#ThankALibrarian initiative for South African Librarians’ Day 2018

LIASA, i.e. the Library and Information Association of South Africa, declared the 10 July a special day dedicated to celebrating librarians. One of the aims of South African Librarians’ Day is to create awareness of the importance of liibrarianship as a profession and the critical role librarians play in nation building. 

In support of LIASA’s South African Librarians’ Day 2018, the Marketing Office made use of the MAIG (Marketing and Advocacy Interest Group) #ThankALibrarian template, which was created especially for this day. The idea behind the template was to provide an opportunity for our library students to share with us why they value what librarians do. We know that we are information experts, but it is delightful to hear this from our clients. And this is library advocacy at its best: students recommending our services and championing what we do!

The few undergraduate students who were still around and mostly postgraduate students making use of the Research Commons in the Merensky 2 Library, were asked why they value librarians. These are just some of the comments that they shared:

“I thank you for continued commitment in providing us with the needed resources to expand our knowledge.”

“I thank you for your help in finding literature and motivating me to read more.”

“Dear Ephenia Peu and Sello Kgwebane, I thank you for always making an effort to respond to my numerous requests. You have made a phenomenal contribution to my doctoral journey. God bless you.”

“Dear Suzanna Mamabolo, I thank you for all the help and assistance with literature searches and EndNote training. This is highly appreciated.”

“Dear Liesl Stieger, I thank you for all your support with my literature search.”

“Dear Rianie van der Linde, I thank you for the support, time and patience that you have every day! Thank you for your smile!”

“Dear Sonja Delport, I thank you for teaching me EndNote, Grammarly and above all for being there to edit my work timeously and encouraging me to be consistent and work hard on my dissertation.”

To warm the cold day, the Marketing Office supplied hot chocolateand all the librarians in the different UP libraries drank their drinks in their respective tearooms – a great way to celebrate our profession on a cold winter’s morning!

Some more #ThankALibrarian photographs: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10155630133716705&type=1&l=7efced89f3

Some more #SALibrarians’Day photographs: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10155630156581705&type=1&l=f6dbf2e84e