Big and Wide as the ocean
The problem as soon as you start putting capital letters on things is they suddenly start to sound important but also perhaps Scary and Intimidating. Possibly as though they’re things for other people who specialise in that kind of thing and know the ropes rather than something everyone has an interest in and a place in.
Advocacy is a bit like that, it’s become a very high profile issue in the UK in recent years as a result of various pressures on the profession, financial and otherwise. The need for advocacy is fundamental, but equally there are choices to be made on what can be done best by whom and what the resource implications are. What are key objectives? How do you know if you're meeting them? What can you actually do with the time, expertise and resource available, and what do you not do in consequence? What's everyone else doing so you're supporting each other not duplicating?
We all do advocacy already to an extent
If you just look at it as promoting and explaining the kinds of things that you do and why they matter to people other than your direct counterparts (whether that’s the wider organisation or possibly outwith it) then we all believe in it and do it in our own ways, but to differing extents. It just may not show up anywhere. It’s about demonstrating the value (for money / resource) and the usefulness of your skills and service and what they can achieve for the organisation and being accessible and helpful to it. Every bit as important though, it’s also about supporting colleagues in other places in our own sectors and also supporting ALL sectors as being equally of value to their own communities, even if the emphasis will (naturally for a different context and / or jurisdiction) change on what the key benefits and risks are.
CILIP
I tend to mainly contribute to advocacy through supporting and helping to formulate the wider body initiatives and work of CILIP, that's what I do, other people do advocacy in other ways or through other bodies. In CILIP advocacy is about a range of on-going activities, some cross-sectoral, some sectoral, some undertaken with a range of other partners (whether internal or external), some not. Some specific initiatives may go on for some years, others may change regularly. Where the main external pressure is can change over time. A huge amount of work goes into it overall, some aspects can appear more high profile than others, some bear more obvious larger fruit or faster. But a wide range of on-going activity is undertaken.
Commercial Law
My own specific sector, commercial law, just like all other sectors, was hit hard by the recession, and the results of it all are still easily discernable some years on. You can see it in numbers of posts, levels, budgets, service expectations etc etc.
The most recent interesting law-librarianship specific joint response to it all has been the blog On Firmer Ground which is a collaboration between lots of different key international law librarianship bodies set up to promote the value of what we do. It’s really worth a look.
Conversations and Finding An Angle
Advocacy is just about talking to people about what you do and why you it’s important. Preferably in a way that reaches to what you know they themselves value, and that is conversational, natural and short. It may sound easy but that’s deceptive. As with anyone I have my good and my bad days, some people are more intimidating than others or easier to talk to. Telling people things they’re not interested in or not wanting to hear isn’t going to work. But giving it a punt anyway to find some kind of common angle is important. If nothing else trying to persuade others forces you to formulate the real basics of what you think is important and why, to reality check your assumptions, and to practice how you get the core idea’s and facts across. And practice on strangers, not on friends. Your friends probably believe anyway.
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