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An all-day American Library Association Advocacy Institute at the 2008 Philadelphia Midwinter meeting was stimulating, and I highly recommend it. I wish now I had attended this continuing education event sooner, but when I thought of "advocacy" I thought of "legislators," and I find politics not only dull but intimidating. Happily, the Institute focuses on the whole definition of advocate, as in moral and financial as well as political "support." Ideas in the included workbook and manual helped me realize that my director and other colleagues sow many seeds to advocate for the library, and have been for years. A few examples: friends of the library programs are scheduled at least monthly and advertised to a mailing list several thousand strong; library instruction is included in all first-year experience (Cit 101) classes; library instruction faculty teach their own sections of Cit 101; and the President of the college spoke to the legislature this winter in favor of continued funding for statewide library database subscriptions. In late March I got wind of a major academic department's efforts to find more book money; even if it is not immediately successful, it is a comfort to know the library is being discussed positively outside the library.
In my workbook for the Institute I tried to diagram a proposal to establish an endowment for database purchases and/or subscriptions. As I doodled, I realized that the model we have, featuring two endowment funds for books, works very well and expanding on it might be the best way to free up allocated money for databases. A huge plus for our endowments is that they are not "use it or lose it," so we can purchase books throughout the fiscal year. Our current endowments cover six disciplines (history, English, political...