Hot topic! CILIP and the Media

There seems to be a discrepancy between what CILIP believe to be its media responsibilities, and what its members believe to be its media responsibilities. Hearing both sides of any story is so, so important. I can't think of ANYTHING I've got angry about, or railed against, that I haven't softened my stance on once I've learned a little more about the other side of the story. There's almost always a good reason why people do things that seem inexplicable at first glance. So I am prepared to have all this explained to me and to think to myself at the end of it all - okay, I was being naive, I can see how difficult this must be for CILIP. But either way, there is a problem here that needs to be addressed - whether the problem is one CILIP is contributing to, or is unable to do anything about. There is still a problem - and I get the impression, though only from a small pool of online responses to these issues, that CILIP's members see it as more of a problem than CILIP itself appears to.

• In my opinion, CILIP are not prominent enough in the media
• In my opinion, CILIP do not do enough to mitigate or respond to negative news stories about libraries, or to place positive ones
• In my opinion, CILIP should be able to escape the echo-chamber and are not currently doing so with sufficient frequency or success (although they are moving in the right direction)
• In my opinion, CILIP should not have allowed the first BBC Newsnight debacle to happen as it did because a: they should have had someone on Newsnight instead of a children's author 'representing' libraries and b: they should have ensured Newsnight were NOT able to claim library circulation was 314,000 books per annum when in fact it was 314,000,000 - responding to this afterwards simply isn't enough
• In my opinion CILIP seem too much like 'one of us'- ie indignant and often impotent. Our professional body needs to be 'representing us' - ie getting someone on the programmes that may cause damage to libraries' reputation. Various CILIP people have said you can't just 'get' someone on Newsnight (they were saying this off the cuff - it doesn't represent an official CILIP statement) but that isn't strong enough, for me. If you can't, then CILIP needs to take steps to force a change of attitude and increase its influence.
• In my opinion, that CILIP were unable to accept an invitation on to the second newsnight debacle is an absolute TRAVESTY. They were offered a 1 minute slot at very short notice, and couldn't get anyone to the BBC studios to fill it - Newsnight were unwilling to settle for a video link. I appreciate those are difficult conditions. But you HAVE TO MAKE IT HAPPEN! By whatever means -surely someone could have taken a cab across London and stepped up? I can imagine that Newsnight thought, right, we got lots of angry corrections from CILIP when we messed up the last feature on libraries, so we know all about them this time and we'll offer them a slot. Then they say no... So next time, we'll go back to ignoring them. [EDIT: I've learned today - 25th June - that CILIP actually contacted Newsnight, rather than the other way round. So while clearly it's a shame that CILIP were unable to make it happen, it's much, much better that they were chasing the opportunity, rather than passively impotent and unable to respond to it..]
• In my opinion, and apparently in the opinion of other library bodies too, it is not the members' responsibility to face the media, it is CILIP's
• In my opinion, CILIP should be getting someone on the Dispatches programme, not trying to get its members on it - at least not on their own. I think calling for people to go on that programme, and to produce a 1 minute video explaining the value of libraries, is great. But it should be part of a supporting strategy of member advocacy, with a primary strategy of CILIP appearing in the media itself. To take a presidential analogy: it's like we're being asked to be the foot-soldiers in Obama's famous harnessing of web 2.0, youtube, and the power of grass roots activism - but without Obama himself going out on the campaign trail to lead us.
• In my opinion, CILIP seem unwilling to step up and assume a prominent role in the media
• In my opinion, there have been opportunities in recent months for CILIP to step up, and it feels like a crippling sense of inertia is preventing them from doing so.  A change of culture is needed here.  Chief Exec Bob Mckee says: "It’s easy to sit back and say “CILIP should have been on Newsnight” or indeed on the Today programme on Tuesday morning. But how many of us could go head-to-head with Jeremy Paxman on live TV and give a clear and compelling justification of libraries and librarians in just one minute or less?" God knows, I couldn't - but it only needs one of us! And that one of us should be employed by CILIP - it should be YOU if necessary. Is there no one in the organisation for whom the challenge of facing Paxman is an exciting opportunity rather than a prohibitively intimidating threat? If none of the current staff feel able to represent the whole industry in the media, appoint someone who is! And if that isn't possible right now, make plans to do so when it is possible.
• On the one hand you have someone like Phil Bradley being invited back onto Radio 5Live after a successful appearance, and basically offering to drag the post-Newsnight  response forward on CILIP's behalf (see the comments section), on the other hand we have CILIP unable to grab Newsnight opportunities. Am I the only one who thinks there's a problem here?

I really, really want feedback on this. Please tell me in the Comments whether you agree with me, or disagree with me, or know stuff I don't know. I welcome all comment and debate on this, and I want CILIP to respond to this too. I wouldn't normally ask this, but please tweet a link - http://bit.ly/9EnejP - to this post  to encourage as many people as possible to engage in the conversation.

I have said before that I think we should not be so quick to attack CILIP, and that everyone I've met or spoken with who works for them is doing a great job. It's very easy to criticise from the safety of a blog. I don't want to belittle their efforts from the easy position of not having to represent an entire profession in the media. But, as I've said above, whether the problem is one CILIP is unable to control or is complicit in the perpetuation of, something has to change.

-thewikiman

Libraries in 2020

As part of CILIP's admirable efforts to get the community's input on defining our professional future, they have encouraged debate, blog posts etc on these subjects:

• What will the Knowledge and Information domain look like in 2020?
• Where will a professional association fit into this domain?
• How will you engage with this professional association?

You can go to the CILIP netvibes dashboard to monitor the debates across many platforms - WELL DONE CILIP for setting this up!

Here are my thoughts - it seems to me to be sensible to look at what the world will be like in 2020 first of all, then how libraries will fit into that, and then how professional bodies in general (and CILIP in particular) will best serve their members in that environment.

Technology

Technological progress increases exponentially. This article by Ray Kurzweil has lots of graphs illustrating this, and some eye-popping insights. Everyone can see that things are speeding up – what is interesting and quite scary is that the speeding up is itself speeding up! In other words, we’ll see a century’s worth of progress in the next 25 years (rather than in the next 100) – because we are doubling the rate of progress every decade.

What does this mean for libraries in 2020? Well for a start, using the model described above, we will make the equivalent of 20 years of progress between now and then. (I think that's how the maths works... :) ) Think of what we’ve done in the previous 20 years – 1990 had no mobile phones! (They’d been invented, but were only first generation and not used widely by any means.) No internet, not really - let alone 2.0... Hard to know how any of us functioned at all, eh? What the bloody hell will be going on in 2020 that’ll make us look back on the current era as positively stone-age? Who knows. As Information Professionals we are becoming increasingly good at being early adopters, so that bodes well. Perhaps the library will have a role to play in aggregating, explaining and training on all these new technologies?

Our technology will be mobile, but will we?

An interesting dichotomy I can see for 2020 is, everything is going mobile but we might be increasingly bound to our desks. At the moment we're all on the move all of the time, so it makes sense to access important information in a mobile phone. But a decade on the world will be more crowded, travel will be more complicated (and perhaps even socially frowned upon; there may be climate-change refugees by then, which would make driving 200 miles to a conference seem like a pretty indulgent thing to do) and employers in all sectors may have less money to spend on training and travel. So, training and conferencing will surely take place more at our places of work, presumably through some kind of virtual means.

Anyway, everyone knows mobile technology is the coming thing. Gartner reckons that phones’ll overtake PCs as the most common method of accessing the web by 2013. I don’t know about you, but I’m guilty of viewing this development as a full-stop rather than part of an ongoing process. Really, though, with rate of progress increasing so quickly, who’s to say phones will still be number 1 by 2020? I'd fully expect mobile technology per se to rule the roost, but not necessarily in combination with a phone as we understand it today. I'd rather access the web (and my documents, and my games, and my videos, and my music) on something like this:

Surely by 2020 we'll have what are, in effect, multi-tasking-ready iPads which one can roll up and stick in a pocket? Perhaps we'll just use phones for phoning. (Perhaps they too will be thin and bendy, and able to fit into the credit-card bit of our wallets - that would be ace.)

This time it's personal

You could argue that the first thing the internet did was make everything available to us; what it is doing now is personalising and customising it to suit us individually. I could imagine that Libraries will go through the same shift, by 2020. We will do our best to protect people from the Tyranny of Choice!

Context is everything. Another, more intriguing insight from Gartner, is this:

By 2015, context will be as influential to mobile consumer services and relationships as search engines are to the Web. Whereas search provides the "key" to organizing information and services for the Web, context will provide the "key" to delivering hyperpersonalized experiences across smartphones and any session or experience an end user has with information technology.

So, perhaps this is why mobiles will be important - MY device will give ME a completley unique and bespoke service based on my needs and habits. So let's think about that in terms of a professional body - at the moment CILIP sends round weekly emails, rounding up things of interest that have been happening in the world of libraries and information. Perhaps that could be much more comprehensive, perhaps an RSS feed rather than an email, and perhaps it could sift out the stuff I'm not interested in, and learn from the links I follow to provide me with more stuff I am interested in next time.

Is FourSquare the most annoying thing in the world? Yes - yes it is. Hey I just became the Mayor of Nobody Wants This Crap Cluttering Up Their Twitter-feed! However, FourSquare is leading the charge in location-based applications and this will surely be huge by 2020. Assuming we can navigate through the murky waters of privacy and data protection (or perhaps we'll all have given up by then), could CILIP use this to their advantage? Let's say we don't travel as much in 2020, so opportunities to meet up and network become increasingly valuable. CILIP could facilitate meetings without having to actually be part of them itself - imagine if you're in South London, and CILIP auto-messages you saying '3 of your network from [insert area of library interest here] are also in the area - would you like to meet them'? If people say yes to the meeting request, the CILIP app (or whatever it is) could suggest a suitable venue equidistant between all parties...

Librarians in the cloud

Do you think the concept of a self-employed Information Professional could exist by 2020? There are already entrepreneurial examples in existence - but what about people performing current information roles but not as part of an organisation? Perhaps that's too far fetched - but perhaps the organisation could exist without the physical space we call the library. It may not be feasible to keep all of them open, but there's no doubting that the modern Information Professional's skill-set will be more valuable than it ever has been, so perhaps we can exist without libraries in some form or other. If that is to be possible, CILIP and other professional bodies would have a big responsibility to support their members in such ventures - and of providing a network that everyone in the profession will be part of, even if they work alone, to ensure support, comparing of experiences, and an effecient system of refferal when you can't help a client yourself.

On a related note, I'd like to see Information Professionals being more active than passive in the exchange of skills and services. We often out-source stuff to other sectors or organisations - how come they don't out-source stuff to us? We should be bartering our skills - our increasingly essential skills - to the commercial sector, in exchange for stuff. Again, professional bodies could play a role in facilitating that.

CILIP specifically

I agree with pretty 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 in social media (etc) developments - and if there are other people forging ahead, harness them! I'm passionate about the idea of CILIP representing libraries more in the mainstream media - I don't want to hear an item about library closures on the news without a CILIP spokesman fighting our corner.

I'm very keen for CILIP to go where the conversation is. There was much fuss a while ago when CILIP's CEO, Bob McKee, debated whether CILIP should be using Twitter, and how. It's a no brainer, of course they should use it - but it's not TWITTER per se that is important here, it's whatever medium the rest of us are using. Right now, that's Twitter - but whatever it is in 2020, CILIP need to anticipate and move swiftly to be there, too.

And finally I'd like to see CILIP treated with respect. People are so often dismissive, scornful or even outright abusive of CILIP - they attack CILIP the abstract entity, but of course what CILIP really is, is the sum of its employees. Every single person I've met at CILIP has been enthusiastic, engaged and engaging, nice, and on our side. Perhaps there are exceptions to this, but I'm yet to find them. These are people who are doing their best as part of an organisation which is trying to rethink itself to suit the times - I find it very hard to criticise people I know are trying really hard, although that's by no means to say they don't deserve criticism... Just that it must be constructive - less of the huffy 'CILIP does nothing for me' and more of the 'I'll explain to CILIP what it could do for me'.  So let's hope that this whole process leads to more mutual respect between the organisation and its members.

- thewikiman

on the Jay Leno library jibe (you might not like this)

There's been a little bit of fuss over Jay Leno's monologue last week - you can view the offending spiel via Library Journal. He's talking about the L.A Mayor's budget cuts, and he says "People here in Los Angeles are upset that the mayor's proposed plan to cut the budget of libraries... This could affect as many as nine people." Lolz.

So anyway, the City Librarian sent him a letter, and I'm going to take a leaf out of Library Journal's book (or should I say 'journal!' Yeah - eat it Leno! You're not the only comedian around here!) and embed the letter here:

GomezLettertoLeno

I don't want to rain on another librarian's parade, particularly one who is fighting the good fight, but I'm not sure how useful getting upset about this can be. I very much approve of stepping up and fighting back when people criticise - wherever possible, I believe if someone says something derogatory and misinformed about libraries, we should use the same platform they originally used, to set them straight. I've tried to this myself in the past. But comedians... Comedians joke about stuff, it's what they do. Leno has writers who write his monologue each night, and they pick something topical and have a go at it. Such is his status, it doesn't even have to be funny (in fact he delivers this particular joke pretty badly) but it's just something to say. Who cares? Much more awful things crop up in comedy all the time.

In the letter, Martín Gómez says Leno's joke added insult to injury. Well yes it did - but the injury is so significant, the insult is really here nor there. It's made a really bad situation infinitesimally worse, possibly. Admittedly there might be some 'floating voter' type potential library user out there who sees Leno and says 'you know what? Libraries ARE useless - I'm going to decide against visiting one after all!' but surely we can give people more credit than that. What might happen, though, is the story becomes (to the people who matter, ie potential users - we as librarians should have thick enough skin not care what Leno says, it's a decent enough throw-away gag the likes of which we all probably make about other struggling industries all the time) about how 'librarians got all fussy and upset - again' when they were insulted, and look, they wrote a letter. Which would be a shame.

I want to make clear I am in no way belittling the plight of libraries in California, or their staff, or their users, or the commendable efforts of librarians to stand up for themselves. But you have to pick your battles. Sense of humour failure very rarely helps anyone - it has the potential to be particularly damaging for Information Professionals because of the joyless legacy we're trying to shake off.

Despite this, I like the last paragraph very much. We should ALL do this sort of thing - we should be saying, as Gómez does, don't take our word for how good libraries are; come and visit one. As I've said a bunch of times before - we can only show people what we do and let them make up their own minds as to whether they need us. The biggest threat we face is a lack of understanding as to our value stemming from a lack of awareness as to what we're really like.

- thewikiman

two new publications

Just a short post to mention a couple of articles I've recently had published - the below is copied and pasted from the Papers & Presentations page on my website:

• The Library Routes Project An article about Library Routes, from ALISS Quarterly, Volume 5, no. 3: April 2010. It details how the project came about, the methodology and so on - the article can be downloaded here, in PDF format. This PDF is actually the whole edition of the journal, by permission from the editor - my article is at the back, the last one in there.
• Why are we still defined by our building? (the short version...) The full version can be found below [on the papers and presentations page linked above]; this is a much reduced edition, published by Impact (the Career Development Group Journal), as part of the prize for winning best paper at the 2009 New Professionals Conference. Available here in PDF format.

  (Plus...)

• The Unspeakable Truth This is a copy of the essay which was one of the winners of the LISNews Essay Contest - it's about the future of libraries, and the positive lessons about reinvention we can learn from other industries. Downloadable here as a PDF.

So if you aren't bored of hearing about the Library Routes Project, and you've sometimes wondered what the Defined by Our Building thing was all about but didn't fancy ploughing through 4000 words of the full version, this is the blog post for you!

Thank you to Woodsiegirl who went through the ALISS article with a finely judged scalpel and made it a lot better. Cheers to Chris Rhodes for getting hold of the Building PDF for me. Bobbi and Buffy, you each get brief mentions in the Library Routes article, by the way...

- thewikiman

the CILIP Manifesto is a good step forward

CILIP has launched its new Manifesto - six priorities for the next government. You can view details of it on CILIP's website, or click here to download the whole thing - it's only a 4 page PDF.

The six priorities are

1. Make school libraries statutory

2. Promote and protect the rights of users within copyright law

3. Build a successful knowledge economy

4. Preserve the UK's digital cultural heritage

5. Fund and enable the effective co-ordination of health information

6. Develop a set of library entitlements for public library users

Leaving aside the colour of the thing, I like this a lot. It is short, to the point, clearly laid out, and with basic information you can take in at a glance and more in-depth stuff too if you have time to read it. Here's a quote:

"A copy of every book published in the UK is deposited at the British Library and, by request, at other national deposit libraries.This is not so with audio-visual or digital material and much unique material has already been lost. There are eight million websites in the UK domain but, for example, no contemporary web records exist for the death of Princess Diana or the unveiling of the Angel of the North."

It makes its point well, highlights the dichotomy of the traditional perceived role of the library and the one we actually have to serve now, and gives a solid and tangible example of what failings need to be addressed.

All six priorities are important, and the chances are one or more of them is relevant to either your work or your other professional activities - for me, the whole Preserve the UK's digital cultural heritage business is fundamental to the LIFE-SHARE Project.

I like that there is are instructions and suggestions on how to use the document for lobbying and advocacy, including an email template to write to your MP, and details of how to go about contacting your local media. This is what a public and national library body should be doing - empowering its members to act, and providing the tools and the guidance to help them do so.

What I really like, though, is how widely CILIP has distributed this Manifesto. It's gone to a LOT of people, including all parliamentary candidates. (There's more than two-and-a-half thousand of them.) It has also been sent to political Party HQs, senior Information Professionals, and a press release has gone out. Much effort has been made to escape the echo chamber - this is not a Manifesto just for us to read among ourselves, but to communicate what we all say to each other to the wider country. I've thought for a while that libraries sometimes seem under-represented in popular culture - as well as all the funding cuts, the well-worn cliches, the closures etc, it doesn't always feel like we've got enough fire-power to fight back in the public domain, via the media and so on. This is the first time CILIP has sent out a message to so many people (and so many potentially important, policy-forming people at that) and I really applaud them for it.

In other CILIP related news, the Diversity Group Conference 2010 has been announced: "An Inconvenient Truth: Race, Class and Libraries". It takes place on Monday 14 June 2010 at CILIP HQ, and you can find details of the programme, prices, how to book etc on the Diversity Group's web-pages. The talks look really good, and Bonnie Greer, no less, is providing the keynote. So check it out. I have a special set of circumstances this year which means I've used up each and every iota of leave and / or conferences-not-directly-related-to-my-9-to-5-job allowance for this cycle so will have to miss this, as well as Liver and Mash, and some other good looking conferences and a couple of events I was asked to speak at, which is sad times (although all in a good cause) - so I can't go, but I wish I could. It's an important issue, race in libraries; we seem to be a very un-diverse profession. It's particularly noticeable in Leeds where I work in the UK - the population of the town has myriad ethnicities, as does the student population, but this doesn't seem that well represented in the library staff. So if anyone reading this goes to the Diversity Group conference, I'd be interested in hearing what gets said...

- thewikiman