This article was written for the CILIP Career Development Group North-Eastern division, who sponsored me to attend the CILIP AGM on 21st September at the Library of Birmingham. It was published in the CDG North-Eastern newsletter, InView (Autumn 2013 issue), which is available to read in full on this webpage.
Of course everyone who went to this year’s CILIP AGM will have to tell you both about the new library, and about the proceedings of the meeting. I’ll start with the library.
One word to sum up the Library of Birmingham: space. It’s huge, it’s impressive… But I was also struck by how much space there was on the shelves – is it on purpose to leave room to expand the collections, or is it because it is so popular all the books are gone? Even though the library is beautiful, with its terrace gardens, its old books on display and its lovely children and music sections, I felt a bit lost among the black/grey/blue emptiness of the building. However, it seems to be a success with the locals! By the time I got out, people were queuing to get in. Service manager Brian Gambles, in his opening speech for the AGM, talked about how proud the people of the city were of their new library – “we are feeling like we are riding a wave of success”.
Talking about the AGM... I should actually say THE agm, the one where something as important as a change of name and a motion of no-confidence in the libraries minister would be decided. As we all know, the latter went through but not the former. Before the vote on the name change, there were questions and comments (restricted to no more than 3 minutes per person!) One was on how much this “rebranding exercise” is costing us. Answer: CILIP had set aside £35,000 for it (that would have included future implementation had members voted for changing the name) out of which £8,000 had been used so far. The other comments echoed what had already been said and repeated on Twitter, blog posts, etc.
I wanted to go to the AGM because to me this was an important stage for our professional association: whatever the outcome of the vote on the name, the process that led to it (the badly phrased consultation, members’ discontent...) meant that one way or another CILIP would have to move forward, put this in the past and put new things in place, as there was clearly space for improvement. And yet, how can it do that without the involvement of members? At the AGM only about 1,000 members voted (either in person or by proxy) – that’s 7% of the membership. Where were the others?! Why did they not feel concerned? During the comments on rebranding, Tom Roper said: “When I talk to non-members, their reasons for not joining are not because of the name but because of the offer.” It’s the same for us members: this is our professional association – if we’re not happy with it, let’s get involved and change it.
Library Camp North East took place at Northumbria University on Saturday 15th June 2013. I happen to have co-organised this event - along with Nichola, Louise, Jennie, Isabel and Elaine - and here I'm just sharing my thoughts on the process.
How it came about
The time: September 2012; the place: Newcastle City Library; the occasion: CILIP Big Day.
So there we were, Louise, Jennie, Nic and myself (and a few other people but I can't remember who!) enjoying a drink at the end of the CILIP members' day. Nic was telling us that she was going to Library Camp UK in Birmingham the following month. I was the only person there who'd already been to a Library Camp (the one in Birmingham the previous year, as it happens) so Nic and I were explaining the concept to our interested audience. Such was the interest, actually, that I stupidly said: "Hey, why don't we organise one up here in the North East?" I say "stupidly" only because I was quite busy at that time, and I certainly didn't expect the response I got to this idea, which can be summed up liked this: "YEAH, let's do that! You lead on it and we'll help you." So that's what happened, and I'm really glad we did it.
I put a call out on Twitter later on ("Guys, were you serious about this?"), just to confirm. A few more people expressed interest in helping out, which was lovely. Eventually, Isabel and Elaine joined the organising team.
Venue and refreshments
We needed a venue - preferably free of charge - and we naturally turned to Northumbria University. Northumbria has a Library School and is known for hosting library events such as North-East CILIP workshops and the Mini Umbrella. We know several of the lecturers, so I contacted Biddy Casselden and explained about Library Camp North East. Biddy was very helpful - she got in touch with the dean of the School on our behalf, and we were granted a free room for "library outreach activities".
Knowing how busy universities are in term time, we had planned to hold the event after the students had left. And so it was that Northumbria's Sutherland Great Hall was available on 15th June. The date was set!
What would we have done if we hadn't been lucky enough to be granted this room by Northumbria? We would have asked elsewhere, of course! All six of us work in different organisations, so we would have made enquiries there first, before possibly going to other libraries or considering hiring a room in a private building.
So we had a venue, but we wanted to be able to offer refreshments: at least drinks, maybe lunch. Ideally, we wanted to bring our own fruit juice, tea bags and hot water flasks, especially as Northumbria catering is quite expensive. After several emails and some waiting time, we learned that we would not have access to a kitchen (i.e. nowhere to refill flasks).
At this point, we knew we would get some money from Library Camp UK ("leftovers" from their crowdfunding campaign for their 2012 event), and some from North-East CILIP and the CILIP Career Development Group North-Eastern division (it so happens that 5 out of 6 of the organisers are CDG NE committee members, and the last one's involved with NE CILIP), but we weren't sure exactly how much. Furthermore, we had already discarded the idea of going down the crowdfunding route ourselves.
So we took up the suggestion of offering attendee packs that contained bottled drinks, which turned out quite cheap, and encouraged participants to bring cake and savoury snacks for the day, hoping there would be enough for lunch. In this regard, it worked quite well - a few people did go out for an extra sandwich but most stayed in.
Task allocation
If I had been the one to get the ball rolling originally, from the start I was grateful there was a team of people I could ask for help and advice. It was my first time organising an event on this scale, and it made things a lot less scary to be able to check with others that I was doing the right thing, and to be able to rely on them for all the things I could not do or think of. We were emailing each other back and forth with opinions and suggestions, and everyone volunteered to take on some tasks. I know (because they told me) that some of the team feel like they have only volunteered for smaller tasks and haven't helped that much, but to me that doesn't look like a problem as everything that needed to be done got done by people who were happy to do it.
Advertisement and attendee numbers
We started advertising in February, four months away from the event - I've had people telling me that it was a bit early. We did it then because there were other library camps being organised in other regions, and we wanted our local colleagues to know that there would be one happening on their doorstep!
We sent a reminder email to everyone who had booked a place at the end of May. Quite a few people let us know then that they could not make it anymore, and we were able to offer these tickets to those on the waiting list and even put some "up for grabs". In the end, there was 40 of us on the day, for 60 places advertised.
I do know that there is a natural drop-out for all events (due to people not feeling well on the day and other unexpected situations arising) but to be completely honest, I was slightly disappointed by the turnout considering that the event had been fully booked before the end of March. What happened? Where did we go wrong?
A bit of a conclusion
After all this, I'm happy to announce Library Camp North East was a success. I'm not saying this just because I'm a naturally enthusiastic person, but because a nice number of people came and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves (if you haven't, please get in touch, we'd like to hear your opinion too) and go away with something - and I don't mean cake!
If I was going to do it again, one particular thing I might try to handle differently is knowing how much money we can count on from the start, instead of waiting to appreciate how much we need to ask for.
But I am going to end this - already rather long - post by paraphrasing the four main principles of Open Space Technology, on which unconferences such as Library Camps are based:
Whoever came was the right people
Whenever it started was the right time
Whatever happened was the only thing that could have
When you're out with friends there often comes a time, usually late at night after a few drinks, when you start talking about putting the world to rights - or as we'd say in French "refaire le monde", remaking the world. When I'm out with my library friends, we sometimes "remake the library", from collections to training via social media. A few of us are Twitter users, and we've talked about what we'd like to do in the highly hypothetical case where we'd be in charge of a public library's Twitter account. Ideas from these discussions, as well as things I have "soaked up" from talks and conferences I've attended, have been going around my head and made me want to write this article.
So, here are a few things I'd like to do if I ever was given the freedom of managing a library's Twitter account:
I would start by following library staff personal Twitter accounts. I would make sure staff know they are welcome and even encouraged to use Twitter at work, especially if they tweet about what they do and about things related to the library service. I would retweet them, perhaps using the hashtag #StaffTweet. View some examples in this Storify.
As might have been gathered from the #StaffTweet examples, I'd use Twitter to promote collections and the service as a whole by talking about what library staff are actually up to. I'd love it if this could be done in a humourous way.
I would have "A day at [...] Branch Library" every week or so, in a different location, so that the service's Twitter account is not focused only on the central library.
I would promote library events, not just once, but several times and preferably in different ways until the actual day, and while it is happening. See examples of live coverage of events by Newcastle Libraries here.
I would engage with people: not only by replying, reacting to their comments and retweeting them, but also by making them participate in discussions as well as games and competitions, for example with trivia questions. Newcastle University Library Reader Services (@nulibrs) often hold "guess where our library bag is in this picture" competitions.
I would tweet about things that aren't directly related to the library service but my followers (and potential followers) might be interested in: mainly local and literary news. I would point to changes and achievements in the local area, talk about this popular author whose new book has just been published, highlight upcoming literary events, etc.
I would make sure the Twitter account is lively, by tweeting several times a day - not tweeting at all in any particular day is not acceptable. This would be made easier by having a team behind the Twitter account, rather than just one person.
[Text below added 31/01/13]
I would interact with other local organisations - the obvious ones being the other cultural venues in the area, ("building partnerships"?) promoting each other's events. An easy thing to do would be talking about events that can be related to the library's services and collections: a film out in the cinema that is adapted from a book the library holds copies of, the local theatre putting on a play of which you can view the text or information about the author, background, film adaptations, etc. in the library.
Many thanks to my friends for our discussions and their opinions on this blog post!
