Information Scotland

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

April 2009 Volume 7(2)

President's Perspective

Seeing libraries come to life

Margaret Forrest reports on her varied first few months as President of CILIPS.

One of the privileges of being CILIPS President is being given the opportunity to visit many different libraries and meet a wide variety of people. In this Perspective I’d like to share with you my reflections on recent visits to public, school and further education libraries.
My first ‘official’ visit was to Midlothian Libraries and its wonderful new service in the Penicuik Centre. I had already heard many good things about this new library from friends and relatives who live in Penicuik, and was delighted to see this marvellous new resource for myself. As I mentioned in my last Perspective, my background is in health and academic libraries, and so I like to take every opportunity I can to explore community libraries (yes, even on holiday!). One of the first things I noticed about the architecture of the Penicuik Centre was that the rounded shape of the roof reflects the Pentland Hills just behind the building. Inside the library, the curved bookshelves echo the same design which draws the reader around and through the collections towards the service area.

At Penicuik I met staff from a number of community libraries in Midlothian. Many are closely involved in supporting their local primary schools, collaborating with teaching staff to help ensure the children benefit from books and reading from a very early age. At Lasswade High School in Midlothian I met several school librarians and learned about the importance to their work of Curriculum for Excellence. A key message I gained from my meetings with the staff of Midlothian Libraries and the School Library Service was the dedication and enthusiasm of the staff and the importance of networking to ensure the best possible use of resources. Many thanks to Alan Reid, Library Services Manager, for arranging my visit to Midlothian.

The following week I travelled north to Elmwood College Library in Cupar, Fife. In the last issue of Information Scotland, Christine Barclay, College Manager, Learning Resources, describes her library’s successful application to Scotland’s Colleges Award in the Customer Service Category. I was delighted to meet the staff of this highly commended library and find out more about their service. At Elmwood the staff have worked hard to develop a service which enables more students to get the best out of their library resources. In response to feedback from staff and students, library staff transformed the way they delivered their library induction programme to make this more relevant to the students and at the same time help them score higher marks in their course work.

Information literacy, libraries and learning was also the theme of the CILIPS Skills for Scotland Conference which I attended at Glasgow Metropolitan College later the same month. There were many very informative presentations at this event and one that stood out most for me was given by Margaret McKay, e-Advisor at JISC’s Regional Support Centre for the South West of Scotland. Margaret described AccessApps, an initiative developed by the JISC Regional Support Centres in Scotland, in conjunction with JISC TechDis. AccessApps consists of over 50 open source and freeware assistive technology applications which can be entirely used from a USB stick on a Windows computer. Working in Higher Education, where many resources are available in electronic format, I believe it is essential to ensure they are accessible to all readers. This new resource from JISC will enable an increasing number of students and the general public to access writing, reading and planning software for use on most computers.

Back home to Edinburgh again at the end of March for the launch of Reading Roots: Year of Homecoming 2009, the public library promotion marking the 250th anniversary of Robert Burns’ birth. This very well attended event took place at MacDonald Road Library where I was delighted to meet two Living Library volunteers of Edinburgh City Libraries. The Living Library project, pioneered in Denmark at the Roskilde Festival 2000, enables readers to ‘borrow’ a book, i.e. a person who has significant experience or a different perspective to share. The conversations between the ‘borrower’ and the ‘book’ can lead to a greater understanding and appreciation of diversity within our communities.4

During the next few weeks I’m looking forward to meeting our Celtic colleagues at the CILIP Ireland and CILIP Cymru conferences, returning home to Scotland in time for our own CILIPS Conference in Peebles. Hope to see you there!

Margaret Forrest
margaret.forrest@ed.ac.uk

Information Scotland Vol. 7(2) April 2009

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: 24-Jul-2009