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!

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

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

• Auditing
• Return on Investment Studies
  

  © Christine Rooney-Browne 2011

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

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!

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.

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

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 © 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

© 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!