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!
11 comments
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May 15, 2010 at 9:42 am
Katie
I like the fact that you, like me http://www.chuukaku.com/blog/2010/05/ki-conversation-thee-questions.html, have refused to guess what technology will look like in 2020! I wonder if anyone’s going to attempt this one (I agree it would be rather ill-advised!).
Also, I have just noticed a typo in my URL. Bum.
May 15, 2010 at 1:48 pm
bethan
I quite like the typo! Gives it a dignified, Shakespearean feel ‘I will answer thee, CILIP, with thy questions three’ 😉
I think it’s interesting that we’ve both been thinking about sectoral change, and you’ve gone for continued fragmantation, while I’ve gone for more convergence.
Maybe we should archive all these blogs/conversations, and get them out in 2020 to have a good laugh? Especially at the people who are brave enough to make technology predictions!
May 17, 2010 at 11:03 am
thewikiman
This is another great post – yours is fast becoming a blog I check even when I haven’t got any time to check blogs!
I think the travel thing is really true and really important. Climate and economy will probably both have an influence there – even now, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but popular courses from respected organisations are being advertised and re-advertised and then advertised again, on LIS-LINK and other JISCmail lists – people just don’t have the training budget to pay for the course *and* the travel. (I was the only one on one of the courses I attended last week, even though it was a mint course.)
So the delivering content without having to go to places thing will be pretty important, I reckon. Not sure how it’ll be facilitated though – the trouble is, future predictions tend to be overly conservative (by 2020, mobile technology will totally outstrip the use of PCs for the internet! What’s that? 2012 called and that’s already happening there? Bugger) or completely wild (ZOMFG FLYING CARS!!!1!) so it’s hard to know if whatever replaces face-to-face events will be replaced by an evolution of existing webinar type technology or something completely different we haven’t anticipated.
(Involving hollograms and a virtual-reality hand-shaking suit. YUSS.)
May 19, 2010 at 12:59 pm
bethan
cheers for the compliment! that means a lot – especially as I see your blog the same way – always very interesting and worth making time for!
That’s a good point about training courses. I had noticed a lot of repeat ads apperaing in my mailing lists, but hadn’t really thought about what was behind that. It’s very interesting that they ran your training course with only you signed up – I would have expected it to be cancelled/rescheduled. I’m sure that’s significant, although I don’t know of what!
I was talking to some people from Pfizer at the SLA E event last night, and they’ve just moved to a non-country-specific information team – meaning that the information workers are one team, spread across the world. They’re looking for ways to deal with being a virtual team and – as I understand/recall – the most commonly used communication methods at the moment are asynchronous communications, and phone calls. So maybe even when we do have hologram suits (and please let it be soon!), we’ll find that more traditional communication methods work best. Whatever happens, I’m sure it’ll be fun finding out 🙂
May 19, 2010 at 11:46 am
Gary Green
You’re spot on when you say there needs to be a willingness to learn. How can the information profession develop if we’re not developing ourselves?
Re. Sector convergence – I’d go with that idea. It would be great to be able to openly share ideas across the borders, whether that’s from academic, business, public libraries or archives, museums, record management. There are so many common interests that would help us all learn from each other and develop the industry/profession as a whole.
Re. Shared training. In Surrey, along with a few other Public Library Services, we are developing the idea of virtual collaboration/training. I think it can work, as long as you have a way of keeping people focussed on it.
Gary
May 19, 2010 at 1:04 pm
bethan
nice phrasing! I’ll try not to steal it 😉
I’d be really interested to hear how your virtual collaboration/training project goes. that would be really useful to share with other library services – and archives, museums etc too!
May 20, 2010 at 8:33 pm
Gary Green
I’ll release the phrase on a creative commons licence 😉
Early days for the virtual/collaborative training – I’ll keep you posted. We’ve had a fair bit of interest.
May 25, 2010 at 7:58 pm
Ed Chamberlain
The following reallly demanded its own blog post, but I’ve never found the right forum, so here I go. As a CILIP Member of nine years and a Chartered Member for the past four, I have recently quit. A colleague from another institution suggested I do this publicly, which I was not used to, but after some deliberation, I’ve decided to share the whole process. Here is the guts of my resignation letter, outlining why:
———————-
Dear CILIP,
After much deliberation, I have decided not to renew my membership for 2010.
In the current economic climate, I cannot justify the cost of £184 p.a. for an organization that no longer meets my professional development needs.
CILIP is all but unrecognized in my workplace. Looking at my institution of employment, none of my division are members, not my Line Manager. Charted status has no bearing on my current pay, nor has it in my previous positions (in specialist and museum libraries). Alternative mechanisms exist to support my personal and professional development. In terms of keeping abreast of developments in information provision and our sector, I find many other sources, (blogs, professional journals, System provider literature) are now meeting my communication and networking needs more than adequately.
Most tellingly, the past years’ worth of CILIP literature has largely remained in its expensive plastic wrapping. My job entails keeping abreast of the latest information developments, yet CILIP cannot tell me anything I have not already found out from other more current and informed sources. CILIP always seems to be several steps behind developments in the networked environment, seemingly playing catchup and acting conservatively. Its attitude towards using Twitter back in March is a case in point.
Even an institution as archaic as my own (Cambridge University Library) is using this medium. Finally, I have issues with CILIPs’ effectiveness as a representational body. Throughout my membership of your organization, I feel that it has failed to tackle issues of pay and status and adequately represent information workers and promote their skill-set and value.
Unexpectedly, I received the following letter from Chief Exec, Bob Mackee, some of which I would also like to share:
———————-
You find CILIP overly conservative in its engagement with the networked environment, and you feel that CILIP is ineffective in representing your interests. Stuff you receive from CILIP remains in its plastic wrapping, unopened. Ouch! These are trenchant and chastening criticisms which summarise very well the challenges facing CLIP now and in the future
I’m not going to attempt rebuttal because all your points have validity. Nor am I going to ask you to change your mind: your decision has been made after much deliberation, and I respect that.
But there are two things I would like you to do. One is to agree that I can copy your letter to the members of CILIP Council and to the Working Group set up by Council to consider issues relating to CILIP membership: your comments will certainly help to concentrate our minds. The other is to contribute to the “Big Conversation” about the future for CILIP that we propose to undertake in the coming months. In your letter you set out the reasons why CILIP membership no longer works for you: it would be really helpful if you could set out, after a similar process of deliberation, what CILIP would have to do in order to work for you again in the future.
—————-
Bizarrely, this lovely and thoughtful letter from Bob was probably the most contact I’ve had with CILIP since Chartership. Prompted by Bob, I felt it was worth going into a bit more detail on my reasons for leaving, and how things could have been done differently, at least as I see it. I’ve tried not to rant and to keep it objective, but personal professional development is on some level a personal thing. My thoughts on CILIP and why I left are outlined below, although it does also touch on the future of our profession. I’ve meant to blog this myself, but life has somewhat overtaken me.
1) Cost to me:
* My biggest issue was the £184 p.a. fee, for which I felt I received little return. Its a non trivial amount, and I’m not alone in this. when I speak to other non-members, its usually the cost that puts them off
* My institution(s) of employment never paid my £184.p.a. It meant a lot more to me as it came out of my own pocket, rather than being paid for by a public library service
* Here is some comparative data with average earnings and a salary spread versus cost of professional organisation membership fees from some fairly random professions in the UK
* All earnings data from: http://www.salarytrack.co.uk/, all fees data from relevant institutional websites:
Librarians (av £24,103)
* 10% > 36k (i.e. 10% of librarians earn over 36k)
* 25% > 30k
* 50% > 25k
* 75% > 21k
CILIP – sample fees 2010
* (Associates, Chartered Members & Fellows More than £17,501) £184
* (Associates, Chartered Members & Fellows £14,001 – £17,500) £153
Midwives (av £29,091)
* 10% > 41k
* 25% > 38k
* 50% > 32k
* 75% > 32k
Royal college of Midwives – sample fees 2010
* FULL £230.16
* JOINT AGREEMENT £177.72
* ASSOCIATE/SPECIAL CATEGORY £133.32
Marketing professional (av. £35,000)
* 10% > 100k
* 25% > 60k
* 50% > 40k
* 75% > 30k
Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) – sample fees 2010
* Affiliate £135
* ACIM £140
Civil Engineer (av £38,000)
* 10% > 57k
* 25% > 50k
* 50% > 43k
* 75% > 35k
Institute of Civil Engineers – sample fees 2010
* Fellow £325
* Member and Companion £250
* Associate Member £250
* Technician Member £100
* Graduate and Affiliate £171
IT professional (av £50,000)
* 10% > 100k
* 25% > 70k
* 50% > 50k
* 75% > 40k
BCS – British Computer Society – sample fees 2010
* Professional (MBCS) £95.00
* Fellow £130.00
* Chartered (£135)
* I can’t vouch for the quality of data, but it was readily available and bore some semblance to real world experience. Please feel free to challenge it. I’m a firm beliver that one can find the right stats to back up any argument, if presented correctly
* There is no maths behind this, but just by eyeballing the figures it is obvious that CILIP fees are comparatively high given our average wages. Compared to the British Computer Society, we really suffer. There may be a large difference in quality of service, but I personally doubt it
* CILIP also charges for other services. Fees for courses are high, job adverts are expensive to place. This is not to detract from the quality of either service, but if training and placing ads, two of CILIPs most valued services costs extra, where does the membership money go?
What can CILIP do better with costs of membership ?
* Rather than try to justify the cost, take drastic actions to lower it. I believe that fees need to be cheaper or more evenly spread. We are not a well paid profession, fees need to be relevant to wages
* CILIP needs to lower membership fees to maintain and increase its membership headcount. I’m sure given the spread of wages outlined above, a happier medium could be struck. Ideally, I would like to pay around £80 – £100 for an online only service. That would be value for money. It would attract more folk
* If membership really is declining, how about a ‘pay as much as you can afford’ model with a minimal set of online only services alongside or instead of those paying fees? Budgets could be allocated to commission articles and works depending on how much was raised annually. If people like what they see, they may pay more. Non Librarians may also wish to sign up, if what we have to say is useful
* CILIP needs to loose the expensive central London digs and become a virtual organisation. Employees could work from home, with meeting space rented only when needed, or perhaps downsized to a small core office elsewhere (Brum?). I lived and worked in London for four years, and never made use of the drop in facilities, even when working towards Chartership
* Streamline, employ less people and downsize in interest groups, regional groups and activity. How much of what CILIP does is now relevant and useful to the modern information professional? How much is just a retread of what is done elsewhere, nationally or internationally ? How much of its activity actually has an impact on members’ professional development and on services library users? How much of it is ultimately self promoting (not promoting librarians, but promoting CILIP …)
2) My personal professional development
* Chartership was useful as a reflective exercise. However, none of the material covered in the portfolio or the then 5,000 word report was covered in enough detail to be that useful. In fact, it felt like I was covering it, well, just to say I had. Furthermore, the goalposts were moving. The follow year, the programme was very different. I expect its changed again since 2006
* My current employers offer a mentoring scheme and ongoing personal professional development plan in the library. The University I work for offers ILM accredited courses in management and first class IT training. Cambridge University Library also offers an excellent set of in house practical training sessions for staff and users. I appreciate that this is possibly very far from the norm of academic and public library services, but with all this on offer, why would I want to repeat the chartership experience through revalidation?
* The core skills I use on a daily basis (PHP, Perl, CSS, XML, Javascript, Core Unix etc) have either been self taught or learnt on the job. None of this was covered by my Chartership process, and CILIP seems to offer very little guidance for Librarians wishing to gain these increasingly vital skills
* In the academic sphere, chartered status is not required and does not affect my status and pay. In fact, to maintain it, I have to shell out myself despite the apparent lack of gain
How can CILIP do professional development better?
* This is a tough one to call, as the whole sphere is so personal and role specific. Ultimately, I felt I could do better elsewhere, although this is dependent on my staying with my current employers
* Certainly, I would like to see a refocus of the core librarian skillset for the networked environment, in which we now all operate
* To elaborate, in the near future, a modern information service could involve data curation and storage, online communication services and data manipulation, database design and potentially web application construction on behalf of users. Yet CILIP does not appear to be skilling a workforce to do this. Are advanced Boolean searching, Cat., Class. and Information Literacy really as valuable now as some in the profession believe them to be?
3) My professional information needs:
The basics
I usually need to know:
* What my users want and what they think of us (locally and nationally) – Reports from the JISC, LIBQUAL, LISU, and those from my own institution give me this information. Articles and data on this from CILIP are too vague, too late and often seemingly dumbed down for a general audience
* What others are up to – so many people in my sphere blog or publish in professional journals (Library Hi-tech). CILIP always seems behind compared to RSS feeds
* Technical developments – Information on software and service developments is too late, too sparse and not technical enough. I am more technically minded than most library workers due to my role of Systems Development Librarian. However, given the move of published material to the electronic sphere, I would argue that CILIP needs to focus more in this area. Systems are vital to management and delivery of e-resources and probably to a lot of future services as well
Job ads
* I get the email list of job ads from CILIP, which is great. Its great that this is open beyond CILIP to others, it has to be to be useful and viable service for them
* The website and email lists were fine for this service. I did not need the bi-weekly expensive shrink wrapped publication. Which brings me onto …
Literature
* I’m sorry to say that Update and the Gazette stayed in their shrink wrapping for the past year. I’ve got a mountain of blogs, RSS feeds and material from companies in the sector (Talis, Ex Libris to name but two) that keep me informed about the things I really need to know
* I work in the academic sector, yet CILIP Update seemed to be 60%-70% public libraries in content
* I noticed nothing for Information scientists. CILIP was a union of the LA and IIS. Yet the material for the latter body has dwindled
What can CILIP do better with professional information and literature?
* In so many circles, print is dead in terms of giving current, useful information in short bursts. So go e-only, and cut costs and fees in doing so
* Publish less, but more often. I’m glad to see CILIP Gazette has its core articles online opened up at least. This is a step in the right direction
* Stop sending expensive mailshots for irrelevant training courses through my letterbox (well, they will now…)
* Save the big stuff for other academic LIS journals. Maybe sponsor one and make it freely available online with membership
* Look beyond the public library sphere – academic and specialist libraries are out there as well
* Stop playing catchup. The debate has moved on elsewhere from CILIP. The argument last summer over its usage of Twitter is a case in point. It sent out some bad signals (personally I don’t get Twitter, but others do and that needs to be appreciated)
* Publish elsewhere – get articles into the Guardian media section and TLS / TES on a regular basis. A monthly column from a Librarian would be great.
* Write more press releases, . Don’t be afraid to add Librarian spin on issues of current public attention. Sex up our issues and make them newsworthy!
4) Advocacy and Recognition
* Within Cambridge, Librarians are probably valued as much as in any other academic institution. Yet our role and services are being constantly challenged by faculty and others within Cambridge and deservedly so. We need to really get a grip on what it is we do now that is useful, and what else we could be doing to maintain our worth
* I would love to see proactive literature and targeted appearances in the media, proving how Librarians add value to an institution and what happens when they are taken away Unless of course, we are not missed, in which case more investigation needs to be done as to why, what is filling those Librarian shaped gaps, and what other gaps could we fill? One way that our value can be recognised is by speaking up as a body, and potentially by being politically active on matters that concern us. The ALA seem to be heavily involved in American legal and political issues. CILIP has a Policy and Advocacy Group. I never saw them being especially active during my membership, but here is their site:
http://www.cilip.org.uk/about-us/business-areas/policy-advocacy/Pages/default.aspx
* They prepared a 2010 election manifesto, which to a former Politics student like me sounds good … expect its was being discussed on a members only blog to which I am no longer privy. I’m not sure how this mechanism will allow potential members, or those vital non members with useful points of view (non librarians?) to get involved, but it sounds hopeful!
What can CILIP do better with Advocacy and Recognition ?
* Get us out onto the news, into papers and onto TV. Challenge politicians about issues of copyright and licensing in e-journal publishing, and in perceptions of how children and students use the Internet
* Get involved in the search debate, the Google books issue and future of publishing debates at national level. Don’t let publishers dominate the UK government’s approach to Open Access
* Engage in a debate not only amongst ourselves on some closed forum, but in the real world out there
* Like it or not, this is the age or personality. Get a celebrity sponsor or two. Get a Librarian or an Ex Librarian out there to champion us on TV, or a tame celebrity to become one of us. It could be hi-brow, it could be low-brow, it could be both. Work harder on getting a positive image created for the profession
* Be controversial. Our profession is undergoing great change and threat. Don’t coddle them with shrink wrapped full colour journals, but instead force academic librarians to challenge how they are perceived and how the skills and services they have could be applied in a relevant fashion
* With a sudden rise in ebooks and the journal switch largely complete, large chunks of a modern academic library could become surplus to requirements for a cash strapped University. Google Books and EBSCO between them could put a lot of people out of jobs. Lets face up to this.
5) “You have to be involved in CILIP to get the most out of it”
* I often heard this throughout my membership. Yet with a personal life and job that often expands beyond work time, dedicating even small amounts spare time to CILIP to take part in groups and committees outside of work felt like a lot to ask
* To put this another way, is an institution that I pay money to and that then expects me to give up my spare time for free to fulll-fill a working role within it actually useful for my professional development?
* I personally found that my time was better spent elsewhere. Once I chartered, I decided to put the time I used at home previously working towards chartership into learning programming languages. Out of the two endeavours, one has got me my last two jobs, one has not …
* JISC, JA.NET, supplier user groups and many other bodies out there are also vying for time. On the list, CILIP ended up slipping
What can CILIP do better with user involvement and qualifications?
* To my eyes, CILIP is a very big body. How much volunteer time is spent on bureaucracy? How many of the committees CILIP uses volunteers to run are really necessary?
* Are the skills that CILIP (and library schools) encourage us to develop now the right ones for our employers, our users and the needs of a modern information service?
* Where is the coding, the database design, the use of online data services, manipulation of XML, intelligent blogging etc?
6) Final thoughts
* A lot of what I’ve written is probably not really true. Its based on my own opinion and point of view from not having got that involved with CILIP over the years. But that failure to engage me is prehaps the reason I quit CILIP, so its a fair bet that other have quit or not joined because they have formed similar opinions, true or not
* I am quite sorry to have quit, especially after putting so much effort into chartering. Sadly, I just lost the will to engage, other agendas took up my time
* I love my job and our sector and put a lot of time and effort into it outside of work. I know many others who do so as well, but again not necessarily through CILIP
* Whilst I found it to be somewhat surplus to my needs, it would be an unarguable blow to our profession if CILIP or no similar body were around to work in the interests of Information Professionals.
May 26, 2010 at 10:50 am
bethan
Hi Ed,
Wow! that really does deserve it’s own blog post, and far more exposure than it will get here. I’ll tweet about it and try to spread the word 🙂
There is a lot of food for thought here – and please don’t say that it is ‘probably not true’! members’ experiences of engagement are, in my opinion, the most valid measure of the success of a professional organisation. You’ve clearly put as lot of thought and effort into this, and it’s really valuable for looking at the future of CILIP. I think losing such an engaged member should be a real wake-up call for CILIP.
‘Be controversial’! what delightful advice 🙂
UPDATE: Ed’s post is also available on the CILIP Communities discussion here: http://communities.cilip.org.uk/forums/t/11967.aspx, which might be a better place if you want to reply 🙂
May 30, 2010 at 5:21 pm
thewikiman » Blog Archive » Libraries in 2020
[…] much everything Phil Bradley says in his article about CILIP in 2020. (I’m a big fan of Bethan’s views also.) In particular, I’m passionate about the idea that CILIP should lead rather than follow […]
August 30, 2010 at 3:35 pm
My IFLA 2010 experience « IFLA New Professionals Special Interest Group
[…] retain, meet expectations and needs, and involve new members in their work.” In the context of an ongoing debate about the challenges of membership in many library associations around the world, she gave us […]