Information Scotland The Journal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland ISSN 1743-5471 Issue contents | Journal contents | About the online edition of the journal June 2009 Volume 7(3)

CILIPS Conference: Reports

The variety of subjects covered at the CILIPS Annual Conference, 1-3 June at the Peebles Hydro, was as wide as ever this year. Three delegates report.

An event to inspire excellence

What makes a good library leader?

In her session, ‘A personal journey in leadership’, Rebecca Davies, in post as Director of Information Services at Aberystwyth University for just three weeks, emphasised the ‘personal’ view. She spoke of three areas – leading; managing; and following, and used her childhood and family as an illustration under the heading of ‘Going for a spin’. Her grandfather would take the lead by deciding what the whole family would do on a day out, her grandmother would manage this decision by delegating tasks such as making the sandwiches and organising people to be on time, and then the rest of the family would follow by carrying out tasks allotted to them.

She went talked about what, for her, made good library leaders, managers and followers, when being a leader or manager is easy and when hard and what makes a good follower, emphasising that everyone has to be good at following and libraries need all staff to demonstrate leadership. She also emphasised that we all must love libraries, with leaders being passionate about them: “Love the service you deliver while walking away from cynicism – though recognising need for change.” 

The issue of cynicism was picked up in the questions that followed, especially for new professional staff. Her answer was to know when to stop, so as not to get frustrated, and try a different route. It is important to recognise that even cynical colleagues all loved libraries once. You need to find natural allies to work with who will change alongside you.

The People’s Network

David Potts of the MLA and Brian Kelly of UKOLN delivered a combined session. David spoke on the People’s Network 10 years on, and Brian on ‘From e-Lib to NOF-digi and beyond’.

Going back to the original 1997 report which introduced the People’s Network, David Potts outlined how it has transformed public libraries in the UK. He was very proud of how libraries have led the way in ICT but felt that this was no longer the case, citing lack of librarian impact on the web-scale, library-like services such as Google, Amazon & Facebook. He spoke about limited content of current public library websites but did highlight services such as Reference Online and Enquire.

Using the original PN headings of Access, Content, Consumers, Training and Support, he felt that, currently, Access is still excellent and in the main free, and Support is available to all, but he saw an incredible opportunity to move into learning and skills and wanted more consumer engagement.

Brian Kelly’s talk referred back to the e-Lib programme of the mid-1990s and the major developments since then. He emphasised the importance of open standards, acknowledging that some highlighted in the past never happened and some were not appropriate for the budgets or technology available. Now the emphasis was on providing pragmatic solutions, with guidelines based on a culture of sharing, openness, and a need for flexibility. 
Anne MacKay, Edinburgh’s Telford College

New OCLC research from Lynn Connaway is not good news, said Jay. People are not seeking information using the same old patterns. This is hardly news, but how do libraries shift our offerings to ‘millennials’? We need to anticipate demand patterns.

Jay went through a busy 25-year history of OCLC’s co-operation with Scottish libraries. Glasgow University was an early adapter. He also gave an update on activity such as OCLC Local, a branding service, used mainly in the US  but UK discussions will come to fruition soon, and the move towards Web-scale – co-operative library management services. Ask Scotland, launched at the conference, is based on OCLC technology, and Jay Jordan praised good examples of collaboration in Scotland, between councils and different types of libraries, for example.

Some words of wisdom he left with us were:

• Get business people at the table
• There is still too much conservatism in libraries
• Look around the globe for best practice.

Reaching more readers

The conference provided the first chance to get reactions to the new Reading Sight web resource from the RNIB and partners. It is due to be launched at CILIP’s Umbrella conference.

We have an aging population which will mean more library users with sight difficulties. Reading Sight is gong to be an immensely useful resource, especially for frontline staff. It will be easier to access best practice, case studies, information, advice and resources about delivering an accessible library service for people with sight loss.

Pat Beech and Tom Forrest are seeking opinions on what Reading Sight should do.
The site will not remain static but will be updated constantly. Pat Beech says: “The site will never be finished as it needs to stay live… overall it should make a real difference.”
Comments are welcome to: simon.morgan@rnib.org.uk

Not good enough for Gill’s mum

Gill Hamilton works with tools to help integrate collections at the National Library of Scotland. She gave an entertaining session, describing how her mother’s experience of searching the NLS website came to influence the library’s implementation of Aquabrowser.

Gill’s mother couldn’t find what she wanted, and this simply wasn’t good enough. The site was not intuitive to readers’ search methods. Gill, as a resources discovery librarian, “...was ashamed”. We can’t expect users to understand the nature of libraries, and use a ‘catalogue’, she said. “Readers don’t know or care about catalogues.”
Aquabrowser is sold by Infor in the UK and developed by Medialab in The Netherlands. Trying again using keywords with Aquabrowser was a much more fruitful experience for Gill’s mother, searching  ‘Westies’.

Reading connections

The Reader Development strand of the conference also included a useful session with Sian Gibson, Canongate Marketing Manager, on how libraries and publishers can work together better.

For publishers, the ‘face to face’ opportunities that libraries provide are valuable. They also offer space and ‘trust’. Publishers have things of value for libraries – authors and promotional ideas. The main contact is reading groups. They like to be “in at the beginning” with a great new book. Sian told us about Canongate’s  worldwide readalong this August of Jan Martel’s Life of Pi, which is being reissued with a new cover. Promotional posters and bookmarks are available.

The final two speakers also focused squarely on books and reading. Anna Burkey told us about the Lost World read that Edinburgh, as a Unesco City of Literature, is running. This is a fine example of partnership work: the UK’s largest-ever collaborative reading campaign only employs two people.

Karen Cunningham of Culture and Sport Glasgow said that Aye Write!, the city’s reading festival, was initially targeted at people who would not normally go to a literary festival. She also talked about Get Glasgow Reading, run by Glasgow libraries. Karen feels that the most important element of Aye Write! is still the free schools programme. The ‘Books to go’ scheme in which children receive a free, signed book revealed that some children had never before owned a book.
Debby Raven, Editor, Information Scotland

View CILIPS Annual Conference 2009 presentations on Slideshare

Information Scotland Vol. 7(3) June 2009

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