A few weeks ago I had to visit my financial adviser at my French bank. What could have been a 20-minutes appointment turned into a 55-minutes meeting, because we didn't discuss my financial situation only. I actually realised that my bank adviser and I were faced with - would you believe it! - similar issues and questions in our professional lives. Here are a few of them.
First, both a public library branch and a bank one are a customer-facing service; people come in wanting to carry out a specific task and sometimes seeking help (I can see you thinking: "Do they get the same awkward customers as we do?" My bank adviser did mention something about feeling patronised by some of his customers; I didn't push this topic as it wouldn't have been professional for him to complain about customers to me) My bank in France is actually a small branch with only two financial advisers and a receptionist; it's located right next to a big supermarket.
CC BY-NC-SA Devon Buchanan
Information literacy
In libraries we are keen on our "authoritative resources" - we recognise their necessity and promote them - but we also know full well that for a quick answer we might be better off using a good search engine or Wikipedia as a first port of call rather than delving into the right encyclopedia. When my bank adviser is looking for the definition of a term, he does the same! Except his next port of call, instead of the encyclopedia, are the documents on the bank's intranet.
While doing that, he also made a comment which I could sympathise with: "We've just changed our platform because we've had to move over to Windows 7, and not everything is quite working the way it should be"!
Marketing
"People don't know the range of services we offer - we don't only bank, we also offer insurance which is often very competitive but people don't think about it and go with the traditional insurance companies". Welcome to the club - people still mainly associate libraries with book-lending! This said, a bank and a public library service don't have quite the same resources to allocate to Communication... In a bank, it's not the branch that will do a huge marketing campaign, it's the head office and it will be nationwide. So in libraries, are we making the most of whatever nationwide publicity we can get, via every SCL and CILIP campaigns that grab the headlines, or for example participating in National Libraries Day?
CC BY-NC-SA Devon Buchanan
Self-service
I've seen ATMs long before I ever saw self-service machines in a library. As an adult, I've never been a customer of a bank that still kept cash behind the counter. Bank customers are used to using a machine to: withdraw money, deposit cash, check their account balance, deposit cheques, print bank statements... That's coming slowly for libraries. Of course, in both cases, there are still some staff around to help.
My bank adviser told me about a pilot of a full self-service bank - with no staff around. No receptionist; financial advisers only available by appointment. He was quite concerned about it; for several reasons. One being that just like in libraries, some bank customers aren't quite confident using the self-service and either need or prefer to have someone to help them. Another being: what happens to the receptionist - do they lose their job, have to move into a very different one?
Again, things that can be easily applied to libraries.
The facts: the CILIP Career Development Group is no more (well, almost) since the end of March 2014. In the English regions, its divisions have merged with the local branches to form the new Regional Member Networks.
Why do I bother writing about it? Because for the last two years I was a member of the Career Development Group North-Eastern division (CDG NE) committee - I was even the secretary for the last year and a half. I'm not qualified to tell you about the history of the group; I just want to say something as I feel it brought me a lot.
Two years ago, I chose to join a group committee because I wanted to gain some new skills to have a better chance of evolving in my career. I chose CDG NE because it seemed so active and so welcoming. I wasn't disappointed! I met a really nice bunch of people: some new like me, some with a lot of experience on the committee but all enthusiastic about libraries and helping people in the profession. On the committee I got to do things I did not have the opportunity to do in my post at the time. The highlight for me was helping out with the Marketing Libraries training: I assisted the organiser on the day and got to attend a great event!
I don't think I'd be lying if I said my involvement with CDG NE helped me get the job I'm in today. It showed my commitment to the profession, but also proved that I had the experience and skills needed to make the jump from a library assistant to a professional librarian post.
And now I'm chair of the new CILIP North East Member Network. Argh! What do I do now?!
Well I'd like us - the new merged committee - to keep things that, in my opinion, worked in CDG NE, for example:
motivated and enthusiastic committee members;
friendly and welcoming ways of working within the committee, opportunities to gain new skills;
a wide range of events: training days, library visits and CILIP qualifications support, but also socials.
And I'd like us to improve things such as:
better communication: using a monthly news mailing, social media;
transparency: giving more insight to members into the activities of the committee, making meeting minutes public;
more collaboration with the CILIP Special Interests Groups locally and the neighbouring Regional Member Networks;
more interaction with members who are not on the committee - we want everyone to feel involved within CILIP North East!
Following our very first committee meeting on Wednesday, I can already say that we do have enthusiastic and friendly committee members coming up with lots of wonderful ideas!
I hope we will be able to create/re-create/maintain a great library and information community in the region and encourage members to get involved.
Shall we talk about all this again in a year's time?!
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
