One Voice
STRENGTHENING OUR TLA LIBRARY ECOSYSTEM By Dorcas Hand IT IS TOO EASY to get completely involved in our own piece of the library pie, our silo, whether we are serving a K-12 school population, a public library, a community college or university, a genealogy or archival library, or a corporate setting. All of our siloed skills are important to our patrons every day – but with collaboration across library types, our skills serve every patron throughout life. The structure of the Texas Library Association (TLA) demonstrates the existence of a Texas Library Ecosystem. All of us who are members have the bond of the same library science degree or certification training even though we work in different kinds of libraries with an even bigger variety of subspecialties. That is One Voice in action. I began to learn about advocacy here in Texas with TLA, but much of my experience leading advocacy efforts has come at the national level and at the local Houston level. That exposure led me to an interesting opportunity. In Winter 2018, I was asked to chair an American Library Association (ALA) Task Force to develop an Ecosystem Toolkit. The task force was overseen by the ALA Committee on Library Advocacy (COLA), a group that serves some of the same functions as the TLA Legislative/Advocacy Committee. The task force developed a toolkit that we hope is useful to state and regional library legislative and advocacy efforts across the country. One Voice: Building a Strong Library Ecosystem was released in October and introduced to the world in a webinar on Oct. 29 (linked on the web page). Please dig in – there is much of interest even in a state that already has a coordinated and reasonably successful
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ecosystem effort in play. The One Voice Continuum offers this definition: “A library ecosystem is the interconnected network of all types of libraries, library workers, volunteers, trustees, friends, foundations, and associations that provide and facilitate library services—for communities; K–20 learners; college and university communities; local, state and federal legislatures and government offices; businesses; nonprofits; and other organizations with specific information needs. A patron of one library is the potential patron of any other library at a different time of life or in a different location. No library exists independent of the library ecosystem and, when we stand together in mutual support using common messaging themes that demonstrate this interconnectedness, every library is stronger.” One Voice envisions reaching these audiences together: “This ecosystem effort is intended to build internal relationships among all types of libraries and their leadership/professional organizations for the purpose of strengthening advocacy to a broad range of audiences including: federal—Congress, regulators; state—legislature, boards, commissions; local—county commission, city council, governing boards, institutional leadership, Chambers of Commerce, other associations; and individual—voters, stakeholders.”
