HSLI President, Fran Kovach, M.L.I.S, is the reference and education librarian at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine.
What a mild Illinois winter this year, and the spring season is here to greet us!
Next week, during National Library Week, April 8-14 we have opportunities to demonstrate the value of libraries in our institutions and communities. If you need ideas for your event please read “How to Plan a Special Event to Promote the Library”, by Kennedy, Joy C. Journal of Hospital Librarianship, 11 3 : 261-268. This article is listed in the HSLI member publications section, http://hsli.org/publications/index.shtml on our website. If you have any recent publications, paper or poster presentations to add to the bibliography, please contact Stacey Knight-Davis at cfslk@eiu.edu.
Illinois Library Day is an advocacy effort of the Illinois Library Association to meet with legislators to convey the value of having libraries in the community. This year, our legislative committee co-chairs, Michael Wold and Eric A. Edwards are participating in Illinois Library Day, April 18 in Springfield. For the last two years during Illinois Snapshot Day, data was collected to show the value of libraries making an impact in our communities and institutions. Informing lawmakers of our value helped with funding libraries.
In the ongoing theme of making a compelling argument for the value of your library, the Metropolitan Detroit Medical Library Group (MDMLG) published Reports and Statistics: Communicating the Value of Hospital Libraries and Let’s Get Visible: Marketing the Medical Library. Never before have librarians and information professionals been more important than now.