A Short Library Sermon

Yesterday we had a handout to help us take notes at church. Unfortunately for my spiritual life, my mind wandered a bit ( sorry, God). It wandered right over to libraries. My pastor's key points were entitled, Six Phases in the Growth of the New Testament Church. It was very interesting and he had scripture verses to illustrate all six, as any good preacher would. Here are the six phases he mentioned: Praising, Pure, Prepared, Powerful, Persecuted and Practical. I do not want to seem unspiritual at all, but do you not see as I did, how these points match our library programs??? Audrey Church was the first person to expose me to the concept of advocacy. She was the president or vice, can't remember, which in VEMA. As an organization I feel we made great strides because of her. These 6 P's from my church sermon fall under the heading of advocacy.
First P, you need to yell out to everyone how great your library is. Praise.
Second P, you need to keep your library pure. Your library, should be a very ethical and legal arena so everyone can count on you to spread the word about intellectual freedom and other key issues related to libraries.
Third P, your library should be organized. You should be following accepted cataloging rules and shelving conventions. Do not be so creative you patrons cannot find books in your library or worse they cannot find a book in the public libary.
Fourth P, you and your library should be powerful in so many ways. Remember the poster, " Your librarian the Original Search Engine"? You should be a powerhouse researcher and helper. You should also have developed a base of leadership in your school!! More on that in another blog post.
Fifth P is persecuted. This P is much more difficult to take from the New Testament church. I see it as there will be some folks on staff who do not want to embrace change so they will might say inappropriate things about your program. Don't worry, others will love what you are doing with the program.
Sixth P is pratical. Please by all means make sure your library program remains practical for all your patrons!
Debbie, you and I might be doing this as a presentation for VEMA in the fall!!
Happy Monday you all, I have to get ready for work.