We are Terrible at Communicating Who We Are, What We Do, and Why-- Make a Commitment to Do Better in 2025

As the working days for 2024 begin to wind down, I wanted to start preparing all of you for my annual posts (coming the first full week of January) assessing my own goals from 2024 and looking forward to the goals I will be setting for 2025. Each year, the goal of those posts is to set an example for all of you. To remind you how important it is to take a moment to look back at the year that was before rushing headlong into a new year.

I am also actively working on the 2024 iteration of my Keeping Up With Books Year in Review webinar. This year it will once again be with NoveList and Yaika Sabat in February 2025. You can click here to read about the 2023 version.

Today I have a goal I think all of us need to consider adding to our 2025 to-do lists, and it is one I talk about every time I give my Actively Anti-Racist Service to Leisure Readers presentation. We are terrible at communicating what we do and why we are important. People outside the library world do not understand how important our work is. They don't even know that we don't just order every single book. And they especially are unaware of the care and professional training it take to craft a collection and serve the public. How we carefully add and subs track titles to make our collections shine. It is one of the main reasons why there are factions that have been undermining us, without much resistance. 

To that end, I want all of you to take a moment as we move from one year to the next and really think about how you are going to communicate your worth and articulate exactly what we do throughout 2025. I want you to start speaking out about how great we are BEFORE people try to attack you. I want you to do it in 2025 but then keep doing it, on a regular basis going forward.

Library workers too often are uncomfortable bragging about themselves (best case) or are afraid to sp-eak out for fear of retaliation by book banners (worst case).

To this I say-- GET OVER IT.

We have not prioritized telling our story. We have ALWAYS let others define us. And when we do try to advocate for ourselves we do stupid things like tell people are services are free. THEY ARE NOT FREE. EVERYONE HAS PRE-PAID FOR THEM.

I have discussed the harmful nature of this messaging many times before, both in my live training programs and here on the blog. Please read that post and fix your language. In fact, I would argue that as part of this commitment to prioritize communicating who we are and what we do--  you should go out of your way to work the "prepaid" language into every interaction you have with people. Again, I have a full post to help you. Use my words. I am fine with that. It's why I write this blog. It gives you no excuse to start being better at communicating.

Speaking of this blog and using my words, on 12/30 I will have a post about my most popular posts of the year, but here is a teaser because it is about communicating what we do. My most popular post of the year was a guest essay by my colleague Misha Stone entitled: Why Libraries Need to Stop Saying “More Than Books” by Misha Stone.

This is all part of the larger-- we are terrible at communicating problem, yes, but I feel like you all know that this is a problem (even though you haven't helped solve it) because you clicked on it so much. So I see this as me helping to nudge you to do the work you know you need to do already.

Again, click here to read Stone's post and use her words to improve your communication and stop the cycle of poor, even harmful, communication. 

But this is not a "Becky is the only person who can help you" post. I also have three very good suggestions for you to use to help you to be proactive in your communication of who we are and what we do.

The first is this article from VOX-- a non-library outlet explaining, very well, what librarians do in the most basic way. It is not perfect, but it gives the general public a sense of everything we do and for such little money (because that is how it ends). Often we forget that the public doesn't know even the most basic things about how their public library works. This piece, not only comes from that place of starting with an assumption that the reader knows nothing, but also it is written in a conversational style that draws the average person in. It is a great entry point to beginning the conversation with our patrons and communities, one we can add to.

The second is this study-- "Libraries & Well-Being: A Case Study from The New York Public Library" Available for free, here is the text from the introduction: 

By Daphna Blatt & Dr. E.K. Maloney, The New York Public Library
Dr. James O. Pawelski & Dr. Katherine N. Cotter, University of Pennsylvania

In today’s society, libraries stand out as among the last truly public institutions. Providing access to resources without financial, social, or physical barriers, public libraries make a unique contribution to promoting individual and collective flourishing throughout the communities they serve.

The New York Public Library’s Strategy and Public Impact team and the Humanities and Human Flourishing Project at the University of Pennsylvania's Positive Psychology Center have released a new report as part of an ongoing collaboration to study and advocate for the role of public libraries in the communities they serve. 

There is much here that you can use to "advocate for the tole of public libraries in the communities they serve." NYPL understands that we all need to do better and in the spirit of library collaboration, they, as the largest public library system in America, took it upon themselves to lead and provide all of us with the information we need.

The third is from Kelly Jensen and is part of her Literary Activism series (every post of which is super helpful, but baby steps). This specific post is entitled "How to Explain Book Bans to Those Who Want to Understand."

This post is important for 2 reasons:

1. It is reminder that we don't spend enough time communicating to those who already like us and use us about what we do. We are so focused on countering the bad actors and how they twist what we do and message it way better than we do. We are not going to change their minds. We have lost them. But good news, the vast majority of American like us. We need to speak to them directly. We need to explain ourselves to those who want to understand.
2. Book bans and censorship in general are the issues whose escalation to terrifying levels-- that we bear some of the blame in. Wait, wait?!?!? Becky, we are trying to stop the book banners. Why are you accusing us of making them happen in larger numbers. Well, quite frankly, our inability to constantly communicate what we do, why we do it, and why it is important in a free, democratic society plays a large part in this issue. If we had been out in front of communicating our worth and explaining ourselves to the general public-- for you know, the century plus we have existed-- we would not be in as bad a shape as we are now. Just think about all of the times in the past when a dumpster of weeded books was photographed somewhere and people went all angry on how we throw out books. We have never solved that problem. It still happens. AND IT IS OUR FAULT. We have never gotten in front of  the weeding controversies-- not even to our supporters. And now.... book bans are the next step.

Use Jensen's article to help you do better on this major issue-- both be proactive and speaking to our known supporters. Use all of the information here today as well. Use it to craft a plan for your library in 2025. Commit to communication.

Back tomorrow and the 27th with some final best of the year lists.