Advocacy Toolkit

Find ideas to inspire, incite, and engage your community about your library. Also find practical suggestions on how to get this done.

General (soup-to-nuts) guides

Advocacy University (ALA)
Library Advocacy Unshushed (University of Toronto’s 7-week course, archived at EdX)
The Small but Powerful Guide to Winning Big Support for Your Rural Library (ALA)
Your Voice Counts (ilovelibraries)

Shareable library advocacy material

Libraries Transform (ALA)
Real Stories (ilovelibraries)

Keep up with hot topics

Advocacy and Issues (ALA)

Get your message out there

Tips for press releases that get noticed from Shelly Angers, Public Information Officer for the NH Dept. of Cultural Resources:

  • Remember to keep the who, what, where, when and why in the first paragraph
  • Keep in brief! 1-2 sentence paragraphs and the whole thing should be 300-500 words
  • Target media that covers your area
  • Read newspapers! Writing a good press release comes down to understanding a certain type of literacy. If you want a newspaper to pick up a story, you’ll do better if your press release is written like a news story. The less work editors have to do, the better they like it.

Have a suggestion for a library advocacy resource? Let us know, contact Mary Cronin, NHLA Advocacy Committee Chair.