Show Your Support, Donate

UPDATE 5/1/2012 We have reached the goal! Thank you so much to everyone who donated! I will be at ALA 2012 thanks to your support and generosity!

Making the decision to write this post was hard for me, after all I love NPR but pledge drive time drives me a little crazy especially after I’ve donated and it keeps going. But I understand why they do it and I wouldn’t have it any other ways. So, I’m going to be a little self-indulgent.

A couple of weeks ago I realized I wouldn’t be able to make the trip to Anaheim for ALA. Some health issues, nothing life threatening, but expensive nevertheless have used up the money I had set aside. In a moment of wistful thinking I tweeted that if each of my twitter followers donated 50 cents I’d be able to go to ALA (and then some). John Jackson who writes the Ink & Vellum blog took the idea and ran with it. I was a little embarrassed but mostly humbled that he and others would think it worthwhile to donate to send me to ALA. Donations have been coming in, about $300 right now.

Then some more good news and support came my way. Yesterday an individual who supports my work and feels I should attend this years ALA approached me with a challenge. If I could raise $750 s/he would donate/loan me the rest with two stipulations first that s/he remain anonymous and second that one day, when I have plenty of money to spare, I either match it with a charity donation or a similar good deed. I’ve been donating smaller amounts for years for a number of causes, including donations last year towards sending two different people to Annual, so I will happily agree to those terms.

What will I be doing at Annual if I go?

I serve as a councilor-at-large you can reread my statements from when I was running if you like. I also serve as the LITA representative on the ALA OITP Digital Literacy Task Force, on the OITP Advisory Committee, on the Conference Committee and as the chair for the Transliteracy Interest Group.

Some other non-ALA noteworthy service and projects include:

serving on the Library Advisory Group for the Pew Internet & American Life research on Libraries in the Digital Age
founder and coordinator, semi-annual Library Day in the Life Project
co-founder and editor This Is What a Librarian Looks
contributing editor and advocate at Library Renewal
co-founder and writer for the Libraries and Transliteracy Project.
contributor to the Transliteracy Research Group
Library Journal Mover and Shaker, 2011

I’m setting a goal of $750. If I meet that my Anonymous Sponsor will loan me the difference. I’m setting a deadline of May 8^th to ensure that the plane ticket isn’t astronomical. If we don’t reach the goal by then the funds will be set aside for attending MidWinter 2013.

So if you find my blog posts or tweets or what I share on Facebook useful or feel that I represent you, please donate. Every little bit helps.

How do you donate?

Two options.

You can use the donate button at the right or below. If you subscribe via RSS you’ll need to visit the blog directly the button does not show up in the feed. I have discovered if you use this option, Paypal takes 30 cents plus a percentage on all donations, so if you donate a $1, I get 67 cents, $5, I get $4.55 etc.

The second one is to log into your Paypal account, click on the “send money” tab, type in my email address bobbi.newman AT gmail.com and select “personal” and “other” for the reason. There is no charge for this option. A dollar sent is a dollar received.

Thank you. And thank you to everyone who has already donated.