Camping In Style at #libcampnw

The Rise of the Unconference 'format'

Now, unconferences, teachmeets, mashed sessions… these have all been gaining in popularity in recent years as an alternative to traditionally scheduled and arranged conferences, seminars and events.

They tend to be free (though donations gratefully accepted as is baking) and may take place at the weekend. And I’ve never been to any so I had a hankering…

Last year I had an ‘almost’ moment with librarycamp11 in that my schedule finally overcame me at the last and I ended up pulling out to write up something I had due on the Monday instead. Reading all the blogs and tweets from it I really regretted this.

Thus I was determined to put this near miss right at the next obvious opportunity.

Fun and Frolics in the Madlab

And hence last Saturday afternoon found me in Manchester for #libcampnw in the wonderfully named venue of the Madlab.

All afternoon a group of very diverse library, archives and information workers cheerily cantered up and down stairs to different sessions only stopping to grab more sumptuous cake and gossip on the way (and to look at the Board Of All Knowledge on what session was taking place where when). An extremely informal and very convivial time was had by all.

The Session Content

Sessions you say? What were the sessions on? Well, on whatever anyone put forward basically that attracted an audience that wanted to gather together in a huddle and discuss it! Some sessions attracted very large enthusiastic numbers of the available punters (e.g. on marketing in libraries, on the development work on the new CILIP Body of Professional Knowledge), others were far more petite (e.g. on equality issues or happiness in libraries or all the ‘small but still important things’ like toilets that don’t usually get discussed).

Quick write-up of the sessions I attended

Personally I went to equality issues, cross sectoral working, staff training.

Equality issues

Now we were a petite group, and we started in the same conversation and then I hold my hand up that we ended up having two separate conversations as three folk had one and two of us drifted into another. But they were both highly stimulating conversations that had folk exchanging contact details at the end.

So as I remember it we started all together with the results of the recent CILIP Equalities Audit looking at equalities findings within the organisation about the membership profile, and then it broadened out to discussing the sector and whether the results would differ at all and re how you defined the sector.

And then two of us kind of hived off into a discussion about how to promote LIS work as a career option in places we don’t perhaps reach very well and how to reach into schools to promote it as an option and all the different kinds of jobs, promote more within our own libraries, promote through other related places with cross-societal footfall and strong education and learning programmes such as museums. We discussed uses of positive discrimination to try to change the profile of the profession to one more akin to that of broader society and whether that gave a more welcoming image or pigeonholed people in a way they would not wish. We discussed collecting statistics and uses made of…

Helpfully the 'other' parallel converation going on next to me on the subject has been written up since too by thebradfordlibrarian and Theatregrad has also blogged about the sessions she attended so I now know bits that I slightly half-missed at the time about things I was in and things I wasn't (grins!).

Cross sector working

This was a combined session on cross sector working and working in non library jobs.

We had a diverse membership for the discussion ranging from public and private sector library folk to consultants to archivists to Wikipedia to library systems supplier to student.

A lot of it was about what opportunities existed to work collaboratively to e.g. source content or systems re procurement and to work in a lot closer way instead of everyone in their respective silos. Various initiatives between different bodies were discussed.

It kind of came down to many have very similar concerns and goals but very few of us are directly connected, all working in different systems and sectors, and thus it is immensely difficult to make national or global offers which would have instant recognition in a brand manner as an out-facing profile to help illustrate the worth and value of what we do. We need to work on this harder.

There are collaborative projects, but often they’re not known widely outwith a certain sector never mind to an external audience, and they may be very localised, or they may be time constrained, or they might have been going a long time and be fairly large and wide-ranging but not have a huge profile outwith their own communities.

Staff training

This was another combined session I think (where there were too many sessions pitched to run some were combined) on staff training and internal communication – though to be fair we didn’t really get to internal communication!

A lot of it ranged about creative solutions to training budgets that did not exist or were perhaps extremely small and how to go about getting the training you felt you or your staff needed.

How to sell the need and benefit for it internally to get it agreed, ways of going about that didn’t necessarily involve time away or expensive courses where there were issues around budget or cover or getting rest of work done.

So we covered all the usual from job shadowing and visits, running in-house, developing yourself, having external trainer in to run, doing half hour very focused sessions at certain times, blended learning, electronic options, discussion with colleagues, getting it written into your appraisal objectives for organisational buy-in, pitching it to boss…

It was useful having a mixture of people there who were themselves trainers as well and getting their viewpoint that generally they love invites from places with defined ready-made communities e.g. professional groups so they don’t have to try and find their own audiences and do all the practical arrangements too as well as deliver the content. The other thing that came across was the difficulty where there is impasses between someone wanting training in x to happen and someone in more authority disagreeing on the need.

Outcomes Beyond The Day?

Concrete things do come out of it. Two of my colleagues also on the Project Board for it who were there proposed a session on the CILIP Body of Professional Knowledge which attracted a good turnout and a lot of debate – the feedback from that session has been disseminated to the Project Board already to help formulate our work.

And I had a few idea’s on various things triggered by all the debate and sessions on other things too which I know I’ll explore.

In conclusion…

I’m afraid I whizzed off early before the last sessions as the only very cheap train back to Glasgow meant I needed to leave early. But it was a really good afternoon of lots of enthusiastic people who would not normally meet from lots of different environments discussing whatever they personally felt like discussing on the day. Definitely energising.

Blogs are starting to appear from folk who attended totally different sessions to me so that's a good way of seeing what happened in the sessions I missed too.

So, many thanks to all the individuals who organised the event and to those cheery souls who turned up for it from all points of the compass on a Saturday afternoon and made it such fun.  Really glad I got and roll on the next one...

And now I've got around to doing the blog entry for it (hurrah) I must do something with that pocket of scribbled telephone numbers, business cards, event notifications, Twitter names etc. that I picked up.

The cake wrappers I can confirm are safely binned though! Promise!