Library Advocacy Beyond the USA and European Union

[Zapopan Martin Muela Meza]

Library Advocacy Beyond the USA and European Union

If you ever wonder how you can help libraries, there
are many ways as 
many
may have our imagination, but at the American Library
Association are 
some
suggestions at:
                       
http://www.ala.org/pio/advocacy/index.html


                  Voice your support for libraries
during National 
Library
Week 
                        See:
http://www.ala.org/celebrating/

                  Get Informed about . . . 

                       . . . ALA's areas of interest
and activity 
                        See: http://www.ala.org/work/
                       . . . legislative issues 
                        See:
http://www.ala.org/washoff/
                       . . . technology policy issues 
                        See: http://www.ala.org/oitp/

                  Get Involved
                        See:
http://www.ala.org/work/involved/

                        or 
        
                        contact the UB Student Chapter
members at: 
                               
http://wings.buffalo.edu/sils/alas/who.htm

                  Visit the ALA Development Office
website
                        See:
http://www.ala.org/development/

                  Fight Censorship at: 
http://www.ala.org/bbooks/      

                  Attend a Conference at:      
http://www.ala.org/events/

                  A Library Advocate's Guide to
Building Information
Literate
                  Communities 
                                See:
http://www.ala.org/pio/advocacy/informationliteracy/pdf

                  Library Advocate's Handbook 
                                See:
http://www.ala.org/pio/advocacy/libraryadvocateshandbook.pdf

                  The Librarian's Guide to Cyberspace
Tipsheet 
                                See:
http://www.ala.org/pio/cyber/cando.html

                  Wear Your Support on Your Sleeve
                                See:
http://www.ala.org/market/graphics/

Well, this is an idea how YOU can help libraries, but
American ones 
though. 

What about getting involved in international libraries
from the so 
called
Third World?

Some people from Hamburg, NY last week sent a plane
full of food and
humanitarian goods to Bosnia. 

But what about doing the same with the people from El
Salvador who just
experienced one of the most terrible earthquakes? What
about some 
American
librarians volunteer to save some large collections
damaged in several
libraries from El Salvador including the Gallardo
National Library.

More on El Salvador damages 
                See:   
http://www.unesco.org/webworld/news/2001/010208_salvador.shtml
                       
http://www.unesco.org/webworld/news/2001/010205_salvador.shtml

Would you like to contribute with money to help El
Salvador libraries?
                Well check these officials sites:
                       
http://infolac.ucol.mx/terremoto/help.html [To raise
money for the
Gallardo National Library, source: UNESCO]      
                       
http://www.emergenciaelsalvador.telefonica.com.sv/
[they are 
official
because are linked at UNESCO]
                        
Or what about a hot Summer in Cuba helping --in a
friendly and
non-political fashion-- to introduce technology in the
National Library 
and
in the Public Libraries? Something wrong with Cuba?
Well at government
levels you may have heard a lot of things since the
sixties, but surely
that doesn't have to do with librarians, advocates of
libraries, see 
last
February 2001, American Libraries issue: Cuba's
National Library: The
Revolution Meets the Millennium, by George M.
Eberhart, p. 30 and 
you'll
see what real cooperation is about, at least these
visitors were open. 

Well, this is just a sinopsis how all of we can help
the really
underdeveloped libraries. The library world is not
exclusively
circumscribed to the USA or European Union, there are
also libraries 
all
over the world, it's just a matter to open our window
and really let 
the
light bathes us gracefully on whatever the colors may
come through our
prisms.

Saludos cordiales colegas,

Zapopan Martin Muela-Meza [Mexican Fulbright,
Laspau-Harvard, USIA 
grantee]
zmmuela at acsu.buffalo.edu, zapopanmuela at yahoo.com

State University of New York at Buffalo, School of
Information Studies
Master's Degree of Library and Information Science
Student       
http://www.sils.buffalo.edu/dlis.htm

American Library Association, Student Chapter Outreach
Committee
Advocacy Coordinator
http://wings.buffalo.edu/sils/alas/alanames.html

"There are many types of slavery
and many types of slavery
but reading keeps being the way
towards freedom" 
        -- Carl Sagan 
        in A Haunted-Demond World. 
        Science as a Candle in the Light

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