Can you be a Gaebler?

Be one or be out of business!

As a noun, a Gaebler is a person who is able to succeed even though the odds are against him or her. I think you could say that handicapped athletes are Gaeblers; or cancer survivors, or even premature babies. But you can also use the term as a verb: it means to persevere and succeed especially when others don’t think you can. Gaebler not only personifies the plight of the underdog, but is also used to denote action!

So how does Gaebling relate to rural librarianship?

In your small or rural community what do you think your odds of survival are? Is your library able to go the distance and face the years ahead financially and technologically? Have you secured the hearts of your residents through an emotional connection with your staff, your services and your story? Do you have the attention and dedication of the influentials in your community who can provide and promote necessities for your continued existence?

As a librarian, if you’re not Gaebling, the answer to all of the above is “No,” and your odds of survival are less than none.

What you need is direction for getting personal.

Do you know that philanthropy giving has increased every year by 6 or 7%? Do you know that 82% of all philanthropy is given by individuals? And that traditionally, library donors are usually older people? Do you know that the largest challenge to fundraising success is negativity or fear? And that effective advocacy is the heart of fundraising?

So how do you stay in business?

The first rule for creating a successful campaign is to create an idea in which you believe. Nobody wants to support a looser, so the Gaebler needs to create a strong and consistent personality for his/her library through the staff and the services. Part of the objective should be to create a fundraising staff within your library and promote fundraising programs which are always in line with your community needs. Your library services should adapt to the relevant needs and interests of your community, and your staff must be approachable, reasonable and supporting.

Fundraising is a science.

Because the flavor of your board has the potential to make or break your library, recruit members who know former elected officials; who are not necessarily book lovers, but rather, movers and shakers; not necessarily library users, but Civic minded influential, philanthropic individuals.

Make sure you focus on retaining loyalty.

Individualize your membership campaigns. Become personal with your donors through personal contact; personal letters; telephone follow-up; end of year gifts; donor recognition events, lunches, etc. Because like attracts like and strengthens your position, use your givers to recruit others.

As a Gaebler, your stand should be strategic, persistent and unique. If you’re going after a foundation, focus on projects which align with the organization’s interests. If you’re going after a family foundation, focus locally and if you’re going after an individual, use personal recognition to create a strong partnership.

Fundraising is an art.

Giving is a personal commitment. Invite donors by playing to your strengths with fresh ideas. Create a compelling case through specific goals and a strong staff. Your proven strategy should include:

Identifying donors
Cultivating relationships with them
Soliciting them
Stewarding them

A Gaebler is no whiner. To survive, your small or rural library must nurture relationships to create your very own advocacy champions. So, create a high personal relevance factor for your library within your community.

Be a Gaebler Librarian and survive against the odds!

Image: beinglatino.wordpress.com

Library as Social Enterprise

A library is what a library does.
The strategy is to move ahead of the continuously changing information environment; becoming agile and flexible for community use and community dependability. This is the 'Settlement Library' working theory in practice: a learning organization presenting steps toward the changing expectations of users through strategies which appreciate change, accept challenge, and develop new skills. A learning organization which knows, understands, and thinks in line with the community in order to become essential to the community.

Good customer service becomes the foundation for all the organization needs to be.

Adapting new ideas is the beginning of community appropriate programs and services by appreciating the skills, values, and work/social history of residents. Exchanging information and sharing ideas and experiences throughout the region through partnering creates opportunities for creativity and new levels of expertise.

The simplicity of it is to simply focus on the resident's, their culture, and their identity when securing programs, establishing a collection, and creating a learning service oriented organization. Being a shared vision, a 'Settlement Library' is about action. A 'Settlement Library' encourages individual learning and self-mastery as a way to address change - personally, environmentally, socially, and politically - and to explore new ideas while respecting the key concepts of librarianship and community.

A 'Settlement Library' is a social enterprise and symbolic site of collective memory (Augst) for each individual rural community it serves. Small changes can lead to big results.

After all, we must honor the past to create the future (Gorman).

Image: tutor2u.net/.../business-with-a-social-face/

Community Sturm und Drang

Translation: Storm and Stress, Urge or Yearning

Every township, city, and hamlet has a personality and a story. Local history is a means to define and reach a customer base with appropriate and adequate information expectations and perceptions. The achievement of excellence in the delivery of information products and services requires a commitment to customer service, and customer service is only attainable when the customer is understood.

Bigger is not necessarily better or required. Small, rural libraries possess the greater opportunity to tap into community individuality through personal knowledge of the community and its historical and cultural strivings. The larger metropolitan areas do not have this unique priviledge. Creating and establishing an ongoing community archival project secures a community's culture and identity for generations - serving as a connecting source.

Using the residents of the community itself as historical sources and donators while striving toward retention of the historical quality of the community, and tapping into its native human resources, can easily be established by a volunteer archiving initiative through the library setting. Human history and culture are what extends a library as a traditional champion of information gathering and information access. Community archiving is simply a natural product of the library ideal.

Ground breaking; home-steading; barn raising; water divining; births, deaths, wars, and choices made which altered individual and corporate existence, all constitute the storms, stresses, and yearnings of the human spirit. Library community historical archiving is a means to secure and connect the past with the present - creating a breathable space in between for those who long to know and want to remember.

As the last puzzle piece in Appalachia, Settlement Library community information center's offer a relationship by creating a local, personal historical connection through community participation. Even a small collection serves to establish a unity and camaraderie between neighbors through something very basic which we all share - ancestry and hometown familiarity.

Every community is bursting with human history. A central value of librarianship is the recognition that the past serves as a guide to the future. The library is called upon to not only provide new information, but to also protect the historical record of our communities (Rubin).

After all, libraries serve humanity.

This image of the sturm und drang daylilly can be retrieved at:
http://www.ashwooddaylilies.com/INTRODUCTIONS%201999-04.htm