Vote Liz McGettigan for CILIP Council 2012!

I’m very excited about the upcoming CILIP Council elections this year because I’ve been lucky enough to work with one of the candidates in the past and I just know that she is the perfect candidate for the role of CILIP Trustee.

I first met Liz McGettigan in 2006 during a student placement.  Liz welcomed me to East Renfrewshire Council with open arms – something I did not expect from a senior manager!   She was warm, friendly, open to new ideas and very vocal about the value of public libraries.  I left on that first day feeling inspired and ready to make a difference in the library world. As a new professional I couldn’t have asked for a better role model and I’m forever grateful to have had the opportunity to learn from Liz at an early stage in my career.  I have since worked with Liz on a variety of projects, including presenting at the Internet Librarian International Conference in London to share her ground breaking social media project, Tales of One City with librarians from all over the world.

If elected as a Trustee we would all benefit from Liz’s wealth of public and private sector experience, her infectious passion for library services; and her fearless dedication to the profession.  Her tireless work, both in East Renfrewshire and Edinburgh has improved public library services, making them more relevant to the needs of users in the 21st century. Not to mention her awesome networking skills and her commitment to creating a new kind of conference for library professionals (The Edge Conference), all of which have enhanced the profile of libraries on a local and  national level.

We need people like Liz fighting our corner.  She’s a kick-ass librarian and her experience, energy, passion and dedication make her an ideal candidate for CILIP Council.

Vote Liz McGettigan for CILIP Council 2012!

Libraries as regeneration tools…

Lately I’ve been hearing a lot about the essential role that public libraries are playing in the regeneration of Scotland’s communities.  An example of this is happening right now in Craigmillar
in Edinburgh where work has just begun on the development of a new neighbourhood and library centre.    Replacing a number of tired and old buildings this cutting edge facility will be a hub for the local community; housing a number of council services, partner agencies and of course a library service that’s responsive to the needs and expectations of 21st century users.  Exciting times for the residents of Craigmillar!

Take a quick peek at the 3D walkthrough of the new centre.    Impressive stuff.  Can’t wait to visit when it opens in 2013!

CILIP Umbrella Conference 2011 – link to my presentation…

On Tuesday I attended the annual CILIP Umbrella conference for the first time. I had been invited by LIRG to present the findings of my literature review on methodologies for measuring the value of public libraries. Here’s a link to my presentation and a link to the final paper; and a selection of links to interesting library valuation studies that I’ve published on Voices for the Library.

I had a great time at the conference.  Lots of networking opportunities, lively debates and friendly faces.  Hoping to return next year

Methods for demonstrating the value of public libraries…

The Library and Information Research Group (LIRG) has just published my article on methods for demonstrating the value of public libraries.  The article provides a  literature review of existing quantitative and qualitative evaluation methodologies for demonstrating value across a variety of sectors and analyses the pros and cons of:

• Auditing
• Return on Investment Studies
  

  © Christine Rooney-Browne 2011

• Social Impact Audits
• Ethnography
• Tracking Surveys
• Customer Profiling

There’s a lot of really interesting case studies in the article and I’m sure some of the methodologies could help us to develop more appropriate models for measuring our own value!

I’ll also be presenting on this topic at the annual Umbrella Conference on 12th July 2011 at the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield.    So, if you’re interested in demonstrating the value of public libraries pop along to my session at 11.45am

Measuring the value of public libraries…

I’m down in Leeds at the moment for a workshop on Measuring the Value of Public Libraries: The fallacy of footfall and issues as measures of Public Libraries. I’m really excited because I’ll be participating in a group Delphi session for the first time ever.We’ll be working on developing appropriate methods for evaluating the value and impact of public libraries. There will also be talks by Annie Mauger (CILIP), Roy Clare (MLA), Dr Adam Cooper (DCMS & CASE), Carolynn Rankin (Leeds Met).The delegate list also adds to the excitement.  Lots of interesting people participating, including Bob Usherwood! And as anyone who reads this blog knows, his research in the area of social impact & public libraries has been an inspiration to me. I can’t wait to meet him in person!

Although my own research in this area has shown that a perfect methodology for measuring the value of public libraries does not exist we’ll hopefully come up with more appropriate methods than those that are in place just now.   I’m off to work on the Individual Delphi questions before tomorrow’s session.  I’ll let you all know how it goes!

9 months later…

I’ve been on maternity leave for the past 9 months which explains the lack of activity on my blog .  I don’t return to work officially until June but now that my beautiful baby girl is a little bit older I’m getting some time to do bits and pieces of research – yeah!

Just spent the morning catching up on all the news from the library community. The most exciting of which (I think) is that Lauren Smith has been nominated as a Library Journal Mover & Shaker 2011.

Lauren’s done some amazing work over the past year, including campaigning tirelessly to Save Doncaster Libraries and working as co-ordinator and spokesperson for the excellent Voices for the Library campaign .  The future for public libraries in the UK looks brighter thanks to people like Lauren!  :)

A full list of Movers and Shakers 2011 can be found here.

Free workshop: Engagement, Impact, Value

Just read a post on Brian Kelly’s blog about a free event that UKOLN and Mimas are running in Manchester on 24th May.    Although the event is aimed primarily at those already involved in JISC-funded work it will also be of interest to those of us involved in evaluating the impact of services, improving user engagement and demonstrating value.  Unfortunately I can’t make it to the event but I’ll hopefully be able to follow the discussions via Brian’s Twitter feed on the day

For more details about the event, including learning objectives and event timetable visit the UKOLN website.

Edge 2010: Building the library of the future in Newcastle…

Newcastle City Library at night

One of the most inspiring sessions at The Edge 2010 conference came from Tony Durcan, Head of Culture, Libraries & Lifelong Learning, Newcastle Council; and Councillor John Shipley, Leader of Newcastle Council.   Tony and John talked about Newcastle’s new City Library: a 7 year PFI development project costing £24m and resulting in a fantastic new library for the people of Newcastle; a public space boasting 8,300 square metres of books, PCs, resources, advice; and a café, of course.  The new library opened in November 2009 and by the end of January 2010 reported impressive figures:

• 792.000 visitors - 35,000 new members - 396,000 items loaned

Undoubtedly Newcastle’s new library is a huge success and I think that’s partly to do with Tony Durcan’s infectious enthusiasm coupled with strong support from Cllr John Shipley.  I don’t think I’ve ever come across a Council Leader who has spoken so passionately about the value of public libraries.    He just ‘gets it!’ And following his positive and inspiring talk there were calls from the audience  to ‘clone him’

Here’s a few gems of wisdom from John’s talk (I’ve paraphrased):

• If we want to build social  inclusion in our communities we need to build libraries where people want to be
• City centres without free public spaces, like libraries, are only welcoming to those who have cash to spend
• Governments should invest in public libraries because it’s the right thing to do!
• Everyone in society can participate in the public library experience: it’s a majority service rather than a minority service
• We shouldn’t be shy about demanding extra expenditure because public libraries are cheap & lead to a more inclusive society which leads to lowered costs elsewhere on things like crime, health, education…
• We need to stop focussing on statistics because they reveal nothing about the true value of the public library
• We need to make a stronger case for our public libraries – if we can communicate value successfully then politicians will invest!

I think he’s telling us that ‘the ball’s in our court’.  And in order to secure the future of public libraries WE need to make the case for our libraries; challenge misconceptions and communicate value – in a language that those holding the purse strings can easily understand!

Librarian brews the alphabet…

Librarian Brews the Alphabet © Coll Hamilton

One of my lovely friends, Coll Hamilton, is a super talented artist and he has created this little image of me for my blog.

It is inspired by my love of tea and books.  I love it!

Thanks Coll!  You can check out more of Coll’s work on his website – there’s even some cool Doctor Who illustrations on there too

Edge 2010 – The Power of the Blog!

The second Keynote Speaker at last week’s Edge 2010 conference was Ewan McIntosh.  From the very start Ewan’s energy and passion for social media was infectious.  He spoke enthusiastically about Twitter, Facebook, Bebo and running his own blog.  He discussed the “illiterate professional class“, highlighting a couple of high profile news stories about users of social media being unaware of the reach of the platform that they were using and an inability to understand that when you post something online, it’s never truly private.   There really is no delete button – it will always exist, somewhere, out there! Worth bearing in mind if you’re considering slagging off your boss – which is pretty much what this Facebook user did last year.

© Blogging Librarian on Flickr

Ewan also talked about the power of the blog in today’s society.  It used to be that once something appeared in print it was rarely ever challenged. I think, to to a certain extent, the system in place for challenging the journalists and national newspapers was too complex and time consuming for many of us to pursue. ..not to mention that the Press Complaints Commission is a self regulating body… Today, however, it’s much easier to correct factual inaccuracies, as Ewan pointed out when he talked about his own experience of being misrepresented in the press. He used his own blog to put into context a quote used in an article published in The Herald about GLOW – “the the world’s first national intranet for education“.  In his own blog post Ewan was able to put across his own point of view, thus challenging the journalist’s interpretation of their correspondence.

This is not the first time we’ve seen social media act as a platform to correct factual inaccuracies in the press.  Ben Goldacre regularly takes to his blog to challenge sensationalism and ‘bad science’ in the press.  For example, he was one of the first bloggers to post about the suspicious nature of the bullying allegations against Gordon Brown.

There was so much food for thought in Ewan’s presentation…he also touched upon the pros and cons of the hyperlink; the importance of visual literacy when communicating; open data opportunities for Councils; Mapumental; and net neutrality.  Just sitting there I could tell that Ewan’s presentation had stimulated lots of thoughts and ideas and at the coffee break afterwards I overheard delegates talking about how they really should be upgrading their intranets and exploring social media as a serious tool for communicating with citizens.

I hope that Ewan uploads his presentation soon so that I can post a link to it as there’s lots more that I don’t have space to cover in this blog post.  All in all, an excellent keynote speech!