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.