PC Sweeney, Political Director of EveryLibrary and keynote speaker for the 2019 Wyoming Library Association conference
If you need yet another reason to attend the 2019 Wyoming Library Association conference from August 7-9 this year, you don’t want to miss keynote speaker PC Sweeney.
Sweeney is the political director of EveryLibrary, a national political action committee (PAC) for libraries. He’s the co-author of Winning Elections and Influencing Politicians for Library Funding from ALA Editions and a lecturer for San Jose State University iSchool. He’s worked in both public and school libraries, and was a Library Journal 2015 Mover and Shaker.
His keynote will be the fun and inspirational session, “Make It Happen/Party Hard,” intended to motivate library staff to balance the stressful work of librarianship with celebrating successes in their communities. He’ll highlight the need for enthusiasm from staff at all levels to promote the work that libraries do and discuss how that enthusiasm can build positive professional networks and relationships with communities for real tangible outcomes. Finally, he’ll explore the way that emotional attractors affect library work and the level of success within communities.
Sweeney will also be leading a breakout session, “From Advocate to Activist.” In this session, he’ll challenge the traditional model of advocacy for libraries and instead look at how to create activists to build the public support libraries need to survive. He’ll look at how the current advocacy model is failing libraries and causing massive defunding and closures and will explore many of the strategies and tactics used by some of the best community organizers, political action committees, and politicians to build real actionable support. He’ll emphasize the resources and skills that librarians and library staff need to develop if they want to have the political and community support that they need in order to increase support and funding.
Learn more and register for the conference.