Leading Together: Academic Library Consortia and Advocacy

Academic library consortia have advocacy power. Historically, consortia work with their members to create plans and tools around material purchasing and sharing, advancing the use of open educational resources with your faculty, and many more important issues where the group influence and expertise can be leveraged. Advocating for the library within your institution, with stakeholders, and across the system in a unified way is an evolving focus of consortia member leadership.

Leading Together: Academic Library Consortia and Advocacy aims to fill the gap in LIS literature of models of consortia advocacy plans, actions, and assessments. It provides a look at the current landscape of consortia work, a consortium and other groups’ advocacy frameworks, a workshop curriculum which may be used to develop an advocacy plan, and thoughts for the future.

There is strength in a consortium voice—it provides the opportunity to lead together under a unified plan, and reinforces the concept that each library contributes to the consistent messaging needed to influence and persuade for the agreed-upon goals of the consortium. Leading Together provides tools for staff at academic libraries that belong to consortia, consortia staff, and those interested in advocacy work.