38 Research Library Issues 292 2017 Mirroring national trends,2 in the recent past Utah public and academic libraries have not been at the forefront of activism on either federal or state legislation related to libraries. When there have been movements to educate elected officials at the state and federal level, it has often been too little, too late. Although activism is often discussed within the Utah Library Association, it is rarely pursued, and the results of these few efforts of library advocacy have been negligible, at best. 2016 and 2017 Beginning with the 2016 session of the Utah Legislature and continuing with the 2017 session, UALC leadership pursued an active effort to advocate for funding increases. In 2016, the first initiative for a funding increase received positive feedback from the Higher Education Appropriations Subcommittee of the Utah Legislature, but the request failed to pass the Executive Appropriations Committee in the legislature. The UALC appropriations request conflicted with other higher education funding requests from individual state colleges and universities. We learned from this experience that academic library deans and directors must be more politically savvy with their university administrations as well as their own representatives in the state legislature. Immediately after the 2016 legislative session ended, UALC devised a plan with input from the government relations staffs at the consortium’s public member institutions. In the fall of 2016, a majority of the library deans and directors met with their respective elected state representatives to discuss the UALC funding initiatives concentrating on the following issues: A request for an additional $1.5 million to fund consortium Association of Research Libraries Although activism is often discussed within the Utah Library Association, it is rarely pursued, and the results of these few efforts of library advocacy have been negligible, at best.
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