Organising Library Camp North East

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:

1. Whoever came was the right people
2. Whenever it started was the right time
3. Whatever happened was the only thing that could have
4. When it's over, it's over it's time for a drink

NE CILIP Mini Umbrella, 23rd November 2011

I wasn't going to write a blog post about the Mini Umbrella. I didn't take that many notes and I knew others there (with more followers!) would be writing about it anyway. Instead, my plan for tonight was to get on with Thing 13 of the 23 Things for Professional Development programme and try out Dropbox. But something happened: I was inspired - by reading louiselib's own blog post about the event. So here we go!

The Mini Umbrella was organised - for the 3rd year running - by the North-East England branch of CILIP and Northumbria University, at Northumbria University in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. It is called "Mini Umbrella" after the biennial CILIP Umbrella conference, which is THE conference for library and information professionals in the UK. This year, it was a half-day conference, running from 12-5pm. It started with a buffet lunch and time to look at the stalls at the back of the room representing some local library services and CILIP groups.

• Keynote by Isabel Hood, CILIP Trustee

Isabel gave us an update on CILIP: its mission, as set out by its members in a recent big survey, its organisation and the changes it is undergoing. [Also in my notes: "Check eHustings + sort out ballot paper." Gloups. I guess it's too late now... In my defense, CILIP and I have had a slight misunderstanding as to what is my current address; in their defense, I should have sorted it earlier. Erm, let's move on...]

• Rachel Steele : NHS Clinical Librarian project

 I do not know very much about working for a firm or in the health sector. Therefore, I am always curious to hear about librarians in those areas. Rachel described the role of the Clinical Librarian as keeping up-to-date with research in the particular medical fields of health professionals she works with, and in this way facilitating their access to the latest breakthroughs. She also undertakes literature searches, evaluates information and is involved in user education and training. To me, it sounded a lot like being what we'd called in French a "documentaliste" applied to the health sector.

• Mark Freeman (now Stockton Libraries) and Kathryn Armstrong (South Tyneside) : Tyne2Seine² 

Tyne2Seine² is a programme between schools and libraries in North and South Tyneside and in Epinay-sur-Seine, in the suburb of Paris. It all started with Epinay-sur-Seine, which is twinned with South Tyneside. There was a school project in the French town which involved pupils in creating stories that were then made into books that were then made into... gardens! This project was then shared with a school in South Tyneside and, thanks to a Comenius (European) grant, a link between schools and libraries, on both sides of the Tyne and across the sea, was established. For the children, the project included discovering the others' culture, activities based around reading, storytelling in a different language, author visits, ... Since the children themselves could not travel, it was the British and French librarians and authors who made several trips!

I have to admit, I was very interested - not least because I'm French. A couple of years ago, Newcastle City Library had a visit from representatives from twin city Nancy (in North-East France - where I have been to university!) Already at the time, I thought how great it would be to set up something in collaboration with the libraries there - even something as simple as gifts of books chosen by readers; something that would really link the residents of the two towns, open their minds to a different people, a different culture, a different language and share their own. I thought Tyne2Seine² was a brilliant project - it's something the kids involved will always remember! - but unfortunately, it demands a lot of resources, and I guess it would not have been possible without the grant. 

• Dilys Young and Christine Willoughby : Rising expectations - using customer feedback to deliver strategic objectives

Both from Northumbria University Library, the speakers shared their experience of using statistics to prove the service's value and set out objectives for improvement.

• Sharon Reeve : Services for visually impaired users

Sharon talked about the North East Accessible Library and Information Services (NEALIS) project and presented the wide range of services available to visually impaired persons at Newcastle Libraries. [No notes for this presentation; I know all about it!]

An outline of the project, which was a finalist in the CILIP Libraries Change Lives award, can be viewed here.

• Middlesbrough College LRC team : The new curiosity shop - what's on offer today?

The team from the Learning Resource Centre (LRC) at Middlesbrough College told us about their use of new technologies. This includes using free online resources for promotion (such as Prezi, Twitter, Inforgraphics) but also getting teachers to know about them via a newsletter. [They had some newsletters to give out... I was eager to grab one of course, but the angle is different from I write for our internal newsletter, so I won't be able to borrow/steal their ideas... Haha] They also admitted to resorting to the "wow" factor to engage pupils: part of the induction is a 3D film tour of the library (with 3D glasses and big screen), a quiz and a QR code tour. The QR code tour uses only coded text so it's quicker and it keeps pupils focused on following the trail: the text is a clue to the location of the next QR code, and leads them to all the different sections of the LRC.

Colin Raistrick, the chair of North-East CILIP, concluded the conference with, among other things, some funny anecdotes on good old-fashioned information users meeting new technology ones - and the suggestion that the Mini Umbrella's name should be changed to "Party under the Parasol"! Hehehe!

For my part, as always, I enjoyed meeting and talking with colleagues from other organisations and sectors, learning about what everyone is up to and going away with a couple of ideas...