FKL gathers articles of interest to Friends chapters, and welcomes your suggestions for articles to add here.

Starting a Friends Chapter – Every library needs Friends! Whether you are a community member or librarian, by starting a Friends group you’ll be giving an important gift to the community.  This guide is by Sally Gardner Reed, Executive Director, United for Libraries,  and is a free toolkit geared mostly toward public library Friends groups, but with good tips on membership and outreach for Friends groups of any type.

Chart of Responsibilities – Whose responsibility is it to apprise the board of the need for a new policy? Who should ensure that the library has an active marketing program? Find answers to these questions and more on this handy chart on the roles of a library’s Director, Trustees, and Friends – prepared by the Connecticut State Library.

Event Planning Tips – Planning a groundbreaking, grand opening or other significant occasion in the life of your library? Special events may also be created for other targeted purposes such as a jobs fair, awards banquet, or logo contest.

25 Writers on Libraries – “Libraries are like the mountain, or the meadows behind the goat lady’s house: sacred space.” – Ann Lamott. Wonderful quotes about libraries from great writers the world over. You’ll find something here to use in your next advocacy piece.

12 Ways to Save Your Library – “A couple of years ago I had to join the fight to keep our library alive at all. It was slated for closing due to budget cuts. Since it was in a rural part of the county, it was deemed “disposable,” or at least more disposable than the branches in the more affluent part of the county.” So begins Jennifer Derrick’s excellent article on fighting cutbacks and closures.

12 Ways Libraries are Good for the Country – Originally published as a cover story in American Libraries, December 1995, this great advocacy piece by Leonard Kniffel is still valuable today.

I Believe in Libraries – “Even though there are many things that intrigue me about libraries …what impresses me most is that libraries are places of community and acceptance.” This beautiful piece aired on NPR’s ‘This I Believe’ program.

Let There Be Light – Written by American Journalist and Noted Historian, Betty Boles Ellison, this piece is a detailed history of Andrew Carnegie and the libraries he created, and how he created a blueprint for library advocates to follow for funding and maintaining libraries.