[Michlib-l] Fight for Senate Support of LSTA and IAL Funding is ON!

[Steven Bowers]

[ALA Membership]


Dear ALA Members, Library Leaders, Volunteers, Vendors, and All Library Users and Lovers:

I promised you I would be back! I’m writing you this morning because it’s time once again to Fight for Libraries!<http://ala.informz.net/z/cjUucD9taT02NTI3NDQzJnA9MSZ1PTEwMDc0MTgzODUmbGk9NDM1MDQxNjU/index.html> in Washington. As you will remember, that’s the campaign web page for federal library funding advocacy we launched last month to enable all library supporters to easily ask their member of the House of Representatives to #save IMLS and to sign letters to the House Appropriations Committee specifically supporting LSTA funding in FY 2018 of $186.6 million and $27 million for the Innovative Approaches to Literacy (IAL) program.

And thousands of you did! Ultimately, one-third of the entire House of Representatives<http://ala.informz.net/z/cjUucD9taT02NTI3NDQzJnA9MSZ1PTEwMDc0MTgzODUmbGk9NDM1MDQxNjY/index.html> signed one or both of these vital “Dear Appropriator” letters. Thank you! Now, we’ve got to do even better in the Senate, where similar letters for LSTA and IAL are circulating right now.

It’s no exaggeration to say that “failure is not an option.” With the President proposing the total elimination of IMLS and effectively all federal library funding, we have to convince a majority of Senators to put their support for LSTA and IAL in writing by signing the separate LSTA and IAL “Dear Appropriator” letters our bipartisan champions have sent all their fellow Senators to review. And we’ve got just a few short weeks to succeed.

At Fight for Libraries!<http://ala.informz.net/z/cjUucD9taT02NTI3NDQzJnA9MSZ1PTEwMDc0MTgzODUmbGk9NDM1MDQxNjU/index.html>, it’s fast and easy to see if your two U.S. Senators have signed<http://ala.informz.net/z/cjUucD9taT02NTI3NDQzJnA9MSZ1PTEwMDc0MTgzODUmbGk9NDM1MDQxNjY/index.html> both of our letters and, if not, to take action now. As their constituents, your request—not ALA’s or our lobbyists’—is the only one that will really count.  So...

  *   Today, please use Fight for Libraries!<http://ala.informz.net/z/cjUucD9taT02NTI3NDQzJnA9MSZ1PTEwMDc0MTgzODUmbGk9NDM1MDQxNjU/index.html> to contact the offices of both of your U.S. Senators by email, tweet or phone (or all three!).
  *   Simply ask them in the lang­uage suggested or your own words to “sign the FY18 LSTA and IAL Dear Appropriator letters.”
  *   Then, ask your library staff, your governing and advisory boards, your volunteers, vendors, employees, Friends, foundation members and your patrons—every library lover you know—to take action too!
  *   Check up on your Senators. Use our easy tracking tool<http://ala.informz.net/z/cjUucD9taT02NTI3NDQzJnA9MSZ1PTEwMDc0MTgzODUmbGk9NDM1MDQxNjY/index.html> and, if you don’t soon see your Senator listed as a signator of the LSTA and/or IAL “Dear Appropriator” letters, ask them again to sign on right away.

We can do this. You can do this. If you care about libraries and all they do with more than $210 million in federal funding that flows to every state in America, you must do this.



Thank you

[Julie Todaro signature]

Julie Todaro
ALA President

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