Congregational Libraries to Police Archives - Edinburgh Doors Open Day 2012

Last weekend was Doors Open Day in Edinburgh

 I spent an afternoon wandering around four buildings, mostly chosen for geographical proximity, and a geographical area I hadn’t covered before, and being close to my main target of the day, the NMS Collections Centre.

I thus found it extremely amusing to note that distinct libraries, archives and research activities were unexpectedly part of most of them.

South Leith Parish Church

Looks ‘normal’ looking straight down the church.

 But if you turn your head to the left within it from the central aisle you suddenly see the library corner.

Full of everything from religious texts to the works of Alexander McCall Smith.

High concentration on children’s materials, and a lot of audio material.

An everyday congregational library to serve the needs of a church community.

It made me smile.



Parish Newsletter section discussing Library



Leith Town Hall & Sheriff Court

This is now a working police station, so we got shown the Old Council Chamber, briefly taken through the police station which is the old Sheriff Court, and down to the 1870 prison cells by police officers working there (not your normal Doors Open Day volunteer guides!). 



Doors Open Day visitors perambulate around the cells



Cells are not in use for prisoners anymore.

However, I did note all the cells had become somewhat unusual archive storage instead.



Notices on cell doors re Major Incident Archiving Team



View through cell door to archive storage boxes inside

National Museums Scotland Collections Centre in Granton

Well this is the reserve collection of NMS and also the working space for a vast amount of technical departments.

So the Library proper is within the NMS proper in Central Edinburgh, (see my previous blog post re), but a lot of research activity gets carried out on the Granton site.

Trinity House Maritime Museum

This did not have a library, plenty of bookcases mind! It is certainly a large collection, but about the nautical heritage of Leith, part of Historic Scotland. It houses paintings, objects, written material amongst it.

Amusement

So all in all in an afternoon I found a congregational library, police archives, and a lot of research capability and output.

The fact that I wasn’t even trying to go anywhere specific with a library or archives focus for once does illustrate the sheer diversity and volume of libraries, archives, and research collections.

CILIP Big Day 2012 – Newcastle City Library Tour

A tour of Newcastle City Library was an optional extra after the main programme of the day.



View from above looking down to ground floor



Partnerships

One of the things that struck me most about this particular tour was the sheer level of partnership working, externally and internally. Externally e.g. with the British Library on specific initiatives, from the exhibition on Dickens and the North East on level six to the preparations for an IP Centre further down. Internally with shared services (e.g. job centre) and using the library to promote and facilitate other local government initiatives (e.g. lending electricity monitors).

Accessibility

The other thing that struck me was just how inclusive and accessible it was – from staff positioned on the main door to help guide people where they wanted to go through to open-plan spaces with a lot of fairly low height and very open shelving and displays, lots of colour zoning, and visibility throughlines from wall to wall. Clear sightlines and passages through to everywhere interconnected by staff on the floor or pods rather than behind desks.

The passes the staff wore around their necks that allowed them to communicate directly with each other were also interesting, no phones going off, phonecalls directed to backoffice staff not in the main space. That really reminded me of a corporate sector approach.

Above all everything about the library is very visible, and that makes it easy to navigate.

Overall Musings on CILIP Big Day 2012

What I’ve done with the rest of my CILIPBD12 posts is just try and scribble down the main content of what was said by all the main speakers, and what happened in the other segments, without making any comments on it.

So, for this one post, some comments just picking up on small pieces of the day and some general reflection on.

#CILIPBD12

I was amused to note, as often happens, while part of it before and after, I opted out of the twitterstream on the event as soon as I physically arrived and didn’t go back to reading everything I missed till I was on the train home.  I could have tweeted throughout, but I’m a lot faster just doing human recorder into my notebook and then typing everything into one place coherently after.  I love following conferences and events on Twitter, but it can be a bit bit-y and frustrating and involve huge amounts of folk  saying the same sentence at times. If I’m there physically I just concentrate on that and blog it later. Lot kinder to folks twitterfeeds that aren’t interested, less invasive for me too. I find writing and listening or talking easy, listening and participating and tweeting simultaneously hurts my brain more over long periods(!).

Newcastle



Folk from near and far!



It really was lovely to bring a big CILIP event to the North East, got to catch up with a lot of old friends, it opened it up to lots of different folk as being able to attend, and the enthusiasm for having it there was great. There was a huge diversity of folk from different parts of the UK, I was most amused to be sitting beside Scots, Yorkshire, and London folk in the middle of the North East (plenty of them about too!!). It also felt oddly ‘local’ to me, I’m Glasgow and fairly insane, so Newcastle to me is a bit like popping round to the local shop.

Bravery and Standing Up for what you believe in

Some of the speakers in particular were giving no-holds-barred performances. Ged Bell was saying a lot of things that he would have been totally aware were not likely to be popular in places, but he said them because he believed them and was willing to debate it. Phil Bradley, again, went for the barnstorming ‘this is what I fundamentally believe’ approach. They were saying very different things to the same audience on the same subject (volunteers). But I thought Ged Bell was brave in particular saying it to that audience, regardless of what you thought or didn’t about the content of what he said.

Fascination

My favourite slot of the day was Penny Wilkinson. Basically because she was talking about lots of things that always fascinate me, I love all the career development stuff and the reasons why people choose different directions, make certain choices. So the things she said that particularly interested me was that she wanted a strategic role with a bigger impact, that a key thing was to do things that you were proud of (mental note to self, this could work well with selecting Chartership evidence etc – what are you proud of, can you evidence and use that). I really liked her discussion of leadership attributes in the charity sector and how it had changed too.

Vibrancy

The sessions on digital access were mostly about bringing together and discussing themes in a range of current initiatives and new developments that have capacity to be game-changing or triggers for the sector to improved service levels and new ways of delivering. I heard about things I knew about, and things I didn’t at all. Some of it was fairly sector-specific in major impacts, some of it was a lot more widespread. But mostly I was thinking just bringing together and giving short introductions to lots of these things demonstrated vibrancy and enthusiasm, a hunger for new frontiers as well as the existing.

Places You Can Go

What caught my attention most in Lord Shipley’s speech was about public libraries as free places you can (within reason obviously!) do as you like in and places you can go. I totally believe in that, in my student days I had a flat with no heating one year, in the Aberdonian winter I used to stay in Aberdeen Central Library till closing time an awful lot in the evenings, reading or studying, for free, not involving spending money. It was a major blessing.  When I had a few months unemployed after university I also lived in my local library a lot, a day where the most exciting thing is Neighbours is on at lunchtime and then repeated is not a great day, if that’s every day then  the library is a wonderful place. Somewhere to go, that is free, where you can do things.

The End Results Matter

I liked what Phil said about the need to get people to look at the end result of what libraries contribute to individuals and communities.  Sometimes an awful lot of the conversation seems to be about running costs, the inputs not the outputs. The inputs can be extremely simple to calculate in monetary terms, calculating the results and what they are worth (and what would be the cost of not doing it) has always been a problem area.  That’s the same actually no matter what sector you’re in, in my corporate sector it’s exactly the same. Yet as various speakers alluded to, there is certainly a move towards trying to measure intangibles (e.g. well-being) a lot more in a statistical manner.

Encouragement and Risk

I really liked the title of the CILIP Qualifications video, CILIP Qualifications: Celebrating Success. Because that is incredibly important in giving people support and encouragement to do things that they want to do but are hard, take time. It’s good to support each other and celebrate. I liked what Emma said about taking opportunities that come up, to be brave and challenge yourself. I liked what was coming across from a number of participants in this part of the programme about personal journeys and developing networks that support you and give access to new chances and challenges. I liked that for the first year we brought so many people together who had done the range of qualifications, and that Qualifications Board were out in force to see how much their qualifications meant to people and how pleased they were to have gained them.

Professional Knowledge and Skills Base

One Glossy Brochure!

Proper post on this soon by itself I suspect. But as one of the Future Skills Project Board that developed it I would just say that it was lovely to have it launched, it has gone beyond us now and that’s a nice thing. There was a glossy brochure in CILIP September Update talking about it, but go look at it in full on the website if you’re a member (and you can even buy it for £25 if you’re not for individual use). The best thing that can possibly happen with it is that people and organisations adopt it and use it and tailor it to help them plot their own development wants and needs, to plug gaps, to assess ability level, to see area’s to develop towards moving into specific jobs or sectors. It’s a tool, it’s the content of the Library, Information and Knowledge domain today.

Any Library New To Me Is Fun

I go and visit all different types of libraries when the opportunity arises.  There were tours of Newcastle City Library (venue for the event) on offer at the end of the day and a lot of folk went on them.  There’s always things to learn and appreciate just walking round and comparing and contrasting to what you’re used and listening to someone telling you what they’ve chosen to do and precisely why they went down that path and what the result has been. I know from various folk I was talking to that they really enjoyed the tours. The feel I most got from the tour was of the utter visibility and access in the library, sightlines from wall to wall and floor to floor, hugely visible from outside, staff performing a guiding function getting people where they wanted to go and situated on the floor not behind desks.

A Smooth Operation



CILIP NE Branch helping out as guides



I’m well used to the efficiency with which CILIP can run big events, but bearing the occasional glitch, which can happens in any kind of event, it was a really well run event of a lot of speakers, a lot of presentations, the AGM and tours to all fit into the one day.

That it worked so well is made up of a lot of individuals and a lot of planning and it went very well.

CILIP Big Day 2012 - Celebration of Achievements and Close of the Day

Celebration of Achievements

This was a joint operation in hosting terms between Annie, Kath Owen (Chair of Qualifications Board) and Phil.

The work of the Qualifications Board was introduced. They assess around 300 portfolio’s annually between all the CILIP qualifications, speak at events, do training, mentor. 

The new PKSB (Professional Knowledge and Skills Base) was discussed (leaflet on in all members September CILIP Update).

This year an invitation to the Big Day had gone out to all recent successful Chartership, Certification and Fellowship candidates at the event planning stage. Candidates for qualifications put together portfolios, reflected on experience, improved performance against rigorous criteria to be the best they could be providing the best service.  Since last year 148 people had Chartered, 77 done ACLIP, 4 Fellowship, 15 Revalidation.

Annie introduced a new short film entitled CILIP Qualifications: Celebrating Success that talked about the value and worth of undertaking CILIP qualifications.

All the recent new MCLIPs and ACLIPs present were then invited to go up and receive their Certificates and be congratulated.  Emma did a short speech on behalf of them talking about the amount of work, and how it put them in good stead to develop as professionals. She talked about the importance of taking opportunities that come up, to be brave and challenge yourself. Thanks were given to mentors, Twitter support etc. Emma has blogged her #NLD12 thoughts since.

Kath then talked about the Fellowship process and the criteria for successfully gaining this including substantial contribution to the profession, commitment to CPD. She emphasised it was not for the great and the good pre-retirement after they’d written lots of books. It was recognition of what individuals had done and achieved, of commitment and contribution.

Citations were then read out of what each new Fellow had done individually to merit Fellowship and those present came up to receive their Certificates.

Next there was the award of Honorary Fellowships. Honorary Fellowships were not applied for by the individual themselves but were a way for CILIP to honour distinguished members of the profession and people who had done significant advocacy work.  Citations were read out for each and those present came up to receive their Certificates and do a short speech of acceptance. [This year’s Hon FCLIPs are listed in September CILIP Update with short citations].

Last Award of the day was a new award, the CILIP Mentor of the Year Award sponsored by Biddy Fisher. Kath talked through the role of mentors and other unofficial networking support and the huge role this played. The winner was Jill Young, as nominated by Bethan Ruddock. A short citation was read out.

Close of the Day

This being the end of formal business for CILIP Big Day 2012 John Dolan as Leader of CILIP Council made closing remarks and gave thanks to all the people who had helped to make the day such a success including the core organisational team from CILIP, members of CILIP North East Branch, Newcastle City Libraries and the staff of Newcastle City Library, and many more.

Everyone then dispersed towards drinks upstairs, tours of Newcastle City Library that had been arranged, transport home, or the pub!

CILIP Big Day 2012 – Speaker six – Phil Bradley’s Presidential Address

Phil noted he’d been asked to give something visionary and joyful, but was going to go for grumpily visionary instead.

He started by outlining some recent CILIP activities and developments re what CILIP has done and where it is now.

He launched the new Professional Knowledge and Skills Base (PKSB) which replaces the former Body of Professional Knowledge. He noted this showed why volunteers can’t run libraries.

Phil said job substitution was fundamentally wrong. He referred to Ged’s speech earlier in the day and took up some of his points. The Olympics example was about a very specific event for a short period of time, it wasn’t about continually and continuously having to rely on volunteers. While volunteer firemen were obviously very different in role to us, the PKSB had at its centre ethics and values, and that was a fundamental difference between staff and volunteers.

Phil talked about the CILIP Carnegie and Greenaway Awards, the Carnegie won this year by Patrick Ness for A Monster Calls with its illustrator getting the Greenaway Award too. 90,000 children participated in the shadowing scheme, they posted over 14,000 reviews.

He talked about New Professionals Day and the need and value of getting people involved.

He talked about some CILIP activities for next year, including the website refresh and VLE.

Phil then went on to say that library misery headlines were common currency in the press, the profession was undergoing radical change, things were changing for everyone faster than ever before, not just our sector, but publishing etc.

This was the new normal. We needed to move the profession ahead in other ways. Campaigns to save libraries do a great job but save libraries is not a strong message. Politicians don’t care, have no interest, think we’re weak. Petitions are taken to politicians by people who think libraries are important, but if politicians thought we were important they would come to us. A headteacher can close a school library, they don’t have to ask the parents their opinion first.

Phil said we need to change the conversation. The need to improve and redevelop libraries was a more powerful approach. Have to make organisational heads care about improving, need to get people to look at the end results not the inputs.

He quoted Lankes article in September CILIP Update about great libraries building communities. Libraries needed to be seen as central and embedded into whole community, our existing community is not enough, we need the community we don’t have as well, this makes us more powerful.

He gave some examples he’d heard about at IFLA Conference this year, about librarians who go out into the community to events and just set up shop and answer things. He talked about using social media to spread messages, about librarians being involved in building communities.

He talked about a recent visit he’d made to a prison library and the feeling of worth that librarians give, there is rare equality in being able to talk one on one about a book for prisoners and enable them in ways that volunteers could not.

He talked about a politician who held that borrowers should come into a library physically to borrow ebooks to show footfall and the lack of logic in that.

He said the purpose of the library was to be central to the community and we have the knowledge and power to do that. He talked about other parts of the world building libraries and investing in them to strengthen the public good.

He said our messaging was wrong, talking about books doesn’t work as a standalone message. Libraries are places people go to question and work to answer difficult and dangerous questions. Librarians give specific answers to exact questions, not general results from Google. We have ethics and morals so are best people to evaluation sources and their information content. A library should be a dangerous place to be which is why politicians don’t like libraries.

He suggested a response to the traditional party question of what we do for a living should be that we work in a dangerous environment in which we’re trusted to help.

Phil talked about the future. We know what is going on, it’s all information, need to build communities, the book is one tool, one technology, as part of that. More and more information can be put into smaller and smaller amounts of space, but that’s not what it’s about.  Need to get out and about and push at what we’re doing or we’re dead.

He said we need to get worried and move from our comfort zones and move on and learn from, we deal with information so we’re in a good position to do that.

A modern library is about results and activities, he doesn’t care if it’s bookless or not, it’s about skills, abilities, improving communities.

So he said we need to advocate, lots of people say ‘CILIP should b ‘x’’, but CILIP is all of us. We need to believe, not ‘just’ a librarian, we enable and help save lives.  We need to challenge and change, there’s more to a library than books, we need to fight challenges head on. We need to not take crap. We need to empower communities we work in, by doing so we empower ourselves, we work together for support, professional associations are part of that. A librarian is the highest form of life and can change the story. The goalposts have changed, we work with our communities and have a moral and ethical approach.

CILIP Big Day 2012 – Speaker five – Lord John Shipley

CILIP Big Day 2012 – Speaker five – Lord John Shipley, member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Libraries and former Leader of Newcastle City Council

Lord Shipley noted he was proud of Newcastle City Library which had been built at affordable cost and he viewed public libraries as essential to a civilised society.

He discussed the public service ethos and his thoughts on three critical issues. Firstly there had been 28% cut in government support to local government and the nature of the library service had changed due to drivers such as technological developments also. Secondly it was important to get children to read as a method to reduce social inequality. Thirdly there was access to services – public libraries were places people could get to easily that were free and where people could do things.  So the ‘buggy test’ for him was whether a mother with one child in a buggy and another in hand could get to the library. He noted that for rural area’s this was obviously different, it might be a bus pass test, the free bus pass helped in this for people.

He discussed the passage of the Localism Bill (now an Act) through the House of Lords and the place of the Lords as a significant revising Chamber. He noted the community right to challenge and the community asset register.  The community right to challenge allows local groups to challenge their councils to do specific things within their area. The community asset register can be any community asset, whether owned privately, voluntarily, by the council, once assets are on the register any proposals to close them need to demonstrate that a similar service will be provided.

Lord Shipley gave his view that can never replace trained professional staff with volunteers, but volunteers can enhance the experience. He gave example of this. He thought it important to examine how can expand the social hub role of service – libraries as places to go for help and advice, this already happens, but with pressure on budgets it becomes what additional services can be provided access to at the library.

He talked about health inequalities and 8 million people having no internet access. Local government need to drive the equalities agenda for social equality.

He reiterated that he was a huge fan of the library service, it was part of civilised society.

CILIP Big Day 2012, Newcastle, 13 Sept 2012

Okay, this is an index post basically to which I shall gradually add links into my posts from my scribbled notes of all the talks!  This will just keep it all linked together in one post.

So I shall start by saying this is not 100% of every syllable spoken (I don't scribble that fast!). 
But it is the main gen and as accurate as reading my scribbles can get it.

So for anyone interested who couldn't make it, or who was there and belatedly wished they'd scribbled more, this might help a bit. For the main programme this is just what they said and a few links into things they were talking about, there's no additional comment on these at all.

I've a done comments post too on thing things I particularly liked mind!

Morning Programme
Main Speakers -

Welcome and Introductions - Councillor Ged Bell, Deputy Cabinet Member for Culture and Leisure, Newcastle City Council [In which he discussed the Newcastle library offer and his views on the volunteering debate]

Leading in the Big Society - Penny Wilkinson, Chief Executive, Northern Rock Foundation
[Look at personal career migration across sectors, challenges of working in the Big Society, how organisations need to adapt and change]

Digital Access for All -
[Broken up into two separate talks]

Mark Taylor, Society of Chief Librarians
[Outlining initiatives and projects SCL are involved in with regards to digital access and digital literacy]

Ann Rossiter, Executive Director, SCONUL
[Giving examples of innovation and opportunity coming from the digital agenda for the sector and beyond]

Afternoon Programme
Main Speakers -

Welcome back - Lord John Shipley, member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Libraries and former Leader Newcastle City Council
[On libraries as integral to a civilised society and challenges facing them]

Presidential Address - Phil Bradley, President, CILIP
[On volunteers, the power of libraries and librarians and how to harness it]

Celebration of Achievements and Close of the Day - compered by a mixture of Annie, Kath Owen, Phil and John Dolan
[On the value of qualifications and awarding qualifications to individual members present, ACLIP, Chartership, FCLIP, Hon. FCLIP, Mentor of the Year Award]

Optional Tours of Newcastle City Library

Final content about rest of the day when I've recovered from the typing up thus far! Almost there now (slumps).

CILIP Big Day 2012 – Speaker four - Digital Access for All, Ann Rossiter from SCONUL

Digital Access for All strand – talk two, Ann Rossiter, Executive Director, SCONUL

Talk entitled - Reasons to be cheerful… in three parts

She started by talking about Ian Dury and a solar powered park bench in London with earphones through which you could hear various of his musical tracks.

She then talked about three exciting initiatives underway

Part 1) Digital Public Library of America – this was a project that started in the 1990s, hugely ambitious, mission to make all cultural and scientific heritage of America accessible free of charge on the internet.  Driven by public and academic libraries, open to everyone, build stage starting next year. It has six workstreams, from the printed record to sound. Content being taken from existing public domain plus mass digitisation of other works. Would provide a central gateway to all existing resources. Shows what can be done with digital access.

Part 2) Professor Ian Hargreaves report on intellectual property and copyright reform – report about stopping copyright being a barrier, quietly transformative, adopted by government. Allows for digital copyright exchange, liberation of orphan works, mining text and data, new uses for copyright.

Part 3) Dame Janet Finch’s report on Accessiblity, Sustainability, Excellence. About opening up peer review of academic journals and access to research findings, controversial report, but Research Council says it won’t fund any project not available to everyone within six months, so it’s having an impact on opening up delivery mechanisms and access.

She argued the UK needs to develop a National Digital Library for the UK, models in place which are interesting to look at such as SHEDL in Scotland in the academic library community, work happening with OCLC…  If we don’t do this then others will do it to us, in our interest to own and shape it for our own ends.

She said what everything she had talked about had in common was to illustrate a fundamental change, a transformation of power. Knowledge and information had moved from needing gatekeepers to being an open door – this changed our role to collating, providing access, guiding – we have more ownership now, all the players in the debate need to work together on how best we utilise it.

CILIP Big Day 2012 – Speaker three - Digital Access for All, SCL Projects and involvements

Digital Access for All was in two strands.

Digital Access for All – talk one, Mark Taylor, Society of Chief Librarians

Mark briefly outlined four current initiatives that SCL is involved in or has an interest in.

The SCL Digital Promise –

This is a national offer to citizens issued in January 2012, it details what expects local authorities to offer and what SCL wants to see, and impact of in terms public libraries providing digital access for all

Digital Services Survey –

This had been sent out by SCL and 65% of local authorities had responded, the Survey was seen as the baseline of tracking actual delivery and progress against the SCL Digital Promise offer. It will probably thus be an annual survey.  Results are currently in draft with further work to be done on them. Various statistics given. For example, 93% had some free internet access, 72% had WiFi, investment in hardware and software seemed to be holding up, 78% specifically trained customers, 81% provided training on digital information literacy.

Public Libraries Information Offer with ACE (Arts Council England) –

This looks at the role of the library service in the shift to digital being default provision mode of government information.  It’s about helping people to access content and navigate it and not be left behind.  There are 9 pilots to do with official national and local information in specific subject areas. The evaluation of the first phase is on the SCL website. Shows libraries support helps as a trusted delivery mechanism.  He used the Council Connect service of Brighton & Hove Libraries to illustrate how libraries can help people to access council services online, successful initiative, lot of folk helped hadn’t used online or website before.

Race Online 2012 –

Aim to get every citizen online. Driven by the costs and efficiency agenda, migrating content to digital only, need to engage people and help them improve their digital skills to access and use. SCL a partner in Race Online, undertook to help 500k people online, actually helped 2.5 million.  Participating in Race Online meant that everyone started counting things that happened before but didn’t transfer into statistics, libraries were a trusted resource that people knew and were local to them.  He gave various case studies of individuals that had been helped and it had improved their lives.

CILIP Big Day 2012 – Speaker two – Leading in the Big Society

Penny Wilkinson, CEO Northern Rock Foundation

Penny noted she used to work for MLA NE until her present job and her career had been in the cultural sector.

She started discussing the Big Society. She noted no one seems precisely agreed or sure what it means. This was illustrated by giving two quotes. The  first one from the Cabinet Office website which said it was about helping people to come together to improve their own lives and empowering localism at decision-making level. The second one from the Archbishop of Canterbury which said it was aspirational waffle and abdicating responsibility. However what everyone does agree on is that it is bringing about huge changes.

She then went on to give some background to the North East as a locality and also to its cultural sector.  The NE was in need of a modern economy, there had been a lot of changes in the region with the decline of traditional industries and modernisation programmes, but not everyone had benefited from them. There was lots of statistics to back this up e.g. unemployment is almost at 11%, 24% of children and young people are classified as living in poverty.

The Northern Rock Foundation had been set up in 1997, it funded projects for the disadvantaged, the vulnerable, victims. It will give out nine million this year. Penny talked us through types of projects e.g. credit unions, and other work of the Foundation e.g. providing grants, training support, agenda influencing.

She talked about her own career and how it had started very differently but assisted her to get her present role. Her cultural sector career skills had been transferred to charity sector.  She noted she’d been a Saturday shelver in her own local public library back in the 70s, but had become a museum curator by profession, gradually moved into jobs that involved front end service delivery and overall management. In order  to get a strategic role with a bigger impact she had moved to a strategy role in what became NEMLAC and then became MLA NE responsible not only for museums, but also libraries and archives regionally. Whole new areas to her.  Having to learn new areas was very good preparation for later changing sectors and proving she could do that successfully.  She also noted that MLA NE had illustrated that a lot of issues, concerns, agendas were shared ones, things like inclusion and engagement. So it was useful in the cultural sector to work together on common concerns and focus on them and what could be achieved together, rather than focus on differences between jobs.

When NLA NE was closed down she was made redundant. The Foundation role came up, she wasn’t a grantmaker and she didn’t know the voluntary sector. However she could prove she had worked at regional strategic level, knew the NE, the key people and organsations, and had led her own organisation through difficult times. She knew how to work across sectors, she knew she could learn another sector because she’d done it before.

She noted that learning a new sector took time, there was a huge and varied charity sector in the NE, obvious players and not so obvious ones. The voluntary sector was going through a lot of changes, professional management and governance was needed, a lot of focus was going on attempts to accurately measure intangibles from well-being to self-esteem as success indicators. There has been huge changes in policy.

She noted that a charity can be doing all the right things but still have far less income in the current environment.  The pressure is to be more and more efficient when the people delivering are already very tired.

She asked how that can be managed. She suggested clarity of purpose and focus on outcomes and the bigger picture. She discussed the need to be flexible, to find new ways of achieving things, to talk to others, take and manage risks, be positive about the organisation. 

Just doing the above in itself is not enough however. The current environment is the new normal, funding will not switch back on.

Therefore partnership working is required within and outwith sectors.  This already happens, but it needs to go to a whole new level. She talked about the usefulness of participating in mixed sector action learning sets, collaboration to find commonalities and deliver shared outcomes. There is a need for leadership that is collaborative and facilitative, not just charismatic solos, though there are still a lot of those about in the charity sector.  Skills were also needed in tenacity, conflict management, patience, fostering relationships.  Silo thinking and silo working was a key problem, had to work with other organisations.

She noted in her career she had changed jobs, regions, sectors, roles, but what was important to her was to have the impact that made a difference.

In her own current organisation it was five years on since the initial financial crisis in Northern Rock (their funder), in the aftermath the staff had been reduced by half, projects cancelled. Her job when she came in had been to steady the organisation and build trust within it, to then make changes, move forward, look to outcomes, be positive.

She saw her own professional journey and experience as a window in to the Big Society, it is actually everyone, we all need to think what difference we might make that we would be proud of.

CILIP Big Day 2012 – Speaker one – Welcome and Introductions

Ged Bell, Deputy Cabinet Minister for Culture & Leisure, Newcastle City Council

Ged noted he was a local resident himself, the importance of culture, his pride in the contribution of the Newcastle public library service to the North East and beyond.

He reeled off a series of very impressive statistics for the service overall and for the Newcastle City Library in alone, including that there were 18 public libraries which had over 2.3 million visitors in 2011/12. He noted that Newcastle City Library delivered a first class professional service to Newcastle and beyond.

He said he wanted to prompt and promote debate so he was going to talk about the volunteers issue and debate. He stated the need was to protect quality front end service delivery in a climate of having a lot less money than previously to do so. In the next three years 90 million in cuts would hit. Newcastle had avoided crisis and maintained a flourishing library service. But no job substitution campaign were not helpful. He saw it as being a lot more complicated than that, a service consisting of staff and volunteers working together in service delivery.

He gave us personal examples as to why he believed in volunteering. He noted he was a full-time professional firefighter also a councilor and worked with firefighters of all kinds of employment status including volunteers. He had no problems working alongside, he trusted in the professionalism of all.

He noted the contribution of delivering the Olympics of volunteers and how successful and appreciated that had been giving personal benefits to the volunteers also.

Therefore he thought volunteering needs discussed and looked at.

He thought the idea of a volunteer being job replacement was a very purist position, yes a volunteer takes a job, but what it’s about is a professional service delivery where volunteers are supported and they get benefits out of it as well.

Contrary to the media portrayal he said local authorities are not happy to see library services run down. However we shouldn’t expect to see community libraries becoming a norm. Community libraries take time, lots of expertise and capacity, need a building etc. They are possible in some communities, but are no quick fix replacement. Newcastle is supportive of libraries, but it needs to follow a co-production model to protect key public services, staff and volunteers working together.