(This started as a tweet thread, wanted it all in one place for linking)
Are you a librarian attending ALA? I urge you to use your airport and mtg downtime to call your Senators abt healthcare #alaac17
Public, academic, school, medical librarians - YOUR PEOPLE are going to lose access to care if the Senate passes this bill
The Senate bill will hurt the most vulnerable people in YOUR USER COMMUNITIES if passed - and everyone who isn’t already rich
So I’m gonna make an offer. If you’re a librarian & need tips or encouragement to call I will personally coach you. DM me. #ALAAC2017 (@rachel_w on twitter, or find me on Facebook - that’s gonna get me faster than a dm on this tumblr)
I will look up your Senators’ name and number w no judgment. I will give you scripts to follow. I will tell you what it’s like to call.
Please just do it, oppose the Senate healthcare bill. However I can help get you over that hump I will do it.
It only takes a minute. You can call both in less than 5 minutes. It’s critically important.
One last thing: if you’re in a red state and think it won’t make a diff please call anyway. They need to know they don’t have support.
I mean I feel you I have Corker & Alexander. I’m still calling, and will work to unseat them for this cruel bill. Show me some solidarity.
I do a one hour shift every Wednesday morning on my library’s centralized service desk. I do this because:
- I want to keep an eye on what’s going on and how things are working.
- I want to be able to identify issues or potential improvements.
- I want to keep up my skills.
- I want to continuously show my team that I am willing to step in and help. We’re a small library and I want to foster an “everybody chips in” approach where nobody is too “good” to do any needed work.
- If I find that I can’t make one hour per week to directly help the team by working the desk, I’m probably doing something wrong in my overall workload approach.
Yesterday I saw an unintended benefit of this approach: a faculty member dropping by and talking to me about a variety of issues, from the online catalog and remote access to how we are going to combat the broader social issue of people’s unwillingness to critically evaluate information, especially when the information agrees with what they already believe. We agree that we can teach the skills of critical appraisal, but people have to have that initial skepticism, curiosity, and willingness to question in order for those skills to be used effectively. We didn’t solve the problem in our brief conversation, but I really enjoyed it as a benefit of making myself directly accessible with no appointment for one hour per week in this simple way.
(but never did before)
Tissues, giant bottle of Aleve, dental floss, packs of thank you notes, and enough spare tampons and pads to go around.
Anxiety is waking up with your mind playing “We are outgunned! Outmanned! Outnumbered! Outplanned!” and spending the day trying to turn it into “Look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now!”