The State Treasurer’s conference to expand the financial literacy of women was wonderful. The Lewis & Clark Library System and 12 member libraries co-sponsored exhibit (10 Reasons Smart Women Use Their Library) was a crowd pleasing success. Conference participants from White Hall, Edwardsville, Six Mile, Red Bud, Freeburg, Glen Carbon, Mississippi Valley, O’Fallon, Belleville, Fairview Heights, Maryville, Swansea, Dupo, Mascoutah, East St. Louis, and Greenfield visited the exhibit to learn how libraries help save money. Interestingly, almost everyone mentioned regularly using their library for programs, fiction reading and movies; we invited them to use their library’s reference collection and electronic resources too.

The Smart Women, Smart Money keynote speaker, Gail Perry-Mason, was eloquent and humorous. Expect to have lots of patron requests for her book, Girl, Make Your Money Grow. She stressed “lack of knowledge“is a major reason of personal debt, encouraging the audience to use their library to learn about ways to reduce their spending and to earn income.

Libraries were prominently mentioned during the breakout sessions, participants were reminded using their library for research, internet access, DVD’s and programs were other ways to stretch and grow their money.

Based on the conference’s comments about libraries, expect to see even more people in your libraries! So this is the perfect time to once again display the library’s financial books on investing, reducing debt and saving money. Talk about your Morningstar access. Remind patrons about the Return on Investment from their tax dollars.

Tags: funding, Library, Money, publics, schools, Smart Money, Smart Women, Treasurer

This entry was posted on Friday, May 14th, 2010 at 1:47 pm and is filed under Advocacy, Collaboration & Cooperation, Leadership & Administration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. # # You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. # #