Advocacy: This is something I have not had to do much of as an academic librarian. However, I think it is going to be increasingly important when the tuition fee rise hits next year. Where I work, we are currently going through an implementation process for a reading list management system and I am putting together a report on it and detailing where we are at the moment with regard to reading list management and why we need to have it. This is all so that, if we need to, we can justify to senior management the financial commitment that it is going to entail. I feel this is something we are going to have to start to do more and more here, in order to justify our existence and how we can help the students. One thing that may help is that the subject librarians here are going to get membership of academic programme committee's, this should help to raise our profile and ensure that we can get the message out about what the library is doing.
I do feel I should be doing more with regards to public library advocacy. I have used public libraries since I was a small child and feel very strongly that they are undervalued as a resource and looked upon as an all too easy target when it comes to cutting council funds. I have done something though. I signed and sent a WI petition regarding library closure's round to all my friends a few weeks back and I am a regular user of my local public library.
Getting published: I guess this blog is the nearest thing I have got so far to being published. (if you don't count my adaptation of a story in the middle school magazine, circa 1982). I guess at the moment I don't feel I have enough to say about something to make an article out of it but we shall have to see what happens, maybe when I have more experience under my belt.
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