I ran across this page on the Services to Schools portion of the National Library of New Zealand website and liked their student centered approach to advocacy. Their point about being able to measure the effectiveness of the library program is well worth considering. Look at this info on finding out what the students want -

Surveying students on their attitudes toward reading at the beginning and end of a year / unit can be a useful way to:

• Measure the effectiveness of your library programmes
• Provide positive information for your library report and help you advocate for the library
• Give you and your teachers information about who to target for reading extension and intervention

When I started looking at what else they had to offer I decided I just had to share it with all of you. I hope you can find time to dig through and find the gems of useful info!

Here's a blog to follow. School Library Journal is providing this column/blog called Make Some Noise: Insights and Strategies for Advocating for Your Library. So what are you going to do to bring some attention to your library? Here's some ideas -

• Participate in Snapshot Day. Pick a day soon and record the day's activities in pictures and with statistics and most importantly, comments from your patrons.
• Submit an article to your school newsletter.  Don't worry about getting on the budget bandwagon. Just let people know what great things are happening in the library. And don't forget to publicly thank folks who helped out last month...for Love of Reading activities perhaps.
• Host a contest or competition. Have a bookmark competition. Have a 'who read the most books' competition, based on the number of reviews submitted. Have a Famous Women in History poster contest.
• Invite public figures to come visit, to come judge your contest, to come read to students.

These are just a few....don't hesitate to offer suggestions for more ways to advocate!

Please extend our thanks to all of those who took the time to sign the Carl Harvey's  petition to the administration at the White House website in support of School Library Programs.  They received the necessary 25,000 signatures on February 4th, 5 days before the deadline!  I was amazed at all the various directions I was receiving email requests for help. Not only fellow school librarians but librarians from other types of libraries, vendors of all sorts and professionals in other fields. It certainly feels good to know we are valued!

I hope those of you with teenage patrons are gearing up for Teen Tech Week, March 4-10, 2012. For more information check out YALSA's Geek Out@Your Library page.