Stories Speak Louder than Numbers: Making the Case for Youth Services

As a publicly funded institution, a public library makes the majority of its money not by selling products or services, but through the allocation of public funds based on the support and the needs of the community it serves. Simply put, if a library isn't well-supported by the community and those who dictate the budgets of that community, it may be one of the first services to be cut. On the other hand, if a library is well-supported, then a library and its services thrive. In other words, the way a public library makes its money is through support at all levels, from government officials to community members and this can only be done through making sure all stakeholders know about not only the numbers, but the heartfelt impact of library services.

How can make sure others know about the real impact of what we do as librarians and specifically Youth Services? Well, this session is all about supplementing statistics with real stories that give heart to those numbers. There were three presenters who represented a small-sized library, a medium-sized library and an Everyday Advocacy Member Content Editor.

Hanna Lee from the Batesville Public Library spoke on valuation and advocacy in a small, rural library. In terms of valuation, her library is moving towards incorporating outcomes in addition to outputs. Outputs are numbers such as circ stats or program attendance, and outcomes are the changes in knowledge, skills, behavior or status. For advocacy, she built relationships with the local government officials and council members, along with doing outreach to community groups that served youth. By building these relationships, they were able to get those groups to also advocate for the library. Telling a good story that shows the value of the library while in the language of the overall municipal goals was very successful for her.

Nina Lindsay from the Oakland Public Library spoke about her experience from a mid-sized library. She gave some examples of personal stories from patrons about their experiences with their services. Stories are a great way to leverage funding in addition to outputs, and relationships. These stories can communicate value and worth.

The last presenter was Jenna Nemec-Loise who presented on everyday advocacy. She got philosophical with it and spoke about Aristotle's rhetorical Triangle.

A good story should take into consideration these three points, as we must considered who are are speaking to and this will change the way we speak and the message we convey. Stories should also be real, relevant, and resonant. Ineffective library stories are static, one-dimensional, and identical.

Here are also five tenets of everyday advocacy that can help when crafting a library story:

• Be informed (know your audience and why you are telling the story)
• Engage with your community (collect impact statments, build a database of stories like Wess is doing)
• Speak out (have an elevator speech and use value-based language)
• Get inspired (Generate excitement by inviting participation of staff, board, adminsitration, volunteers, etc)
• Share your advocacy story (Tell the story of your story, show others how you did it)

All in all, this session was a great reminder of how much of an impact a good story can be when making the case for Youth Services and Library Services in general. If there is one thing I've learned working here at RCLS is that branding is very important! Stories are a great way to create that feeling behind the brand and it's much like what Maya Angelou said, "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."