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Time for a quick round-up of last week’s CILIP CDG conference: Working smarter: making more an impact with less. I tweeted the day, but foolishly didn’t set up a twapperkeeper, so I’ve harvested my tweets, and put them here. If you want more detail about what was said and when, try the tweets (read from bottom up), as this blog post will be more of an overview 
I’d booked for this right at the last minute, as I was going to be in London the next day anyway, and am delighted I did! It was an interesting and useful day, where I heard some good ideas, met some lovely people – and, of course, won a bottle of Sue Hill champagne in the raffle!
I heard twice from Susie Kay from The Professionalism Group. I’d been intrigued by the descriptions of Susie’s sessions, and they were a strong pull in signing up for the conference. The main thing I brought away from both of these sessions (How to reduce the hidden costs of meetings and Professionalism for success) is that professionalsim and professional behaviour has a profoundly positive impact on your working environment. Professionals consistently monitor their own behaviour, and will always be looking for ways they can make improvements – whether this is by finding innovative alternatives to time-consuming and unproductive meetings, or ensuring that they create a positive impression on colleagues and managers. I was impressed with Susie’s definition of professionalism as ‘a way for an individual to have an entirely positive effect on those around them’ – what I need to do now is to keep finding ways to do that!
Susie’s points sat very well with the talk from Carol Brooks about training and development on a shoestring. Part of being a professional is a commitment to your own personal and professional development – you should always be thinking about learning and development opportunities. One of Carol’s points was that – especially in lean times – we need to share experience and learn from each other. Teaching is just as valid for cpd as learning – and you will learn while you teach. I particularly liked Carol’s suggestion that managers should shadow/second their managees, to get first hand experience and understanding of whether the support they provide is sufficient and appropriate.
Carol was also very emphatic about the benefits of mentoring, both for mentor and mentee (or mental and manatee, according to @jaffne). This was of particular interest to me, as I’ve just come out of a mentoring relationship (chartership), and am planning to become a mentor myself. I had a really productive and positive relationship with my chartership mentor, and am finding that I miss it. I think mentoring is something I’ll try to stay involved with throughout my career.
I’m writing most of this on my phone on the train (hellooo typos!), so will skip over fundraising with Kathy Roddy and marketing on a shoestring with Andy Ryan with less attention than they deserve. The main point I took from both of these sessions was the importance of leveraging existing relationships and networks. Marketing and fundraising have, I think, more in common than I had realised.
Overall, an excellent and enjoyable day, that was well-worth getting up at 5:30 for
I’m about to head off for a meeting with Research by Design, to discuss my thoughts in ‘The Conversation‘ stage of the CILIP ‘Defining our professional future‘ programme.
Like Joeyanne, I thought it would be useful to blog some of my ideas about the 3 questions. These are basically the notes I’ve made for the interview, prettied-up a bit for public consumption. Don’t expect deathless prose!
What will the knowledge and information sector look like in 2020?
To a large extent this depends on what technology will look like in 2020, and none of us can predict that – if we could, we’d be making a fortune somewhere else! It also depends on the political situation, and as, we’ve seen over the past week, that can be extremely volatile and unpredictable.
I think adaptability, flexibility, and the willingness to learn will become increasingly important. I know one of the goals of this programme is to help CILIP prepare for the future, but we do have to be willing to accept that we can’t know – we need to be prepared for unexpected changes.
And there’s no doubt that there will be changes. It may be a stereotype, that librarians guard books, and guard them closely, because once the books are gone, so is their power, but it – unfortunately – has some basis in truth.
Well, now, if ever, the books are going. they’re out there, on the internet, with no need for registers or white cotton gloves. No order slips, and queues for the catalogues, no respectful hushed silence. And we need to change to adapt to this.
What we do may change, why we do it won’t. I strongly hope that many of the changes that come about between now and 2020 are as a result of information professionals proactively pushing for positive change, and not merely reacting to circumstances.
I think one major change will be more sectoral convergence – we’ve already seen a merger of the Society of Archivists, the NCA and the ACALG, to produce the Archives and Records Association (UK and Ireland). While this is more of an in-sector merger, and I don’t predict that CILIP will merge with anyone in the near future, I think it’s indicative of a trend, and we’ll see a lot of roles that overlap. CILIP already offers Society of Archivists members discounts on courses (the same discount as CILIP members).
Linked to this, I think we’ll also see an increase in solo professionals – possibly doing the work of a librarian, an archivist, a record manager, a knowledge manager, an information officer – probably not all at once, but yes, I think there’ll be a rise in these hybrid roles. The professional association will need to support this – solo professionals need a different kind of support.
Where will a professional association fit into this sector?
They need to support their members through these changes. Risk management & change management training and strategies.
Knowledge management: as information professionals, we know that people are valid – and valuable! – resources. A professional association will need to manage their members’ knowledge and expertise, make sure it’s being made the best use of. This will involve encouraging member participation – ultimately, I feel, the association’s real value lies in its members.
As training budgets continue to shrink, I think the professional associations will need to find innovative ways to provide free/cheap training. A lot of this will come from members/activists. I heard a talk on the SHARE project recently, and think it’s a great model for moving forward. Museums in the East of England are sharing training and expertise by setting up a ‘skills bank’, into which each museum deposits as much professional time as it can afford – say 3 hours of conservator time. This is then used to provide free training and development activities, as well as practical help. I think there’s a lot of potential for a similar scheme in the library sector.
How will you engage with this professional association?
Virtually/remotely – travel will become much less feasible. This means they have to be at cutting edge of remote communications technology.
In many ways, the role of the association would be to facilitate my networking – put me in touch with other members who can help me. So I’d expect it to be very much a 2-way interaction – not just me wanting to see what the association can do for me, but the association engaging with me, and finding out what I can do for the profession. And then encouraging me to do so!
Yes, I know this is a deliberately provocative title, and I am not implying that Prof Murray-Rust needs teaching more than most, nor that he is particularly difficult to teach.
But, as his blog posts show (start here and read on), here is a prominent academic, who is well-known in the library world, who doesn’t understand why – or indeed how or when – the BL have DRM (digital rights management) on their electronic inter-library loans. (please note: I’m not going to discuss here whether they should have or not – merely that they do).
I understand why, although I couldn’t tell you when I learned. I’ve never worked ILL – is it some kind of librarianly osmosis? I’m sure you, as librarians and info profs, understand too (and if you don’t, go read Steph Taylor’s (@CriticalSteph) response on PMR’s blog).
So here is an issue which librarians understand, and which fundamentally affects the relationship of our users – arguably of our most sophisticated users – to the library. As PMR’s blog (and comments) show, it’s an issue which very negatively effects that relationship. It’s seen as a barrier to scholarship – PMR says ‘I believe that these represent a serious reduction in academic freedom‘.
If this is issue is so vital, why don’t they know why we are doing it? Prof Murray-Rust says ‘The BL’s responses are often masterly Sir Humphreydoms that say nothing‘, and he asks for professional advice from librarians about how to interpret the restrictions.
Why does he need this? I appreciate the need to have the legal disclaimers in place, but our primary role, as information professionals, is to get information to our users. We have obviously failed here. Why is there not a simple, accessible guide to DRM on ILL articles – in fact, to the role of copyright in ILLs as a whole?
The Cambridge University Library website inter-library loans page makes no mention of DRM – but that may be because it makes no mention of the fact that you can obtain journal articles electronically, through SED (secure electronic delivery). Surely Cambridge provides this service? Indeed, why else would PMR be questioning it? Yet no mention – that I could find. I’d be very happy to be proved wrong!
I’m not singling out Cambridge for condemnation here – it merely happens to be Prof Murray-Rust’s institution. Let’s look at some others, shall we? Manchester? No mention. Oxford and Sheffield? Some mention – they at least acknowledge the existence of SED. Edinburgh? Getting better – advice about the service, and a mention of why you can only print one copy. ‘Copyright restrictions’ is a pretty bare-bones explanation, but at least it’s a start.
So there is some information out there – but surely you’re not suggesting that this is providing an acceptable service to users? That to find information on a service you provide they have to find information on that service as provided by other libraries, and extrapolate from there?
(This is just a whirlwind tour of a few libraries that sprung to mind – if you know of a particularly good example of how libraries are communicating these restrictions, please let me know!)
So, on to the BL. After a bit of digging, I found the SED FAQ – it’s certainly not in a prominent or easily accessible place. And yes, it answers the technical questions. But nowhere is there a mention of the ‘why’. And without the ‘why’, it appears that we are restricting access to information for our own fun and amusement.
DRM on articles may or may not be deliberate barrier to scholarship, but not providing easy access to (in effect, withholding) all of the information users need to make the best choice about how to access those article, and how to make best use of them once they have obtained them, is. If we have to live with DRM, we have to learn how to make sure users get the most out of it – and that they understand why it is there. If we don’t, we’re failing in one of our fundamental trusts: to make the information our users need available to them – even if they don’t know they need it.
I blogged recently about what CILIP Chartership – by which I really meant the process of putting together my Chartership portfolio – meant to me. Well, as of yesterday, it means that I am now a chartered librarian! Hurrah and jubilation etc etc 
Once the excitement had died down a little, I started to think about what being a Chartered member of CILIP means to me. It’s something I’ve been working towards my entire career – I can’t remember if the statement ‘I intend to work towards CILIP chartership’ was on the application for my graduate traineeship, but it’s certainly been on every application form and piece of professional assessment since.
So, now I’m there. What do I do with it? Is this the pinnacle of my professional achievement?
Hopefully not! After all, there’s still Revalidation, and Fellowship somewhere in the misty future. And I’ve expressed an interest in becoming a Chartership mentor, so there’s plenty of room for personal and professional development within the CILIP framework for me yet.
But what does it mean in practical terms? Am I, as @mariekeguy suggested, now ‘always expected to know what I’m talking about’? Do people expect more from Chartered Librarians? Does it have an impact on how you behave professionally? Or on how people expect you to behave? I guess I’ll find out for myself soon enough – but any insights you want to share in the comments are very welcome!
One immediate effect, by the way – a huge rush of affection towards all my wonderful twitter peeps, who were (as always) so immediate and unstinting with their congratulations. Did I mention at any point that you guys rock?
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