Information Scotland

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

June 2009 Volume 7(3)

President's Perspective

Good practice in action

Margaret Forrest is seeing her presidential themes put into practice all over the UK.

In my first ‘Perspective’ I described three key themes which I would like to explore this year in my role as CILIPS President: accessibility, collaboration and professional development. During April and May I visited several libraries, attended three conferences both within and beyond Scotland and found examples of good practice of these themes in many places.

The first of these visits was to Dundee Central Library which is situated in a busy shopping centre in the heart of the city. I was very pleased to meet several staff and learn about the library’s outreach services. Very often when people talk about accessibility, they are referring to walk-in access for people with physical disabilities, but there are many other unseen barriers which can prevent people from being able to use and enjoy libraries. In the February issue of Information Scotland, Maureen Hood described an innovative reading group for people with diverse and special needs. On my visit to Dundee I was delighted to meet the staff involved and learn more about this project.

In May I joined a delegation of Scottish librarians on a study tour and conference in Finland. At this Twin Cities Conference I was very interested to hear about an innovative service available from the Estonian Library for the Blind where audio books are created ‘on demand’ and posted out to readers. In 2008 the service won the ‘Deed of the Year’ Award from the Estonian Library Association.

There were many other excellent presentations at this conference which itself was a very good example of collaboration and networking. The first Twin Cities Conference took place in Helsinki and Tallin two years ago and an enthusiastic and informative report was written by Silvija Crook. Last year a group of Estonian and Finnish librarians visited Scotland and participated in our own CILIPS Conference at Peebles. At this year’s conference in Helsinki and Turku we exchanged information and ideas on a wide range of innovative services in public, national, university and defence libraries. The title of the presentation by Martyn Wade, National Librarian of Scotland, sums up very well what I believe the conference successfully achieved: ‘Expanding horizons – ideas into practice’.

Collaboration, networking and professional development were also important themes for both of the CILIP conferences I attended recently in Ireland and Wales. The CILIP Ireland annual conference was organised jointly with the Library Association of Ireland (Cumann Leabharlann na hÉireann). Two presentations stood out for me as a history librarian. Professor Jane Ohlmeyer of Trinity College, Dublin, spoke on Europeana: the European digital library, museum and archive project in which she called on librarians to become more involved in supporting the Irish contribution to this online resource. Another presentation demonstrated that some Irish librarians are indeed active in developing digital content for archives. Deidre Wildy, Senior Subject Librarian at Queen’s University, Belfast described a successful collaborative project with JSTOR and JISC on the Irish Studies Collection. This includes around 80 key journals, 210 monographs and 2,500 manuscript pages, providing access to a multidisciplinary digital library of research materials relating to Ireland from the eighteenth century to the present. A highlight of the event was the Conference Dinner hosted by the Lord Mayor and Belfast City Council and held at the Harbour Commissioner’s Office, when Lord Mayor Tom Hartley spoke from the heart about the power of books and libraries to facilitate learning.

The CILIP Cymru conference was another good example of collaboration, this time between different sectors. The Welsh conference was a meeting of library, archive and museum professionals which clearly demonstrated the common ground of all three areas. The keynote speech by Alun Ffred Jones, Minister for Heritage, picked up the conference theme of ‘Space for all’ when he described two areas where there have been improvements in the sector in recent years in Wales. Firstly, he mentioned new developments in the physical space (e.g. the new Glamorgan Record Office with state-of-the-art facilities for conservation, public access and education). Secondly, the Minister talked about innovations in virtual space, one of these being the digitisation of around 300 newspaper and magazine titles held by the National Library of Wales; another was Cat Cymru, an online catalogue enabling people to view collections of all Welsh public and academic libraries in one easy search.

Finally, I’ve just returned from the CILIPS Conference in Peebles where I was delighted to meet many members and learn about their interests and aspirations for the profession. I hope I encouraged delegates to take on the challenge of developing at least one personal goal to put into practice some of the ideas explored at the conference. IS
Margaret Forrest
margaret.forrest@ed.ac.uk

Information Scotland Vol. 7(3) June 2009

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Last updated: 31-Jul-2009