Susan Waldon

According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition, an entrepreneur is “a person who organizes, operates and assumes the risk for a business venture”. Strong libraries require library professionals to take on entrepreneurial roles in advocacy, marketing, grant writing and other communications. I have seen this clearly in the differences between the library system in the county in which I work and the library system of one of the adjoining counties. Wake County, North Carolina libraries are strong, have recently built or refurbished nearly all their 22 locations and have a huge budget for resources. This growth is due to our Library Director being an extremely good advocate for libraries with the County Commissioners and marketing that pulls people into the libraries. Good communication in the form of displays and in-house marketing for programs and resources, plus an emphasis on customer service, keep people coming back. The people of Wake County use their libraries heavily and we have the numbers to prove it. Therefore, the Library Director nearly always gets his proposed budget and voters pass bond referendums that benefit libraries.

 

In contrast, we make a great many non-resident cards for residents of Franklin County even though there is an annual fee for a Wake County card. Franklin County has historically been more rural, without a large, well known university or the state capitol to draw people. Franklin County residents often complain about their small, poorly stocked libraries when they pay the annual fee to use Wake County Libraries. There is a demand for good library services that has not found an able advocate with the Franklin County Commissioners, who, to be fair, may just not have the funds to adequately support their library system. I have started to encourage Franklin County residents to also get and use a library card in their home county so that their librarians will have evidence of interest to present to the Commissioners with their proposed budget. With a bigger budget they could enhance their web presence and their collections and start to increase demand for their services which would provide more grounds for the county to finance library services.

 

Despite having observed how important advocacy, marketing and other communications are for libraries, I have not actually done much of it in my coursework. In LIS 610, Collection Management, the group with which I worked developed a wonderful presentation asking for funds for specific collection projects for a hypothetical library. This library was based on the demographics of Siler City, North Carolina, which has a white minority and is almost 45% residents of Hispanic heritage. In our presentation for the “Similar City Library”, we asked for funding for online homework help and

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

learning, the American Mosaic Database, a graphic novel collection, ABC backpacks, Makey STEM activities, and a sewing and knitting STEAM kit. I made the slides having to do with the American Mosaic databases. Also, in LIS 610, I wrote a memorandum asking for library funds from a government grant Title 1 grant to an elementary school at which only 1 in 10 students were reading on grade level. In the memorandum, writing as Angie Sutton, Media Specialist, I detailed how I would spend those funds primarily on Time for Kids® Nonfiction Readers kits. These kits contained 6 copies

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

of 15 different non-fiction titles on topics of interest to elementary aged children. The kits came with interactive ebooks of each title with embedded audio (helpful to struggling readers and ESL students) plus lesson plans for each title. Each kit could be split into 15 smaller kits that teachers could be using with reading groups, thus supporting many classrooms at once. Best of all, nonfiction titles are still of interest to older students reading on a lower level, are emphasized in the Common Core Curriculum, and really needed to be updated in Angie’s ageing collection. Because it is easier to get fiction than nonfiction in other ways, I asked that the remaining money be used to further update the nonfiction collection with levelled readers that students could borrow and share with their families.

 

In LIS 663, Services for Young People, we learned that often the people who could most benefit from library services don’t come to the library. Our teacher encouraged an entrepreneurial spirit that took library services outside the library walls or that came up with original programming to draw people into the library. In that class, I helped to collaboratively design a teen program related to getting a summer job. The program, called “How to $eek a $ummer Job for Teens”, would almost certainly bring new teens into the library if properly marketed outside the library walls.  Our program included information about common types of summer employment, labor laws, and how to get a youth work permit. Then we shifted gears and put the teens on computers with a resume template to begin writing their resume. After about 20 minutes, we would have the teens email the beginning of their resume to themselves and settle in with popcorn to watch two funny YouTube videos that also contain great interviewing tips.  We would send the teens off with a list of commonly asked interview questions and the assurance that they could come back for help with the job-hunting process.

 

The one bit of entrepreneurship I have attempted as a part of my coursework was to try to organize a way to close a digital divide for my Community Informatics class. I am in the midst of trying to get teen volunteers to help our church members with the church app. It is hard to gauge how much buy-in I am getting for the project or how successful it will be. I hope that we will have more people being able to take advantage of the app, some great intergenerational interaction, and teens happy to have an hour of community service for school or National Honor Society.

 

Advocacy and marketing are weaker areas of my job-related experience as well. I did contact representatives and senators when it looked like the federal government would reduce IMLS funding, and I do some minimal marketing in my role as library assistant, mainly making displays and suggesting programs to patrons when I am talking to them. But in our library system I would have to be a librarian to have even a little latitude to do marketing or outreach. That is why I decided to pursue an MLIS. It is required in our system to apply for a job with any kind decision-making opportunity. With experience and opportunity, I look forward to growing into an entrepreneurial leader. The work that libraries do in helping people pursue interests, dreams and goals is so important that we should use all the ingenuity, initiative and imagination we possess to create an environment where people are excited enough about libraries to support them for the future.

 

References:

 

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Ed. (2018). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Print.