Information Scotland

The Journal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland

December 2008 Volume 6(6)

Centenary

All together now

Alan Reid and Rennie McElroy discuss developing advocacy and partnership in the final instalment of the history of CILIPS and the SLA, started by the late Brian Osborne.

When we were invited to complete the series of articles that the late Brian Osborne was writing to mark the centenary of SLA/CILIPS, we faced a dilemma – we did not know Brian’s intentions for the final article. Should we try to second-guess him, puzzle out what he might have done and write that? Perhaps, but all who knew Brian know also that second-guessing him was a chancy business! So we have chosen our own theme, analysing how CILIPS has gone about its work and how changes of strategy and style, especially in the last 30 years, have improved its impact and achievement.

The professional community
When one of the present authors was a student of librarianship in the late 1960s, a key element of the curriculum was ‘co-operation’. This meant the rather convoluted ways in which libraries might lend books to each other (providing postage was refunded!), or even – with safeguards that could be draconian – allow readers from one library to use another. That same curriculum included little analysis of government and library-funding bodies in any sector; they were peopled by that strange life-form, the ‘non-librarian’. How far we have come; how important the journey has been.

In this journey, the contribution of SLA/CILIPS to the professional community has been crucial. Especially important has been its capacity to break through the organisational structures of the workplace and bring together librarians of differing experience and seniority to work on professional issues. Sectoral boundaries can be crossed too, with academic, public, school and special librarians working together, sharing views and experience. Each group’s contribution is tempered and improved by exposure to the others; libraries and library users are the beneficiaries.

By facilitating and exploiting such collaborative engagement across the profession, SLA/CILIPS has been able to build a consensus about the role of the library and what it can contribute to local and national priorities, and inject that consensus into the corporate agendas of government and of library authorities in all sectors.

A developing approach to advocacy
SLA/CILIPS has always spoken out for libraries, librarians and library users. Early advocacy seems to have been largely a case of senior members of the profession debating an issue at the annual conference or in a meeting convened for the purpose, then adopting a formal resolution which expressed (hopefully resoundingly!) their collective view and policy. That resolution would be distributed as widely as working contacts and formal publication allowed.

Later, issues would be addressed by a working party established by Council, consisting predominantly of Council members. Sometimes, daringly, a few carefully vetted non-librarians(!) might be invited to contribute. The resulting report would be circulated within the profession and to such external bodies as might exercise influence or control over the issues it addressed.

The report would reach these bodies in a manner not unlike ‘cold calling’, with predictable results. Librarians would declare that they had proclaimed standards; others would reply, “Well, you would, wouldn’t you?” or worse, “So what?” Many will remember the lack of interest, the gross ingratitude even, with which the then executive received the draft Bill for public libraries which SLA had had prepared in the wake of the 1964 Act, as it sought with earnest good intent to give Scotland some perceived parity with England.

How things have changed. Recognising the need to work in true partnership with other interests and with local and central government, SLA adopted a strategy of joint working groups, or preferably, working groups led by the very bodies it sought to influence. The first real example, perhaps still the role model, for this “advocacy in partnership” was the working party on public library standards convened by COSLA in 1986-87. For the first time, we had recommendations about libraries, still developed predominantly by librarians, but validated, endorsed and published by managerial, political and financial stakeholders. Behold, they were taken seriously!

A further development was extending advocacy beyond the public library sector, again using the partnership model to expand the base from which policy was developed and thereby, to improve effectiveness. Recommendations were produced about school libraries and further education college libraries, long the poor relations in resources and status. Successful work was also undertaken for prison and health libraries. In higher education, SCURL and SCONUL remain the primary advocates, but it is a source of satisfaction that Information Scotland now carries regular reports about work carried out with SCURL.

So the lesson to learn from this aspect of CILIPS’ history is, the more you appear to relax control over the development of policy, the more highly is the eventual policy regarded by those you seek to influence.

It would be invidious to name names; too many people have contributed too much over too many years; accidental omission would be unforgivable. But yet – while not the sole originator of this shift in the advocacy model, no one has done more to install and promote it than Robert Craig, with his unique ability to perch metaphorically on the corner of anyone’s desk and to chat, engagingly and apparently innocently, but to huge effect. Professional advocacy will long be indebted to him.

CILIPS and SLIC
It is difficult, now, to imagine Scottish librarianship without CILIPS and SLIC working together so closely that each is the alter ego of the other. They have created a blurred but successful linkage between the professional association and the advisory body. This has benefited all sectors of librarianship, facilitating dialogue with library authorities and government, promoting lasting development, strengthening the professional community, and increasing the heed paid to professionally promulgated policy.

CILIPS, the professional body for individuals, and SLIC, whose members are employing organisations and whose funding derives from them and from government, work hand-in-glove in (almost!) complete accord, and are managed by the same people. Add to that, that SLIC has a remit to advise the executive arm of the Scottish Government, and we have a remarkable state of affairs reflecting careful preparation of the ground over many years, studious attention to potential opportunity, and judicious communication, all made possible by the trust that SLA generated through its advocacy in partnership model.

A devolved Scotland
It is too early to pronounce with certainty on the longer-term outcomes of devolution for Scottish libraries, but it can be said with confidence that today’s CILIPS and SLIC are better fitted to operate within a devolved Scotland than was the case as recently as 15 years ago. The practices and skills developed since about 1990 fit them to work confidently and effectively with Scottish government ministers and to build upon government’s growing understanding and acknowledgement of libraries’ contribution to the national agenda in such fields as cultural provision, digital inclusion and education.

The collaborative work that generated the Public Library Quality Improvement Matrix as an outcomes measure for that sector, and its possible future use to define local authorities’ responsibility to deliver ‘adequate’ library services, may be seen as a latter-day fulfilment of SLA’s objective in the 1970s, when it poured so much effort into the ill-fated draft Bill for public libraries. So, it took 30 years; so, it is a different approach; so, it’s ‘not statutory’ (ever the lament of the librarian whose advocacy has failed). But it may well prove more effective in the long term, and its very development is eloquent testimony to the relationship between CILIPS and SLIC.

CILIPS at 100
In the final third of its century, SLA/CILIPS has advanced libraries from cautious co-operation with each other, to fruitful partnership with government, managers and stakeholders. As a result, the profession now has the confidence to engage easily with other agencies and to welcome the contribution of people from many areas of expertise to what it once regarded as the preserve of librarians alone. It works productively with government and its agencies, and with COSLA, head-teachers, arts and literacy agencies, and information technology practitioners, to name just a few. It contributes to national agendas in all sectors. Its voice is heard with respect, its views heeded, the interests of its members and of libraries promoted.

However unexceptional all this may seem today, these developments retain the power to astound anyone whose involvement with the professional bodies dates back more than two decades – just half of a working life. CILIPS has come far, and will go further.

Alan Reid is Library Services Manager, Midlothian Council. Professor Rennie McElroy was formerly University Librarian, Napier University. Both have contributed extensively to the work of SLA/CILIPS over many years.

Information Scotland Vol. 6(6) December 2008

Information Scotland is delivered online by the SAPIENS electronic publishing service based at the Centre for Digital Library Research. SLAINTE (Scottish libraries across the Internet) offers further information about librarianship and information management in Scotland.

Last updated: 22-Jan-2009