{"id":33209,"date":"2025-05-23T23:04:29","date_gmt":"2025-05-24T03:04:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/?p=33209"},"modified":"2025-05-23T12:07:56","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T16:07:56","slug":"the-power-of-stories-for-library-advocacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/2025\/05\/the-power-of-stories-for-library-advocacy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Power of Stories for Library Advocacy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Do you ever check the Yelp or Google reviews of a restaurant before you go out to eat, or comb through the Amazon comments for a product before purchasing? Of course you do! People love to hear first-hand experiences, and who better to collect stories than a librarian?  <br>Why should we seek out stories? We all know the power of a story to reach readers hearts and minds! According to the<a href=\"https:\/\/womensleadership.stanford.edu\/node\/796\/harnessing-power-stories\"> Stanford Graduate School of Business<\/a>, stories are remembered up to 22 times more than facts alone. I call this \u201cstats + stories\u201d. Giving out 173 books at an outreach event is a great statistic, but being able to recount the tale of the bright-eyed child thrilled to finally have their very own book makes an emotional impact.  <br>Gathering stories from our community, asking for feedback after popular programs, sharing ways our patrons can contact their local legislators to advocate for libraries \u2013 these narratives are all fantastic ways to create emotional connections that will inspire people to not just visit their local library, but become lifelong library advocates. Looking for more inspiration to get started? Check out The Power of Stories section of ALSC\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ala.org\/alsc\/initiatives\/everyday-advocacy\/be-informed\/power-stories\">Everyday Advocacy<\/a>.  <br>Now, more than ever, it is essential that we share personal stories of the positive impacts that libraries, librarians, and library staff have in the communities we serve. We can (and should) sing our own praises, but our chorus will be louder and stronger if voices from our community are singing with us.  <br>Sing out for libraries! We want to hear your stories, too! Help us write the next chorus and verse by sharing a submission to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ala.org\/form\/send-us-your-advocacy-story\">Everyday Advocacy<\/a>. The ALSC Library Advocacy and Awareness committee loves reading these submissions and may contact you to be interviewed for a future post in the ALSC Blog! <br> <br>Meagan Albright <br><br>Manager of Youth Services <br><br>Cambridge Public Library <br><br>Member, ALSC Library Advocacy and Awareness Commitee<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do you ever check the Yelp or Google reviews of a restaurant before you go out to eat, or comb through the Amazon comments for a product before purchasing? Of course you do! People love to hear first-hand experiences, and who better to collect stories than a librarian? Why should we seek out stories? We all know the power of a story to reach readers hearts and minds! According to the Stanford Graduate School of Business, stories are remembered up to 22 times more than facts alone. I call this \u201cstats + stories\u201d. Giving out 173 books at an outreach event is a great statistic, but being able to recount the tale of the bright-eyed child thrilled to finally have their very own book makes an emotional impact. Gathering stories from our community, asking for feedback after popular programs, sharing ways our patrons can contact their local legislators to advocate&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[253,1803],"class_list":["post-33209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-advocacy","tag-story-telling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}