one thing that is important -- 
Lance said, don't be afraid of a little opposition.
It rallies your supporters.
You need to be aware of the naysayers in the community and what they're saying about the Library like, but can have short upbeat responses prepared and teach them to library supporters.
If you have somebody in the community that you anticipate might be somebody that is not a library supporter.
You do what Lance did.
Find out who the people are and tell them your story and you try to turn them around and help them to understand why the library is important.
One thing to keep in mind, there can be a misconception, of course the library proposl will pass.
Who would vote against the library?
Two chances to go to ballot.
First chance we lost by 28 votes.
Supporters assumed it would pass.
We didn't go through these steps and didn't follow all of these suggestions and the educating of the community and advocating as we should have.
But on our second try, we did turn it around.
You want to connect with your community's thought leaders.
Geek campaign 18 months before the election.
That was the staff's project.
Five minutes before the election, separate grass roots community group rolled out a library yes campaign, led by a submarine captain and a Beloved pastor.
The pastor was a warm and friendly person that drew people in.
And those two together made this huge group of people that were advocates for this grass roots campaign. 
You want to brand your message.
As Ava pointed out, you want to make the materials available, resources to help people.
What you want to do is have your printed handouts and you want them on the web site and you want PowerPoints.
We had bundles of brochures attached with talking points.
We made those available at the library.
People could pick them up so that they could speak to the civic organizations they are attached to, homeowners associations, PTA groups.
It was simple and easy.
PowerPoints were available on the web site.
They could download those.
They had the resources they needed in order to be successful advocates.
As Lance said, you want to list your target audiences, but the most important part about your target audience is you need to personally invite them to help you.
Identify someone in each of those target audiences and go to them and say I know you're a library supporter.
Would you speak to your organization on behalf of the library and empower them with the resources that you have created. 
You want to identify ways to reach people.
Is that through web sites, E-blasts, list serves, social media, all of those different ways to reach the public.
It is not just a matter of brainstorming, but then a matter of identifying someone to handle each of those areas and that is what our grass roots library committee did.
Tagged a person who was responsible for working on social media, tagged a person responsible for updating their web site and things like that.
People in the community are passionate.
You just need to encourage them and empower them. 
And then just a few things to think about.
First of all, what percentage of your community would you estimate knows how the library is funded?
What percentage of the library staff knows how the library is funded?
And more importantly can they explain it?
And something that you will want to do is just sit down right after this is over and list five influential people in your community.
Which ones would help you promote the library?
How can you convince the others and who can help you convince the others?
Thing I would like to hear you share in chat, what is your parking lot response to we don't need libraries.
We have the internet.
That is something that we have to deal with everyday and it is important to know how you would respond to that. 
>> Julie, thank you so much for those wonderful examples and suggestions of how we can all generate engagement and this really valuable question that you have left us with.
We're really excited to hear from all of you in chat.
What do you think about this?
What would you say having had the opportunity to answer this question before or have you had the opportunity to think about it?
We don't need libraries, we have the internet.
How should we respond to that ?
Already starting to see some responses in chat and we look forward to seeing more.
Thank you so much.
So So, lots of fodder for us to think about and all of us to use the next time we see a chance to have these conversations, and we will move ahead now, Lance, over to you to talk about how we keep up with all of this great work. 
>> Lance: Hello everybody.
We have to keep this train running down the tracks.
We had success at the Kent District Library, the question is how do we maintain it?
You're never done.
Always new issues, new goals, new plans.
For instance, currently using lessons of Turning the Page in my role as the chair of the Michigan Library association legislative committee.
Working to end -- Michigan library millages -- I use these principles to be successful in conversations with my local legislators.
In fact, they are all library fans.
They are a part of the family.
I can't state enough how important this training is.
So, if the Kent District Library, we have trained all of the managers in Turning the Page.
Here is a picture of most of them.
We also have new managers coming in because of turnover and so on and so forth.
We're training all of the new managers on Turning the Page as well.
Currently flushing out a plan to train all of the professional staff because we feel it's necessary for our success to have all of our folks here, family members at KDL, to have the ability to talk to people about their passion and about the things going on here that are important to the library.
So, what else is next for us?
We're working on training the whole board to have them prepared and positioned to tell our story.
It's important that we continuously practice advocacy and to always know your environment.
Know your audience.
Speak to them.
Know what's important to them.
Speak to that.
And with that, I'll wrap it on up. 
>> Thanks so much, Lance.
Mary Lou is going to take it from here with a few more thoughts about sustaining that momentum.
>> Or what I like to call be unstoppable.
I don't want to downplay the challenges of advocacy.
I have been scrolling through the chat comments and I completely honor the challenges that you have before you.
Advocacy is challenging.
And yet I believe so strongly that it is one of the greatest challenges that face libraries today.
And because of that, I really feel like we need to embrace it and I think you will grow to enjoy it.
You know, I understand that with advocacy you're going to have to be out in the community and doing a lot of night meetings.
I understand how burnout can get to you.
We're not well paid but we have a lot of work on our plate.
Boards have very little time because they're busy as well.
As many of my colleagues mention, you have the naysayers and the downers and the no tax folks and so you have all of these challenges, but let me share something with you.
It took me eight years to develop a really solid working relationship with our local school district.
It was eight years of constantly being in front of them, going to the school board meetingmeetings, talking up the library, talking up how we're partners in education.
As the years went by and they saw what we did and proved what I said was true, we have this great partnership now and we do rely on one another and share resources and share facilities and we're the source for field trips and information, teacher support, parent support, child support.
If I had given up, I would not see the benefits of that today for our library and our staff would not be able to partner with the schools as well as we do today.
That is all because we made the time, and I'm going to throw it out there.
There is always time for advocacy.
Because you need to make it a priority.
To schedule it into your day.
To infuse it into everything that you do.
And mostly to have fun with it.
Because it is a great way to share the value of your library, impart the importance of libraries into your community.
As we have been talking about, to have opportunities to tell your Library's story.
We all have them.
Our patrons, as Julie was mentioning, our patrons have incredible stories as well and they have come through your door and we're fighting for them.
We're fighting for your communities.
In every instance, I, you know, ask yourself when you're about to embark on a new project or a new campaign as we're talking about today, who else needs to know about this?
And then let them know, invite them for coffee.
Get them as jazzed up about your ideas as you are.
These relationships that you build and develop will sustain you for years and years to come.
And believe me, it gets easier the more you do it.
You start to see the connections and the opportunities that are available to you in your library with every conversation that you have in the community.
But, you know, if you want to change the perception of libraries in your communities, you're going to need to expect more.
Expect more from yourself, and you can do this.
You can find the time for advocacy.
I promise you.
It's there.
You can find the time to work with your staff.
Expect more from your staff.
Set them free.
Let them try new things, like public speaking, for instance, they are a great resource for you and they will help you.
They will take some of that advocacy off of your hands.
If you train them, then the message goes to them and they're able to impart it to others.
Expect more from your board and your friends.
They want to help, but often they don't know how.
They don't know what to do, and they have limited time as many of you have mentioned in chat.
They have limited time so we have to give them the training and talking points and take a little bit out of each of your board meetings to talk about advocacy, to share advocacy tips to use some of these tools that we are mentioning here to work with your board and your friends' groups and develop them.
Give them the verbiage that they need to go out and be your supporters in the community.
Expect more from your community.
Be the change you want to see in library world.
Remember, be audacious.
Use the tools that we have here and customize them to your community.
They make you and your library look so professional, and people will pay attention.
Look at those geek posters.
They're awesome.
They highlight the folks in your community from the kids to the professionals, and they send a very powerful visual and people remember them.
They're up in their offices.
That's the gift that keeps on giving.
After this, the Geek the Library campaign ended, we held a serieses of communications and we came together to form a community group to create a more vibrant Wallkill.
Our library was the catalyst for this.
This organization is called the vision of Wallkill.
And it began with our library.
Out cropping of the Geek the Library program and that audacious behavior.
We went through promoting the library, now we wanted to take on the town.
With the help of community members and stakeholders that saw that, you know, the library is showing what can be done.
We are the heart of the community.
We're showing that we can practice what we preach.
So, they believed us.
And they came to these meetings and these community conversations began, and within one year, one year, we had created a summer concert and outdoor movie series as you see there.
We created a river walk to showcase our greatest natural asset, the Wallkill river.
A contest for our logo, that is up there and it is just lovely.
And at the end of the year, we developed a fall festival of events called wow, the weekend of Wallkill.
It all started with geeking that baseball stadium.
It began from those very beginnings and it gave us, because of consistent advocacy efforts, it gave us the ability and the confidence and the team.
We developed this team of supporters to go out and to develop a more vibrant community.
And with the library as the center.
So, with the library as the leader, we elevated the discussion.
We changed the community conversation, and if I can impart anything from our meeting here today is these tools really are powerful and they're powerful when you -- 
when you take them for all of the worth that they have, and they guide you through this incredible process that will take you to places that you never even -- never even imagined.
Never imagined a vision of Wallkill group coming out of the Geek the Library campaign.
That connection was just not even seen in the very beginning, but now it is such a clear path that we took to get there.
And because we were able to help people visualize what we imagined was possible.
We have to be able to give people a reason to pay attention to us as our library system director mentions here.
We don't tout ourselves enough or sing our praises enough or really show people out there in the community that we are vital and we are valuable and we are necessary and we are a library leaders, we are community leaders, and we have a seat at that table and we're taking it and we're running with it.
So be bold.
You can do this.
You can elevate the discussion.
Change the community conversation, and ultimately change your libraries forever. 
Let me leave you with this to think about.
What is one action that you could take today based on what you have learned from this webinar and all of these speakers that have shared their stories, what can you take from this today?
We would love to hear what you got from what we have shared with you.
Be bold.
You can do this.
>> Thanks so much, Mary Lou.
Thank you Lance for sharing these great ideas about how to keep it up.
As we look forward to hearing from all of you in chat about this one action, what's the one step you will take after -- 
you'll take today based on what you have learned?
That might be taking a look at the Turning the Page revised curriculum a little more closely.
That might be exploring the resources available on Webjunction.org, advocacy in action, or perhaps you want to share your own library story through the upcoming video contest that we will talk more about.
What is that action that you will take?
We look forward to hearing about it. 
We're ready now to move into more of our discussion and I would like to go to Barbara and ask if there are any questions that have been raised so far that you think we should start with.
>> Barbara: Hi everyone.
What I'm seeing is the perception of libraries and what we're learning from all of the presenters here and addressing how we can get to the heart of changing those perceptions. 
>> That's an excellent point.
We would love to hear your thoughts and questions -- 
thoughts and responses to that in chat.
If any our panelists have responses to that as well. 
>> I would love to chime in on that if I might.
I just really feel, as I mentioned, that it begins with you.
If you can change your perception that the library is a community leader, that it is a vital and vibrant center of the community, then your passion will carry on.
Your passion will help others to change the perception of libraries.
You are a really strong motivator in that department.
>> Thanks Mary Lou.
Barbara, another question that I saw in chat was what, for our panelists, what would you say to a staff member who may have many layers between themselves and upper administration within their library and they want to take an action towards advocacy, but they might feel intimidated?
What would you say to someone in that situation? 
>> Gosh, I feel like I'm doing the I'm the only one talking.
May I chime in on that as well?
I just think your staff is such an incredible resource of talent and unless you give them the opportunities and the permission to step outside of their comfort zone, you will never know the skills that they have to share.
And I have been amazed over and over and over again with our staff in just giving people I never thought would get up in front of a group the opportunity to do so.
People I never thought would want to go talk to community organizations or the seniors group.
You know, just giving them that permission.
And letting them know that you support them and that you will give them the tools and the training and the time to work on this, I think, really goes a long way with your staff.
>> I agree with you, Mary Lou.
This is Cathay.
I think from a staff's point of view, if I was a staffperson and feeling kind of alone in wanting to do something, but not knowing how to approach my administratorsadministrators, you know, it kind of depends on your situation.
But I would probably want to learn more.
So, I would say I would probably take the initiative and look through the Turning the Page materials first and gather the information myself for my own self-advocacy and then be able to, you know, kind of point out or identify who I could approach as one of my administratoradministrators, maybe somebody under the person that could really make the decision and running it by themment and that way it is kind of a practice situation, but it also begins the advocacy itself.
But not to be afraid.
You know, I think as what Mary Lou has said and others, you know, step outside of the box and take the professionalism with you, but to take the risk of trying it and seeing.
Another really supportive way to go about this is through your state's library association, too, and I think library associations can really be helpful. 
>> Hi, this is Barbara.
I really agree with Cathay.
Don't be afraid.
You certainly want to respect the chain of command, but do not be afraid to continuously, you know, share ideas and try many different ways to get to, you know, whoever needs to hear the message in administration.
There is a lot of different ways to be creative.
You can ask questions.
Don't ever be afraid and don't give up.
>> This is Ava.
I think I'm really fortunate.
I have an amazing staff that constantly bring me wild and crazy ideas that I probably never would have conceived of five, 10 years ago that kind of thing.
One of the things that we did was make sure that everybody knows that we don't expect everything to be a full success.
We can learn something from each of the things.
And also that working together, bringing all of those different passions together often creates something quite amazing, and, you know, celebrate each of those successes along the way, and from the staff's perspective, I think putting it into a manageable format that you can offer it to administration, you know, that they're just as busy as you are.
That they can, you know, from the executive summary, see very quickly that you have invested a lot of time and effort and that you have something very valuable to share that could save them money, time, effort, or create better awareness.
Put it in something though that, you know, you can hand to them.
It doesn't have to be all shiny and glittery, but it does have to be something that you can discreetly package out in one cookie format at a time. 
>> Thanks Ava.
Barbara, were there other questions that you were seeing come through in chat for the panelists or for you?
>> Well, for discussion, we talked a lot about going around staff that are going to be resistent to innovation and change.
And I think that Mary Lou especially has shared a lot of really interesting ways to go around, but I would also like us to talk about staff engagement.
How can we, instead of going around, work with the staff that we have to really promote staff engagement, whether that is, you know, promoting, you know, from an executive point of view, whether to promote supervisor training.
Another participant talked about hiring for someone who is a good advocate.
But setting the page so that we can promote that staff engagement from within.
>> You know, Barbara, this is Mary Lou.
One of the ways that we have worked on here is through practicing extreme customer service.
And that is a great bit of advocacy in and of itself.
We have -- I am not in front at the circ desk as much as my staff is.
I really -- I listen to them and what they are -- what they are dealing with and also empower them to make decisions and to see what they would like to do to expand in their role, in their position, and by practicing extreme customer service, basically that is just really going out of your way to work with the library members as they come in the door and engage them in conversations and that has been an empowering thing to the staff because they have learned so much from library members and guests as they come in, just by going that extra mile and engaging them in conversation and finding out more about them and what their needs are and it is a great opportunity right there on the spot to talk about the value of libraries.
That conversation that they're finding so valuable would not happen if the staff person did not take that extra step.
And, so, you know, it is -- 
having that as a protocol, you know, you really do go the extra mile.
But show -- they understand what the value of that is, and they also understand they're respected and honored for doing that, and taking that step and then sharing what they learned from the library members how we can provide better -- a better program for the next folks that walk in the door.
So, they're integral to all of this.
>> One of the things we use at the Kent District Library when we run into naysayers and people that have concerns.
A lot of times it is important to realize that a lot of this is driven by fear.
We feel it is important to meet with them and talk through that.
It is not necessarily true that everybody can go with the same level of passion and enthusiasm and get out there in front of everybody and be the champion.
What we can do is make it more manageable to them.
Start with small things and build on that.
But it is really, really important to first talk with them and find out what's going on and then try to work through that and address that.
Again, I really feel that a lot of the naysayers, it really comes down to fear.
And it is important to address that fear.
Thank you so much. 
>> Thanks, Lance.
Any other comments about how to work with colleagues who might be resistent to change or not wanting to take some of the steps that we talked about today? 
Those are great thoughts that we have heard already.
I want to go for a moment over to Mary Hirsh.
Do you have other comments or thoughts based on what you have heard on the webinar today and more specifically about Turning the Page?
>> I thought the webinar was great.
I am ready to go out and advocate.
Everybody was inspiring.
A question did come through about how PLA is planning to support the revised Turning the Page curriculum.
We are having an internal conversation right now about an informational webinar, something similar to this that would go a little bit deeper about how somebody could get the content and model for them to implement it.
I would imagine that will happen mid-fall.
Keep an eye out.
It will be on the PLA regular communications channels and of course I will work with Anna to get the information out to everyone on this webinar.
The content is brand new.
It just got released a month and a half ago or so.
We are working on our plans for it.
Stay tuned. 
>> Thanks, Mary.
And this is Anna.
One other question that I saw come through in chat was how the library can employ being seen in the community as just one other organization with your handout.
Any of our panelists have thoughts to speak up on that or participants in chat? 
I think it is important to distinguish that the library is different.
In Kent County -- if you add up the visits for all other cultural institutions, we still beat them.
We have the highest visitation and we're touching the most people.
You know, we can go to the fact that we're transforming lives here.
And doing profound things.
We are helping children, people find jobs, and all of these critical things and entertaining people.
And I think it is important to distinguish, the library is different.
It is different.
Important to distinguish that the library tax is different.
I think that is what it is all about.
Don't be afraid to talk about return on investment.
Don't be afraid to talk about where the dollars are going.
Don't be afraid to share anecdotes like Julie's about this mother and her child.
I think that is how you do it.
You tell your story.
>> I agree, Lance.
I think also like in Delaware, we have been working hard on gathering data about, you know, how effective we're being in the different programs that we're offering and then being able to easily, you know, gather that data and share that data and have that at the fingertips of everybody that needs it.
We're all advocates.
I think collaborating on gathering data, making that easy to do, and showing the value of it, where is it headed?
It takes a little time, but when you get started and you actually start seeing it coming in and going, wow, we do all of those things, as well as collecting the stories.
I think the stories are really important, too.
But it kind of depends on the audience, you know, and people have talked about earlier how it really comes from, you know, it starts with us.
Within.
And then maybe our colleagues around us, our staff or administrators, and then it extends out into our funders, our potential funders and stakeholders and so on.
It really -- the more that we have at our fingertips, I think the easier it is to show the uniqueness of the library as a center of the community.
As I mentioned, it is really a foundation of democracy.
We serve everybody equally.
That's one very rare thing.
We're a non-commercial place for people.
So, it's really amazing.
Just those things there are amazing. 
Thanks for those additional thoughts.
We are moving towards the end of our time together.
We have just a few final thoughts to share as we wrap up today as we hope that you have seen both Turning the Page and advocacy in action share the same goal, to increase library funding and support.
And there are endless ways that you could consider digging into these resources and using them together.
It's really up to you to make it work based on what your needs are.
A couple of ideas of different paths you could follow.
One possible path would be to look at Turning the Page and complete that training, if you haven't yet, to build essential skills.
And then keep up your momentum once you have created that foundation of skills by applying them through a library awareness campaign, such as Geek the Library, which the advocacy in action resources will walk you through.
Another path might be to start by planning a library awareness campaign, modelled after geek and document your campaign plan using the tools available on Turning the Page, the advocacy action plan workbook.
You could use that workbook to help you identify gaps where you think you need to brush up on critical skills as you begin to embark on the library awareness campaign and turn to the Turning the Page curriculum to help you do that.
We look forward to hearing from all of you about how you are using the curriculum and we want to also make sure that you know that there are opportunities for you to share and highlight your wonderful advocacy successes.
We would love to have you submit your success story as a video to a contest that PLA and OCLC are sponsoring this summer for U.S. libraries.
We invite your 60-second video submissions about your advocacy success and those videos are due by September 14th.
We will look forward to seeing those come in.
And the top three submissions, top three winning videos, your library will win an Roku streaming stick that you can use locally.
So, we really look forward to seeing your videos and hearing about your advocacy successes and on behalf of Mary Hirsh and the Public Library Association, as well as Webjunction, we want to sincerely thank all of the presenters and moderators.
We want to thank all of you who took the time to join today's webinar.
The ideas and questions that you shared, they were fabulous comments.
As you log off, you will receive a short survey.
We encourage you to fill that out.
We appreciate your feedback and it helps us improve for the future.
We will be adding a discussion option to the archives for this webinar.
If you have additional questions or suggestions or discussion, please, we really welcome you to chime in there on that discussion thread. 
That discussion thread will be available later today.
And we just want to thank everyone again so much.
And we wish you all really wonderful success with your incredible advocacy work that you're already doing and you will be doing in the future.
Good luck everybody.
Thank you, and goodbye.