ABF 2012, part 1/4: public policies

From 7th to 9th June 2012, the ABF (Association des Bibliothécaires de France - the French library association) held its 58th annual congress in Montreuil, near Paris. And I was there! I had been invited by a friend on the ABF regional branch committee for the wider-Paris area to help out during the three days. This gave me the opportunity to attend several sessions, most of them directly linked to the conference theme: 

The library, a public matter

In the opening session, the representative from Montreuil town council declared that "the library [as] a public matter" was indeed an issue on every librarian's mind nowadays, both in the sense of "the library focused on its public" and "the library as a partner of public services, i.e. of the public authority".

The councillor for Culture from the département (French equivalent to a county) of Seine-Saint-Denis reminded us that the budget reductions decided by the central government was an attack on the autonomy of the local authorities. He went on to add that unfortunately, investing in culture was not mandatory for local authorities, which results in projects in that sector being postponed. However, elected members support reading development, he insisted.

The president of the ABF pointed out that reading - not only of texts, but also of music, films, art - development was a major issue, especially as the gap in access to culture in our society is widening.

The following session, on what is a public policy, felt very much like a university lecture. The speaker defined a public policy as a complex set of social issues pushing various stakeholders from different sectors, including public services, associations and other partners, to pass a number of instruments expected to have an effect on society via a process, a sequence of stages that regulate the actions of the state.

Main conference hall during the opening session

The libraries in public policies session gave the opportunity to elected members from different local levels and to an inspector for libraries from the ministry to share their point of view.

Dominique Voynet, mayor of Montreuil, said that community libraries are places full of life, and sometimes they are the only public facility in a given area. Libraries are first a space dedicated to books, but they are also used for other means: they can be a haven, especially to teenagers, somewhere to work and discover new things.

Jacques Marsaud, director of the conurbation committee of Plaine Commune, explained that the conurbation has authority for reading development. Plaine Commune decided to invest in its libraries and modernise the facilities, which immediately resulted in an increase in the number of members, of items issued and in general use. In his opinion, libraries are places where several public policies come together: those relating to education, culture and integration into society. Indeed, considering the number of nationalities represented by the residents of Plaine Commune, libraries play an important role in social cohesion.

Isabelle This-Saint-Jean is in charge of research and higher education at the regional council of Ile-de-France. For her, libraries, on top of being a living space, are essential to student achievement. Libraries are the research facilities for subjects such as literature, social and human sciences, to be compared to the experimental labs used in scientific research. This is the reason why the Ile-de-France region is supporting university libraries by participating in projects to build new facilities and modernise and equip existing ones. They have also introduced a "student essay award".

To compare with these examples in different local areas, Dominique Arot, from the General Inspection Office for Libraries, gave an overview of libraries in public policies from a national perspective.

In the general opinion, the existence of libraries is threatened by digital resources, budget cuts and, more specifically in France, by the delegation of authority from central to local government and the problem of a large variety of libraries under a variety of authorities.

Public policies for libraries come with several issues:

• They are either implied or absent: libraries are rarely mentioned even though they exist and fulfil a role. There is a consensus on the usefulness of libraries among the authorities but despite that, libraries are not a priority when it comes to the budget and policies.
• There is a loss of consistency and resources as too many stakeholders lead their own separate policies which end up competing with each other.
• The state does not have the monopoly for policies anymore: authority has been delegated to regional councils, European Union policies have to be taken into account and the globalisation of information (for example with the Internet) does not help.
• Library professionals express themselves strongly [just like CILIP in the last parliamentary election year, the ABF produced in 2012 a manifesto], but we hear less from library customers, even though there is a greater number of them.

What are the objectives of the public policies involving libraries?

• to contribute to learning and to develop literacy, to help young people falling behind in school;
• to support research;
• to promote local heritage;
• to allow everyone access to culture;
• to develop civic rights and the sense of being part of the community.

Dominique Arot said that there was a need to prove the efficiency of these policies, as evaluation is currently insufficient. For him, the state bears the responsibility for laws and regulations, interdepartmental cooperation, evaluation, shared tools for all libraries to use, technical control (such as the Inspection Office) and the training of library professionals in order to provide a quality public service.

In my next article, I will tell you about two sessions on engaging the public in implementing policies and defining services. But before that, a little bit of comparison between the situation in the UK and in France.

From what I heard at the conference, I am under the impression that French politicians generally have a good opinion of libraries (though obviously, those invited to speak wouldn't say the opposite in front of a room full of librarians, would they?) which isn't necessarily the case in the UK. But still, libraries in France aren't seen as a priority when defining policies and regulations (copyright exceptions and digital rights, anyone?) nor in planning for the budget - though in that regard it is not as bad as in the UK (yet?) ... What do YOU think?

Integrating Things

I have not forgotten about the 23 Things for professional development programme; Thing 19 is actually about integrating "things": things I've learnt or used or tried while going through the Things and how I do or would integrate them in my professional development...

It actually reminds me of Thing 5 on reflective practice! So let's do some reflective practice on Reflective Practice. Before this post, I still have not done some serious reflective practice. Well, of course I do little bits of it all the time, probably without realising that's what I am doing. But let's take the example of talks I have been to: having gone through Thing 5 did encourage me to write up my notes, but they are mostly retellings of what was said. I haven't dared compare what I heard with what happens at the Library and share my opinions of it on this blog.

This blog - created in Thing 1 - is actually something I am really enjoying. I enjoy learning and writing, and since it's "out there", online, there is even the possibility that someone might read my ravings! How exciting. Joking apart, I would like to keep this blog alive when I am finished with the 23 Things. I have started using it to tell about talks I have attended. I have also used it to be able to share on Twitter information in English that I could only find elsewhere in French: I wanted to spread the news about the French Copy party but I could not find any articles in English to point others to, so I just created (translated) one myself!

Among the other new tools I have tried, I am still using LinkedIn, Evernote and Dropbox a little. If I was in a different post, I am sure I would use more of these tools in my working routine. For example, I found Prezi and Slideshare particularly useful, but I am not required to create presentations in my current job.

Social media talk at NE CILIP AGM

Tuesday 13th March 2012 was a busy day for British libraries. In London, the libraries lobby was taking place, with a rally at Westminster and a call for constituents to come and talk to their MPs.

Up in Newcastle, we had the North-East Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) AGM and a committee meeting of the CILIP Career Development Group (CDG) North-Eastern division.

The NE CILIP AGM took place in the beautiful old lecture theatre of the Mining Institute. To the best of my recollection, Colin Raistrick, chair of NE CILIP, put it this way: "I know you didn't come to hear me addressing the group, but to hear Phil Bradley tell you about social media afterwards"! So I have to be honest: I didn't take any notes during the AGM... but I did fill a few pages during Phil Bradley's talk!

For those of you who have never heard of him, Phil Bradley works as an Internet consultant and is the current president of CILIP. And I have no idea how many ties he owns, but from where I was sitting, the one he was wearing that Tuesday looked a lot like it had both PCs AND books drawn on it... Hehe.

Phil Bradley started by explaining his role as CILIP president. Running for the presidency of CILIP is a 3-years commitment: the first year you are vice-president, the second year president and the last immediate past president. The president is a non-voting member of the CILIP Council. He chairs different committees, works with the CILIP team, represents CILIP at some conferences, talks to the media, etc. Phil Bradley stressed that he was keen to talk to and listen to members. The move of this year's national AGM to the North-East is also part of an effort to be more in contact with members and to have a less London-centered CILIP.

Phil Bradley is focusing his presidency on the following themes:

• Ensure that CILIP as an organisation and individual staff use social media resources to enhance and leverage its position;
• Articulate the importance of social media to individual members and groups;
• Discover and broadcast good library practice and innovation to the membership as a whole.

His goal for the end of the year is to come up with a set of CILIP social media guidelines which would help members use social media and gain access to it as part of their professional lives.

The third theme would also help him give arguments in favour of libraries and librarians in the media and in political debates.

But back to social media. What is it then? Phil Bradley admitted not being keen on definitions but still explained that social media was linked to the notion of user-generated content, which was the focus of what we had come to call "Web 2.0" - or more simply, the way the internet is developing. Nowadays, you do not need an in-depth knowledge of HTML or FTP to make something available on the internet: everything is more simple to create than pre-social media, which also results in easier access to information as more and more things are "cloud-based". As an aside, it is actually something governments are trying to regulate: for example, the American SOPA was designed to control what users can do.

Phil Bradley said that the tool (the PC) is not important anymore: it is the activity that matters. Our society is moving away from the artefact to a frictionless environment, where things are browser-based and the user is not tied to one particular device anymore.

Before social media, everything was on websites. Now, everything is crowd-based and easy to share (via Twitter, blogs, etc.) with many ways available to communicate.

Go to www.theconversationprism.com to view the full image

Institutions restrict access to social media because they are concerned that staff are going to be consumers rather than creators, and also because they are afraid of what their own staff might say about them online! It is important to have access to social media in the workplace because there is now information on it that is not available anywhere else. As an example, news tend to appear on Twitter first: it is almost instantaneous, whereas it would take time for news websites to create articles and then for search engines to index them.

Press departments no longer have control over the message, as people can easily blog, tweet, comment, etc. Where Web 1.0 was about control over the information, social media is about free access to it.

In practice, what does it mean? For a start, there are changes relating to internet search. A lot of search engines are now incorporating Web 2.0 in their results (blogs, wikis, tweets, presentations on websites such as slideshare, etc.) - hence the need to have access to it. The ranking of results on Google is also moving from "the most linked to website at the top" to "the most recommended [via social media] or talked about".

Social media is indeed about people recommending things to other people. Instead of searching for the information on our own, we like to ask people we know or see what they recommend, and we are now used to participation. Having a social media presence is therefore a way of getting involved into people's conversations.

There are several websites or apps helping us pull data back for our use, based on topics pre-set by the user and on recommendations. For example, Zite or Flipboard create your own personalised magazine downloaded straight onto your iPad. Similar things are also possible with websites such as XYDO, Scoop.it or even Netvibes. These tools, as well as other RSS aggregators, wikis, etc., demonstrate an evolution of the Internet away from websites that are too still, too fixed.

At this point, Phil Bradley also recommended Quora, where you can ask questions of people who are experts in their field, and social bookmarking websites Trailfire and Pearltree.

To conclude, social media results are becoming more and more important. Librarians need to go where the conversations are to find the information. Therefore, we need access to social media to allow us to do our job more quickly, cheaply and effectively.

"It's all just information!"

And just to put a bit of drama into this post: thus the presentation ended. Well, not quite; there were a few questions and comments!

Later on that same day, I attended the committee meeting of CDG North-East at Newcastle University Library. And I am proud to announce I am now an ordinary member of this committee!

Copy Party press release

Intellectual property law is slightly different in France and in the UK, but here is an interesting event designed as an awareness campaign for copyright.

The text below is my own quick translation of the press release - please be indulgent! The original text, and more information and links, can be found at: http://blogs.iutlaroche.univ-nantes.fr/copy-party/2012/02/09/communique-presse (in French)

"WHAT IS A COPY-PARTY? It is an event allowing users equipped with scanners, phones or laptops to bring these devices and copy books, CDs and DVDs from library collections!

WHAT ARE THE CONDITIONS TO PARTICIPATE IN A COPY-PARTY?

 - These copies must be for private use only;

 - each person must make their own copies using their own replication devices (camera, mobile phone, etc.);

 - the copies must be made from original documents viewed in a library;

 - the act of copying must not break any technical protection (DRM).

WHAT IS THE AIM OF A COPY-PARTY? Via an act that is symbolic, militant and festive, the aim is to:

 - make users aware of copyright law and the right to a private copy as well as of today's issues related to sharing works;

 - attract attention to the interest and the role of libraries in the diffusion, joint use and access to knowledge in the 21st century;

 - question local and national authorities on the development of criminalization policies of digital practices and on the urgent matter of maintaining a free movement of information within a lawful offer.

WHAT DO YOU NEED TO PARTICIPATE?

A bit of equipment. Your choice of a smartphone equipped with a camera and/or an app allowing you to scan documents, and/or a laptop with a scanner and/or a digital camera, some blank DVDs if you wish to copy DVDs.

And a bit of commitment: when you arrive, you will have to sign a document stating that you are committed to only reuse the product of this copy-party in accordance with copyright law, for your strict personal use.

WHAT IS THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK OF A COPY-PARTY? 100% legal

 - The contracts between libraries and copyright holders, which allow works to be put on public display on the libraries' shelves;

 - the exception for performance within the family circle, set out in paragraph 1 of article L122-5 of the CPI [Intellectual Property law];

 - the new rewrite of paragraph 2 of the same article L122-5 of the CPI on the exception for private copy;

 - the rules and regulations of the library.

WHEN IS THE 1ST COPY-PARTY? On 7th March 2012. At 6pm. At the University Library of La Roche sur Yon (France). A world first, quite simply."

http://bit.ly/copyparty