Umbella 2011: Currency of staff IT skills

Umbrella 2011

Beyond Pathfinder: Currency of staff IT skills

[Being my notes on Alan Brine’s presentation who was talking at an impressive rate so my notes may be slightly garbled in places]

Integrating IT support at the point of delivery

Background was fast changing and volume of technology, 24/7 academic library environment, lots of IT-related questions to library staff e.g. because the IT Department had gone home and the Library with all the products was open or because they were easier to ask direct, so wanted to integrate IT support at point of delivery in library and ensure all staff could handle typical questions.

So there was a HEFCE funded project that involved talking to students and staff trying to figure out all the different skills that were needed and where these skills existed, and to what level in the staff and what type of staff needed what level in which functions. Drew up a very large IT Skills Matrix. Highest level skills were in the IT Department and the Library.

Addressing gaps through training and development

Gap area’s tended to be around bespoke areas, advanced functions, ATHENS  / e-resources. Things that were more specialist or asked less often.. Range of solutions used from short informal drop in sessions on how to do a specific thing (very popular) through to more formalised IT training sessions, ECDL etc. Also used wiki’s, guides, VLAD. Wiki was very popular and highly used. Improved technical literacy and gave rise to more use of some systems.

Issues

Clear will need to keep reviewing and up-dating requirements and ensuring the necessary skills are present. People preferred face to face and personal communication, meant there was a recognition of the additional workload on staff needing to use these skills and keep up with changes.

Future

Move towards giving information to users as they find difficulties and need it rather than trying to cover everything at induction, culture change required, lots of work on effective communication methods required, needed additional work to be carried out to define the way forward.

Umbrella 2011: School Library Research - part two without one!

Umbrella 2011

School Library Research: where next

 [Now I’ll start my notes with a hasty apology for the first speaker’s talk of the session – I gabbed too long in the Exhibition and was somewhat harried and late for the start so I missed quite a lot so feel I’m better starting from the second.]

Speaker 2 – David Streatfield

The Research

Discussion of research carried out using funding from Wendy Drewett Bequest from CILIP with active involvement by SLG.  Purpose being to try and get some baseline information for secondary schools of all types re libray provision and what the school librarian does.

Background to research being general concern school library provision worsening, research carried out just prior to the Coalition Government coming into power.  School libraries not a statutory service, pressure on school budgets, concern about internet being used as substitute.

Survey concentrated on various activities – management, funding, reading, information literacy, support for teaching and learning, academic and professional qualifications, key role, stories of success and failure.

Key findings

School budgets weren’t doing well with 32% cut and a lot the same as previous year, almost 60% school librarians supervised by senior manager, high concentration on promoting reading and information literacy, problems re ‘first language’ needs, lot of ‘pastoral care’ being undertaken. It was found that those with academic / professional qualifications did more promotion of reading and information literacy work and got more involved with aspects such as intranets, a lot had dual qualifications in education and LIS.

Promotion and next steps

Work on promoting the findings within and outwith the profession. Had House of Commons launch, been various press coverage and sectoral (to LIS and education).  The results need to be analysed more as lots of rich material, the pastoral care angle needs more research. Interesting questions re how to develop library staff as educators e.g. embed awareness  in teacher training. Need to promote role of the school librarian to school leaders and engage government and policy formers. Need to look at next ways forward.

Comments

There was an interesting question at the end of this session noting that it had concentrated quite a lot on qualitative evidence and asking about quantitative information (on basis politicians etc. want numbers). There was a fairly wide-ranging discussion of the difficulties of doing this for a complex area and of showing causal connections between e.g. school library and exam results.

Opinion…

I’m sorry I missed the start of this so haven’t done proper justice to the first part of it which was also very interesting. I’ve never been a school librarian but thought a lot of what was being discussed is also applicable to other sectors, particularly around showing the value that comes out, not just the cost of the resource that goes in (a much simpler calculation). It is important contextual information for any sector to have survey information, it can help make an internal case for a lot of things as well as confirm trends and show things you didn’t know and suggest further avenues. As with a lot of sessions I attended I thought it was the same themes coming out in many ways.

Umbrella 2011: KIM Profession

Umbrella 2011

KIM Profession

[More of my scrambled notes and thoughts, we’ve reached the afternoon of Day 1 of Umbrella 2011 now.  This session consisted of three presentations on the knowledge and information profession, skills for and changes to]

First Speaker – Sharon Jones on Dewey to Bear Grylls

From a government librarian so with the normal caveat of personal opinion only.  The theme of this presentation was survival, that it’s not about navel gazing on what is and is not ‘professional’ but it’s about survival and doing whatever we can do that’s unique and better than someone else can do it and embracing all the change and moving with it.  She briefly talked through the existing Professional Skills for Government framework and those existing in CILIP qualifications and went on to consider essential skills for survival in Bear Grylls style.  These included the need to use media the way customers use and expect, not getting caught up past baggage (‘real librarians’), professionalism as a state of mind that can be nourished (e.g. by bloggers), doing CPD little and often (horizon scanning, staying up-to-date with changes), being a catalyst and involving people in services, connecting to people, positive communication and transformation skills, influence and fight for things but know when to stop, need to sell USP in a sentence and then cross-sell like mad once in, enjoy what you do. She noted that the phoenix always rises from the ashes.

Speaker Two – Franko Kowalczuk on Librarian skills in KM

This was more using own career to demonstrate how library skills had segued into knowledge management and the sheer range of skills that had been called for in his different jobs.  He started with some standard definitions of librarian and knowledge management, then looked at ‘traditional’ library skills, then his own career path from a librarian to a knowledge manager.

Speaker(s) Three – Ned Potter and Laura Woods on Escaping the Echo Chamber

An expanded version of the presentation given in this session is available online so I’m just going to cover some main bits here. It was a discussion of getting outside the echo chamber (the profession talking to itself) for advocacy work on libraries.  The thread was that it’s no use us all talking to ourselves and complaining in an enclosed space. Libraries are in trouble because people don’t understand what we do and it’s easier to criticise than defend so need to broadcast out to users and those who control the finances.

Various examples were given of both failure and of success in getting beyond the echo chamber.

It was noted that media narrative on libraries was largely controlled by others and various bodies were trying to impact on that such as CILIP and Voices for the Library as well as lots of other campaigners.

Various techniques for successful engagement were outlined including asking things and being confident, stealth advocacy, aligning messages and values with the audience (it was suggested looking at the SLA work on alignment), not mixing messages, responding to attacks using same medium from whence they came (talking outwith the profession in terms of media).

The curve of engagement was discussed as a means of deciding what type of people to target, easier to target those of no fixed view than those determined against, more chance of success.

Thoughts….

This session brought together a variety of food for thought. A lot of it touched on themes of Conference I’ve already mentioned in other posts. The complexity of the skills base as jobs and careers evolve, the difficulties of the current operating context and need to promote our value. The need to sell and cross-sell services. Perhaps what all the speakers had in common was an emphasis on the need to get your foot in the door and then expand outwards in adaptable fashion, that applies to growing market for services, talking to media, and also I think thriving in new posts demanding different skills which have to be developed as you go.

Umbrella 2011: Ministry of Defence ATHENA Reports Collection

Umbrella 2011

Ministry of Defence ATHENA Reports Collection

These are my notes on a presentation on exploiting science and technology research in the Ministry of Defence to avoid duplication, know what had already been done, enable access to Reports and who to approach for information on.

ATHENA

ATHENA is about knowledge sharing and accessibility of research and increasing awareness of the content of the collection of around 200,000 full-text Reports and 470,000 records.

We were talked through the process the original hardcopy reports go through from arrival in the document handling centre to going on the secure intranet – sifting, preparation, scanning, quality checking, indexing, coding, release, destruction of hardcopy.

MoD uses Microsoft SharePoint 2007 for all the various different ATHENA sites which allows desktop access to full-text reports, browsing and downloading within MoD.

Access

Various issues when it comes to allowing access to material beyond the MoD (e.g. to industrial and academic research partners) re the security and intellectual property issues. Security is by clearance, for IP they work with own IP Group which advises on the balance between protection and exploitation and they can create different cuts of information for different audiences depending on security rating e.g. Defence Reporter is unclassified re security clearance and contains titles and abstracts. 

Statistical information

They keep a range of statistics but they don’t show key things such as whether the service saves the MoD money or improves the life of its staff so they ask for feedback and use success stories of ways the information has been used by the wider organisation to show they are making a difference and an impact.

Future

Looking at developing a wider government version of their own gateway using SharePoint 2010 and things like tailored email alerts. There are limitations to do with technology, security, intellectual property rights etc but the aim is to exploit the assets within that.

Umbrella 2011: Preserving information on the web for the future

Umbrella 2011

Preserving information on the web for the future

My notes on a session by the National Archives on how they archive government information.

Web Archiving and Government Sites

Web archiving is the automated collection of portions of web for preservation and research and is mainly carried out by cultural organisations. The NA archives government websites, the likes of the British Library archives a much wider range of material.

There has been massive growth in the use of the internet by government but content e.g. electronic only publications, and websites can disappear very rapidly with the risk it is lost from the public record. Websites are worth saving for historical reasons, otherwise there are gaps in recorded knowledge.

The UK Government Web Archive

The UK Government Web Archive on the NA website is free and consists of A / Z lists of archived websites and their content, there is also available accessing information by theme.

The NA seeks to capture all UK central government departments, central government agencies, public enquiries, Royal Commissions, some English regional material.

Web Continuity Issues

It also seeks to address web continuity issues. These consist of broken links, websites that have been removed or had key content moved. Research was done into the number of URLs in Hansard that were broken over a defined period of time and 60% were broken. Important to resolve such things. A redirection solution uses the UK Government Archive to make sure information remains accessible – those setting this up can choose whether want to link direct to new location or through a bridging page to make it clear where the information has been moved and why.

Volume and Frequency

The comprehensive archiving of government websites is part of the transformational government initiative. There are around 1500 UK central government websites in all and sites are archived at least once a year, additional crawls can be done if there is likelihood of major changes imminent. So before the 2010 General Election there was a project to capture all government websites before and after the election due to the concern of the loss of information. Social media represents new problems and the NA has started experimenting catching social media as well but with limited success so far.

Statistics

The NA collects statistics on usage of the UK Government Web Archive, the peak was after the last General Election with 140 million hits in one month. A lot of these come through the automated redirection points, others through web browser searches. There are about 3 million unique visits a month.

Problems and next steps

The Archive is huge already with lots of duplication. To know what website to go to for any subject you first already need to know a lot of information – who was responsible for the information at what point in time and what were they named. So looking at creating a semantic knowledge base to help locate material easier to link subjects across databases. Considering archiving various departmental intranets across government but raises lots of sensitivity issues re levels of content. Now archiving datasets as well to support transparency at data.gov.uk.

Additional Access Point

All sites are catalogued through the main National Archives catalogue.

Discussion

Social media problems - encountered lots of problems to do with technical issues of how things like Twitter view and copyright issues. Devolved Nations approach to archiving government information – the National Libraries have programmes for archiving content relating to own jurisdictions, National Library of Scotland, National Library of Wales. I didn't quite catch who does it for Northern Ireland. The UK Parliament is also building its own digital repository.

Thoughts

I really enjoyed this session. The work of the NA is something I have been known to be incredibly thankful for in the day job when trying to find information created by  government bodies that lived short lives (English regional planning agencies spring to mind!!) before being unceremoniously culled. The Archive means that a snapshot of the relevant website will still exist and it gives me some form of pointer information, even the bridging redirection pages contain a lot of useful information on where responsibilities went to and when bodies ceased to exist. So while I’ve been making practical use of the information for a good while it was really nice to just get the rationale and background to everything to give me some idea of just how much is archived how frequently by who re previous web incarnations of government information and the simplest access points.

Umbrella 2011: Libraries in the Big Society

Umbrella 2011

Libraries in the Big Society

[Being my scribbled notes on a discussion session from the viewpoint of provision of government information services, on a key theme of UB11 – ‘The Big Society’ and what that means for the delivery of services to individuals and for libraries and for the departments themselves]

The format of this session was three shortish speeches by people speaking in a personal capacity followed by questions and comment.

Speaker 1

The first speaker worked for a large transactional-based department and saw The Big Society as empowering the citizen, which meant making information available from the department to partner bodies or individuals and helping people with it to make it more accessible to them. He also noted that such information could be used to tailor other services and processes to make them a better fit for people. So his department mainly produce material electronically and through DirectGov for subject-based information, but also  produce print on demand as 40% of silver surfers aren’t on the internet. The role is to get information out, but also need to make sure don’t overload people and that the information is understandable.

Speaker 2

The second speaker from a smaller department saw things in terms of connecting people to information to make better decisions. ‘The Big Society’ as devolving power to the frontline with local participation and ownership against a context of reduced spend and a massive rate of change.  There was however potential tension between sharing services to save money and localism as an agenda.  In terms of departmental agenda there was a lot more accountability for the frontline, not just over-arching policy.  There was a great deal of change, increased ICT, reduced headcount to deliver services, but it did bring new kinds of opportunities with it.

Speaker 3

The third speaker noted ‘The Big Society’ was confusing and saw it as double devolution – devolution from central to local government and then from local government to local community. This raised all kinds of issues – volunteers in the delivery of library services, accountability to government and people, statutory provision of local services v local delivery models.  He went on to note that the Transformational Government Agenda had been on-going for a while and focused around delivering lots of data direct to the citizen. However there were issues with this around e.g. who pays to make the information available and how nicely  and how do you find your bit of information amongst the vast swathes. Should ‘value added’ information be added by government?  It’s the taxpayer who’s eventually paying for it. Or should information just be made available for other people to do the value added bit to it? Move towards public data corporation?  He also asked how quick ‘The Big Society’ will be. He noted ‘The Big Bank’ was due to be set up but would take seven years and be funded from dormant bank accounts. He discussed the shared services drive  e.g. subscribing to another department’s product for part of your own operations, and the changes that brought with government departments selling to each other interally e.g. 40% of his staff were paid for by another organisation. He noted everyone was operating on a much smaller staff base than before and the importance of cost effectiveness in deciding what services to produce.  This meant a far larger skills base was needed for staff but the radical change had created types of career opportunities that hadn’t existed before for those who were left.

Comments and questions section

There was a good range of these from the floor. [While this was very early in Conference by the time I came to write up my notes afterwards I realised that actually most of the themes of conference were here.]

One theme of UB11 made itself very clear in terms of there being a rare opportunity to take the lead, but only if people kept pushing themselves forward promoting and proving what they could do and the value they could bring, there was no job security for unsung heroes, necessary to get the credit to justify on-going existence. Sensible to hitch selves to current agenda and show how fit into delivery of that. Have to show relevance.

And another theme to do with the evolving skills base of the profession and what constitutes the information professional.  There was discussion of the need in one department for a balance between project management, business change and librarian skills. The department had a physical library in a basement, no enquiry service, but it did have account managers who went out to clients. Web backgrounds were as prevalent and relevant as traditional cat/n/class ones. The range and width of activities necessitated and expected to be undertaken impacted on skillsets needed and things like Chartership needed to be re-examined in that light.

And another theme of UB11 that was raised was quality of public sector information, its reliability, how understandable it was. Whether it was reliable or not there was certainly huge amounts of it produced and increasingly being made available and that could raise problems e.g. around interpretation. Producing quality information is expensive so is it about publication or is it about quality.

Another UB11 theme was around the speed of technological change and need to provide the service that the organisation is asking for and doing things you know it can’t get rid of and worries people (e.g. FoI in government). There was discussion here on things like how fast you can change infrastructure, uses of cloud based services.

And one last UB11 theme that was touched on was community volunteer run or managed library services in the context of the Big Society / Government agenda and issues such as information assurance

Opinion…

My personal musing on this session goes that as usual the slight debate format with multiple speakers was a very good one for bringing out, in the second session, what (now looking back at my notes) are mostly key themes of my Umbrella this year.  I say ‘my Umbrella’ because I suspect some key themes differ if you followed a very different programme to one I did and others would be universal to all sectors. But certainly re-occuring themes in the sessions I attended were Big Society / Government agendas, enabling access / quality government information, the need to be visible and relevant and blow own trumpets within our organisations and generally to society, the widening skills-base and how that impacts on the profession, the economic climate, and speed of technological developments, role of librarian as educator…

I think what was most interesting about this session, as someone who isn’t a government librarian but uses a lot of government information, was getting varied perspectives on the internal driver’s on departments currently, the sheer rate of change, and how the mix of agenda’s impacts on what information is made available and how to get it into the public sphere.

And the key thing in my memory from it is providing the service the organisation wants in the here and now to keep and visibly demonstrate relevance and strategic fit.

Umbrella 2011: Developing your Library Presence Online

Umbrella 2011

Developing your Library Presence Online: Working beyond Web 2.0

Somewhat shorter notes here of Nick Stopforth’s session as lots of lights down to watch and listen to video clips and I was flagging!

Whither the future…

This was a brisk canter through a public-library orientated list of technological developments that may, some sooner than others, be things we need to consider and allow for in service development in terms of user expectation.

There was discussion of the problem of two-tier society between the internet-enabled and those who are not with a widening gap as technology rapidly increases making the learning curve ever increase needed to catch up.

There was discussion of the hope cycle. That not everything is as shiny as it first appears, some things are more practically useful than others, but important to maintain awareness of new developments and try things out so if they are going to cross over to mainstream usage you know about them or if things are overtaken by newer creations you can transfer quickly.

Technologies

Ten technologies were discussed, often with video clips to illustrate and references to good blogs to follow

1. RFID developments – e.g. wearable RFID that can speak stock management information to visually impaired users.
2. Online  - From ‘The Internet of Things’ – internet as a central nervous system of interconnections to the physical world and objects within it – to things like Enterprise Search and collaborative search engines.
3. Context-aware computing – Gadgets more like personal companions that can react to moods, likes, dislikes.
4. Location-based data – e.g. proximity marketing e.g. sending GPS signals to mobiles to give specific information
5. Social media – Whether business would use in a new way making it more corporate, social networks overload, the new Google+
6. Tablets – Expectation for public libraries to have and use?  Lots of players in market but Apple is dominant
7. Open Source Data – Low-cost innovative way to produce services? Already being used in public libraries
8. Mobile technology – 4G, apps, user-contextualised services
9. Augmented reality – using devices to point and get additional information sent to device, used in tourism
10. QR codes

Thoughts….

This is not my main area of activity or knowledge, I tend to read what others say about things briefly but wait till things cross over to the mainstream before I spend time on them, and I was flagging a bit by this point! So it was interesting horizon scanning, it’s useful to be able to go and just hear quick run-down’s of lots of things consolidated together by someone else and be able to pick and choose which of them you investigate further.

Umbrella 2011: Educational outreach from 17th c university library

Umbrella 2011

How a 17^th century library and its collections can contribute to wider education within the community

[This was Part 2 of the session the first part of which had been focused on school library research.  The presentation was by Kathryn McKee and Ryan Cronin of St. John’s College, Cambridge. I’ve decided to blog it separately.]

This session was about enabling access to the social, intellectual and cultural history within library collections for educational purposes.  It was noted that St. Johns was primarily an undergraduate library, but it was also 17^th century Jacobean Gothic with MLA designated special collections of outstanding international importance. 50,000 of its books were published before 1800.

Involvement in education and outreach

This fitted within the overall university ethos of broad-based education and an active schools liaison programme and helped bridge town and gown.  There were also pragmatic reasons – e.g. access was usually a requirement of funding bids and the collections lent themselves to educational outreach use.

Benefit to the library service and to participants

The programme gave enhanced knowledge of collections amongst staff and allowed them to develop a variety of new skills. It was an aid to successful funding bids, and it generated goodwill.  Schools involved in the programme got an interesting place to visit and a different type of learning experience for pupils related to physical objects that could be tailored to core subjects of study in the curriculum and different levels. There was also participation in broader community events for the general public. And they also played host to specific groups from local history to adult education. It was good to be as open as possible, ambitious, flexible and have fun.

Programme development

There was discussion of librarians as educators through teaching school groups and running learning events and advice on how to begin to develop a programme.  The basis was a well-catalogued collection searchable online and properly considering the physical space also – what it allowed for and didn’t – together with knowledge of the curriculum and funding opportunities. After that it was about letting relevant people find you (through website or local promotion or opportunities to meet relevant folk) or contacting them direct (e.g. emailing local schools). Word of mouth was also excellent.

Delivery issues

In terms of running actual events it was about considering practicalities, working closely with teachers to deliver what they wanted, tailoring events (not just information dumping), concentrating on collection and personal strengths, thinking beyond books in cases and seeing what additional elements might lend themselves e.g. interactive parts. In terms of repeat events and contacts it was important to keep contacts up-to-date and keep in touch to build relationships to plan for return visits.

Integration with wider library activities

The outreach programme had to be balanced with providing all the normal university library services for students. There was a certain amount of time given for it in job descriptions, it developed transferable skills which could be applied to settings such as induction, and things could be put together quite quickly if knew the stock or it was an established topic and materials and displays re-used. So a lot of elements also informed the staff’s other duties.

Discussion

At the end in the questions section there was slight discussion of collection development policies, noting that the College had one, but it hadn’t had it for 500 years so while it had a small budget for acquisitions it tended to use it for purchases very specific to the college and gaps in collections. However there had always been donations and so the collection continued to grow.

Thoughts

This was the ‘surprise’ session for me. I’d actually turned up for the primary purpose of listening to all the school library research which I had an interest in, not this.  But I utterly loved this and found it fascinating. There were things the speakers were saying that certainly chimed with other related contexts such as induction or training sessions and would apply anywhere from my totally commercial context onwards.  I particularly thought the idea of deciding at the outset the one thing you wanted to get across and embed it so people go away remembering it was important. 

And while I’ve blogged this separately it did link with the school library research presentations in some of the concepts that arose in both e.g. the extent of the role of the librarian as educator, which was yet another reoccurring theme of UB11.

Umbrella 2011: Using everyday research skills to become a changemaker

Umbrella 2011

That’s a good IDEA: using everyday research skills to become a changemaker

Workshops and intellectual effort early in the morning

Right, change of theme, change of pace. This was a Workshop strand session rather than a standard presentation format so involved much postcards, small table work, post-it notes, lots of enthusiastic individuals, and diving around tables gently interrogating each other against various questions. We even had a whistle, which first thing on the Wednesday morning was definitely penetrating! And there were a range of semi-daft prizes and many exchanges of email addresses. There was also The Dread Postcard completed by the end by each individual which encapsulated (to some extent!) the research they wanted to undertake and what was involved to take away and either try to gently ignore or get on with.

Research utilises everyday skills we already have

The key point being made in the first half was that a lot of everyday stuff that we all do and don’t actually think about very much is actually research or aspects thereof. We started by interrogating each other to find out who had done various things (e.g. has run a focus group, has written or presented report to their organisation) and what their example of that was. We then looked at what skills were involved in a range of examples from the information gathered, from listening through to analysis. And they’re all research skills that most people had used, but not often in such a way that the results of their research had been promoted or made available outside their organisation or published for others to use.

Project definition

Then out came the blank postcards and being asked to write down something on it we each wanted to research whether as part of our job organisationally or a distinct personal interest. We then gradually filled in the postcard by applying the IDEAS framework going through each part of it and adding a bit to our postcards, often with a bit of discussion with our neighbour or wider group.

The IDEA framework

The IDEAS framework broke down into five component parts –

• I – Interest, issue, idea
• D – Develop, discuss, define
• E – Engage, elaborate, enact
• A – Advocate, advertise, apply

• S - Skills

The Process

So we discussed defining precisely what it was we wanted to achieve, and the scope and limitations of it and what was required to do it and the types of other people we might need to engage with and how in order to do it (everything from authorising funding to management permission) and what completion would look like and how be communicated and shared to inform our own practice and beyond.  

Conclusion

Research was about using everyday skills we have but in a purposeful focused way and the results if promoted could influence beyond our own immediate communities by being used by other people to feed into their own work and practice and changes to. There was a bit of discussion of the echo chamber and looking to see if there were wider audiences for research outputs beyond our own obvious sector or community and how best to reach them.

Thoughts

Again, I really enjoyed this one. I wasn’t quite sure what it was going to be, but it looked interesting and as though it might relate to something that’s been at the back of my head for a couple of years now to do.  So, do I have a postcard Yes, have I done one single thing with it since last week, No, is it really fairly likely this will stay the case… well on current commitments yes. My main limitation is always time and I’m well aware it’s something that would require proper focused time and concentration and I’m not someone who likes to do things slowly. On the other hand I could argue with my more exacting self that simply writing up this session is making me sift through options and slightly question the assumption. I’m wondering if I’m dismissing ‘slow’ out of hand. All in it’d do no harm to experiment and see if anything did get done that way.

Umbrella 2011 Why do European Libraries matter?

Umbrella 2011

The opening Plenary session was by Gerald Leitner from the Austrian Library Association and current President of EBLIBA. 

[Herewith be my written up scribbled notes from the session!]

Why do European Libraries matter?

He was discussing the European Libraries idea / concept. He noted that there has never been a ‘right time’ to discuss this. It remains just as important in the current economic climate impacting on Europe and on libraries . All libraries are impacted upon, and what is happening in the UK is followed by European colleagues, especially re public libraries and education. Leitner sees libraries as a means by which the worst impacts of measures taken in Member States can be mitigated. He argued that European libraries should work together and use the mechanisms of the EU to bring libraries, and the benefits of, into the debate.

Navigating EU infrastructure

He outlined the different purposes of the Council of Europe (47 member countries which can choose to make commitments) and the European Union (27 member countries who have transferred their own executive powers in certain subject matters to the EU). Thus EU legislation is binding on Member States and implemented everywhere, but the Council of Europe creates Guidelines which are recommended but not binding.

Co-operatively developed Libraries documents

He noted the IFLA Public Library Manifesto (an advisory document) and the EBLIBA Guidelines 2000.  The Guidelines had not proved powerful, a few States had made changes locally in result, but not many.

EU Threats and Opportunities

The EU, being a commercially orientated organisation, had produced nothing on libraries as such. And yet a lot of its legislation directly impacted on the way libraries can provide services and the context in which they operate e.g. Copyright Directives. He discussed the pre-legislative documents re Green (discussion paper) and White Papers (official proposals) the EU produced and benefits of getting one on libraries. But it hadn’t happened.

Transformation of the media and information market

He noted the developments in ICT technology had been vital and enabled a new user-based philosophy. The work of librarians and libraries had changed but it had brought the digital divide also and copyright laws had not kept up, they kept libraries in physical places and formats by imposing lots of restraints despite most libraries being hybrid.

E-books

Leitner argued that the mass market in ebooks has gained momentum and is changing publishing in result. There were new challenges to this to do with creating financial models, changing copyright, understanding ebooks are different legally – these made ebook services difficult. He noted the attempt underway to create one central Austrian nationwide elibrary.

He argued strongly that libraries need copyright law changes through the EU to deal effectively with electronic media and that contractual terms and conditions were all in favour of the publishers.

EBLIBA and international advocacy

EBLIBA influences EU politicians, but it needs help, we all need to co-operate to advocate for changes that are necessary and benefit us all.

Economic Crisis and Libraries

Sovereign States are now the debtors with no money. In many places this is a crisis for libraries with closures and reduction in service provision. Libraries can help and have a civic responsibility to advocate the benefits that they can bring to politicians and to the overall agenda. They can counteract the worst aspects of cutbacks. The crisis is not just economic but also social, a strong vision for society is needed.

He talked about OECD research into literacy levels among 15 yr olds showing fatal gaps and lots of differences between States. He argued this was a time bomb libraries were needed to combat. The role of libraries went far beyond public libraries, National Libraries were doing much to save digital memory, research libraries to underpin development and economies.

The Need to Promote Libraries

Leitner noted in very few countries were politicians aware of what libraries could do to help and in many places libraries were in crisis. There is no impetus campaigning on the role of libraries. EBLIBA lobbies for European Libraries but it takes time and effort and it has been more successful in some aspects (e.g. intellectual property rights) than others.

From Reactive to Proactive

Libraries involvement has tended to be reactive but we need to become proactive and offer a convincing overall vision. While the European Digitial Library has been launched this only touches on a small area of overall EU activity, need to be involved a lot more and to discuss things at both national and European level.

His Conclusion

Leitner noted there is no common policy for European libraries. A  European Libraries Directive is unlikely. But we can lobby together for a White Paper on the role of libraries in Europe. This should consider all types of libraries, not just public libraries. EBLIBA is trying but it is slow and more partners are needed to lobby together for the benefit of all. As part of this the young need to get involved and be commited

Some thoughts on the session…

A purely personal opinion here. What struck me most was what he said near the beginning on the ‘is this the right time for this discussion in the context we are all facing / well there is never a right time’ theme.  I think that applies to an awful lot of things that never quite make it up a communal priority list for all sorts of reasons. The EU is a vast body and libraries by their very variety don’t fit comfortably in one place so perhaps lose out on obvious homes and champions that way. It’s difficult to envisage libraries getting far up the EU agenda with all the other competing priorities which are perhaps slightly more narrowly defined and thus easier understood.

European advisory documents are interesting in but up to individual States whether they choose to engage with them or not, and at a time when the biggest debtors are in fact the Sovereign Member States investment money would be very hard to come by unless the document  e.g. White Paper, really showed the societal and economic benefits in a way that could be measured as value for money. Perhaps what we actually need is a way to integrate more European level impact studies into the role of libraries into policy documents or, if these already exist and I’m showing my ignorance, more promotion of them.

CPD25 Thing 5 - Interacting with Conferences – reflecting on Umbrella (CPD23 Week 5)

First the very very slight cheat!

Partially as a slight cheat on CPD23 Week 5 Reflection (which was CILIP Umbrella 2011 week so I was kind of busy elsewhere), and as I’ve done nowt on it for weeks (coughs – been busy, honest guv) and partially for anyone who didn’t get and would like vicarious content from a splendiferous  conference (in full knowledge it’s usually me reading Conference I Wasn’t At tweets after work while making dinner!)… I enclose a general rumination (i.e. a somewhat specific use of reflection!) followed by Lots of blogs on the conference sessions I attended. Any inaccuracies down to my not scribbling fast enough at the back!

I’m thinking in this post about how we interact personally with conference and how the level of interaction – I would suggest – has a great deal to do with how much we enjoy it, get out of it, where it comes in our personal lists of best conferences.

So how many ways can you interact with a conference?

I’m just back from Umbrella and that’s a really good example for me. Umbrella is the big CILIP multi-day multi-strand biennial cross-sector conference which shares responsibility and programming between CILIP and its Special Interest Groups. It started in Leeds, had a good few years in Manchester, and the third one at Hatfield (Univ. of Hertfordshire to be more precise) is just ended.

So how have I interacted with Umbrella down the years and how did it impact on me?

Programme Development

Session Planner

My first experience of Umbrella was being asked to jointly develop the CDG programme back in Ye Days Of Old when Groups could have up to seven solo sessions over conference to deliver. Hugely to my then alarm and trepidation. It kind of started a trend of sorts. After that I created and delivered lots of courses and conferences jointly or by myself on all kinds of things in lots of places. Still do to a minor degree, just keeping occasional hand in for fun.

Chair'ing

I’ve Chair’d a few sessions at Umbrella, though not for a good few years now. Chair’ing sessions is really rather fun in a running around like a half-demented fly kind of way.  Done my fair share in other places since. It’s almost like a parallel simultaneous experience the back end. But it meant a free day at Umbrella so was much enjoyed.

Speaking

I’ve only spoken at Umbrella once, and that was fringe event after the end of the day’s programme so doesn’t hugely count. I have strong memories of CDG birthday cake of extreme difficulty to cut so might must have been 110th anniversary year I think! Unless I’m mixing up AGMs.

Publishing

In my journal editing days this meant clobbering (nicely, persuasively!) Speakers to do journal articles for me to publish based on their sessions for those who would otherwise not have an opportunity to get any of the content.  This year this blog seemed an opportunity to make available an awful lot of content, to anyone who searched for it, much more quickly.  I thus scribbled continuously and at great speed through every main content session I attended and then typed it all up here after.

Loitering in the Exhibition(!)

I have also done the attending various meetings that take place on site before Umbrella and adding on a day attending the Exhibition but not Umbrella per se (and it’s astounding how much you can get out of just a day at the Exhibition which is free talking to people, doing the Poster Sessions, the exhibitors).

Full Attendee (whee hee)

And I’ve done two glorious attendances at full full Umbrella courtesy of SLLG and CILIP respectively. And I do adore Umbrella. I love the sheer variety of it and the fact I can go to lots of sessions on all kinds of different things and find relevance. It’s a bit like a sweetie shop full of options. And that's just the programmed content and doesn't even begin to explore the social side.

Online

These lovely days it's perfectly possible to get lots out of conferences you're nowhere near physically through online networks for the event (e.g. the spruz one for Umbrella), the Twitter traffic, Groups and speakers posting presentations, crowd sourcing options, people blogging sessions. Which now includes me!

Practical outcomes

And what comes out of Umbrella? Well I can think of one biennial conference that started with a dinner conversation between me and a (then) complete stranger there, and a day course that I developed after getting the idea for at Umbrella. Those are practical things I suppose. Mostly what I get out of Umbrella is motivation from wonderful variety, lots of things to listen to, people to meet, and just a very positive refreshed feeling. Which is worth its own weight. The trick with Umbrella is to talk to everyone and make sure at least half of them are strangers. Works perfectly.

Addendum....

Some weeks after looking back at this post I know that the concrete thing I took away this time that I'm doing something about was a decision to have a play about with an awful lot of new technlogy tools I hadn't yet. The combination of Umbrella and CPD23 have been good timing as a lot of that are specific tools-based which is the bit of it I don't do as much of programme-wise.


Addendum no. 2
Adding another way to engage with Umbrella, I did the Keynote for CILIP NE Mini-Umbrella 2011 in glorious Newcastle and got to catch up with a lot of friends I haven't seen in a long time. Really good afternoon.

CPD23 Thing 3 - Musings The Perils of Penelope Pitstop and The Hooded Claw

Admit it, some of you remember / know the cartoon series.  We have Penelope in bright pink (only pink seems to exist in her sunshine world) and then there is the Hooded Claw (evil cackling black faceless) perpetually trying to stop her and failing.

You're now wondering what on earth this has to do with personal online brands? (CPD23 Thing 3)

Well I have a brand conflict (not that I particularly like the brand word in the first place). Or at least it's more an 'approach to personal brand conflict'. Penelope approach is very out in the open.  Claw approach is faceless and a lot more cautious.  I kind of do aspects of each but in different places for different aspects of my life.

The conflict is to do with why I'm on certain things, what I hope to convey by it, being aware of potential consequences, and a wish to frame / zone different aspects of myself into different mechanisms and maintain personal space / focus place for each main aspect of my lives - and I have many. So - let's explore that.

Why I'm On What I'm On

I probably came to social media about 2 years ago, I set up just about all my accounts at the same time, and I just do 'main' ones i.e. FB, Twitter, LinkedIn.  I set up the accounts for two objectives, one professional, one personal. 

Personal was about keeping in touch better with folk I don't see that often (some within the profession some not). Personal to my mind is FB (though a lot of my friends on it are within the profession) and a personal Twitter account that I don't advertise and has very very few folk on it with a small smattering of librarians within it, though I'm a bit alarmed to see doing the puting my name into search engines thing that it just came up!

Professional was mainly to promote blog entries I'd done on a blog I was primarily responsible for at the time as part of promoting the content across relevant weblists and beyond to members.  Which is where the other Twitter account and LinkedIn came in.  It was also about feeling I should have a 'professional' presence on them, which again linked into promoting the doing's and activities to members of the organisation I'm primarily involved in.  And wanting to see conversations relating to and be able to respond.  It really wasn't about the day job though the 'professional' Twitter account has kind of become for both.

They're all different aspects of me, even though a few people overlap on them, so I'm not fussed about having different avatars, names etc. They're supposed to be different. Equally there's a limit to how many online personalities I can cope with having. The personal Twitter and mostly personal FB, professional / work Twitter and professional / work LinkedIn seems about right, it's manageable, easy to flip between them. I've toyed with blogs, failed, and would like to revisit (yet more aspects of me!).

What I hope to convey / Consquences

My personal Twitter one I really enjoy, it's just fun, I never put anything professional on it. I get a bit conflicted if folk I know as friends and professionally want on it trying to figure out what I'm most comfortable with though. Half because I want it as a peaceful non-professional space where everything else doesn't impinge and follow me. And half because I wonder which account would they like most. So I divert people towards the professional one or find they overlap occasionally but I try and avoid that. I steer completely clear of professional on my personal Twitter and I tweet and am on it a lot, all very innocuous. Fun. 

Basically I follow the same rules for FB (i.e. keeping it non-professional) though I don't post that much or find the time to keep up with it this year and will generally accept anyone I know for it, many of whom are in the profession.

My professional Twitter I don't really weed at all, if folk want to follow me then absolutely fine that's one of the main purposes it's there for, I follow a lot less back than I did at first, but that's just to do with controlling volume of stuff to look at. I'm cautious on my professional account (on all of them actually to different degrees), I want to be there, I want to post more, but I'm very aware that I'm corporate sector which puts a lot of work stuff out of bounds and in my professional involvements again I need to be careful and think about appropriateness and reputational angles while still wanting to communicate, be seen to be there, convey some personality, be responsive etc.  So I go through phases of being 'good' and trying to tweet something regularly and periods of silence when I'm reading a lot more than tweeting. I get more out of it than I contribute professionally.

LinkedIn again is the professional sphere and I exercise very little control, if I know folk I accept them, it all tends to be professional or work (though they may also equally be friends as well as professional), and I'm on it very little other than to accept people. My profile's probably out of date come to think of it.

A zoned approach

As I say there are grey area's in this, I have a lot of people I met through my professional involvements who are also friends and 'which account' creates problems at times as I have taken the conscious decision to zone myself, different aspects of what I do streamed through different accounts / products. I don't think my professional ones hugely need to know or care if I'm eating apple pie or on a day out. If I'm harassed I don't want them to know, I want to appear calm, collected, focused etc professionally. I don't think my 'personal' ones want all the professional stuff either.  If they really do they can follow both. Otherwise my personal ones are to create space for the rest of me from my professional life which gets very all-consuming. I find it necessary to zone to keep that space in my head and I want it limited in numbers of folk and who. Semi-private.

Should I become more consistent?

I started with a a fairly clear plan of what I wanted to be on, how, and why two years ago, setting everything up at the same time helped in that, and it was a great thing to do. I love Twitter (for personal and professional). FB I really struggle to find the time for much compared to a year ago, LinkedIn I'm barely there, it's all reactive. I've tried setting up blogs or contributing to over the last couple of years, and that's been wildly erratic and never lasted more than a couple of weeks.

Ze Internet Search Engine results

Well there's a famous international food writer with the same name as me but I knew that (I've been looking at Google, Yahoo, Bing by the way). So she outdoes me a bit but that's fine, there's still a lot of me there under my actual name.  All my other identities my name is discernible from I think looking at these results. So they link in a bit more than I'd anticipated they would.

To Do List

And this is going to be Kept Very Small because I frankly don't have time to add lots more To Do lists and it would totally take the fun out of this if it all became part of the on-going juggle. It's going to be 5min chunks around the edges of main activity. But then you can actually do a fair bit in 5mins if you know what you're trying to accomplish with it!

1. I shall officially sign up for CPD23 and link this blog to it instead of skulking in the shadows (less Claw more Penelope).

2. I will (shock horror) look at all my main online profiles and actually up-date them and put a bit more information in.

3. The blog thing shall be tried again - probably through this as an initial vehicle / schedule.

4. I will judiciously add at least some of my other selves to main places where I have profiles so they're still zoned with different names and avatars and purposes, but linked in better.

5. I will read the blog on BIALL Conf presentation on using LinkedIn better.

6. I'll get back to trying to tweet a few times a week on the professional account.