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! 🙂

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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 🙂

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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! 🙂

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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! 🙂

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Edge 2010 Conference – all killer, no filler!

Last week I was lucky enough to attend the Edge 2010 conference at Edinburgh Castle – and what a fantastic conference it was! 🙂  The speaker list was top class and thanks to some excellent programming from the event organisers I didn’t have to miss any of the sessions.   This was such a relief because there’s nothing worse than getting all excited about the speaker list then realising that all of the big names are on at the same time.  But The Edge managed to avoid this pitfall and offered delegates an impressive list of sessions that truly were all killer and no filler!

The journey up to Edinburgh Castle was stunning and delegates were filled with a real sense of occassion before the conference even started. The conference suite was jam packed by the time I arrived and there was standing room only for Susan Benton’s keynote speech.    A wonderful sight, especially considering the audience was made up, not only of librarians but also high profile councillors, MSPs, Chief Executives etc.; all joined by a collective desire to “push the boundaries of public service delivery“.

Up first was a truly inspirational speaker – Susan Benton, President and CEO of the Urban Libraries Council (ULC).   Unfortunately, thanks to some freak snowstorms in the West of Scotland I missed the start of Susan’s keynote speech but I managed to catch her final remarks. Susan spoke passionately about the public library as a “trusted neighbour” in our communities, highlighting the vital role that they play in “bringing diverse entities together” and the need to “strengthen the public library as an essential part of urban life“.  I’ve been a huge fan of the ULC for a while now and Susan’s speech reflected some of the wonderful research they’ve carried out in recent years to communicate the value of public libraries in communities in the US.  A selection of these publications are linked to below:

Welcome, Stranger:  Public Libraries Build the Global Village

Making Cities Stronger:   Public Library Contributions to Local Economic Development

The Engaged Library:  Chicago Stories of Community Building

Following Susan’s rousing “call to arms” speech we welcomed Ewan McIntosh-digital media expert and founder of the innovative 38 Minutes project.   I’ll be discussing Ewan’s talk in a future blog post…

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Public library websites…

Darien Library in Connecticut-an example of a good public library website

One of the reasons why many public library websites look a bit dated, lack user friendliness and often feature irrelevant content is because they have to sit within the myriad constraints of the wider Council website.

I’ve spoken with lots of librarians from different authorities across the UK over the years and many of them have voiced concerns that they are unable to fulfil user needs and expectations because IT and legal departments either don’t understand what public libraries are trying to do or are just too busy juggling multiple projects from other council departments to invest time and energy into developing the public library website into something fit for 21st century users.

That’s why I’m looking forward to the publication of an article by Margaret Adolphous in the March online issue of Update. Margaret first contacted me back in July 2009 to ask my own opinions about the state of public library websites in the UK. I also met up with her for a brief chat following my presentation with Liz McGettigan at the Internet Librarian International Conference in October. Margaret has invested a lot of time and energy into investigating this topic and has sought opinions from a variety of people within the profession so I’m sure it will be a great read. Hopefully she’ll offer us all some solutions for the future! 🙂

In the meantime you might find this article, appropriately titled “How to STOP writing rubbish copy on your website”, useful if you’re currently involved in upgrading your public library website.

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Looking forward to The Edge conference in Edinburgh…

© Christine Rooney-Browne

In just over two weeks time I’ll be heading through to Edinburgh to attend The Edge 2010.

I’m really excited about this conference because I think it’s unrivalled in Scotland.   Quite often, when I attend conferences in Scotland it’s a mix of the  ‘same old faces’ talking about the ‘same old issues’, which is fine…but it’s nice to see something new and exciting on the calendar for Scotland.

Normally I have to head South or across the water to attend a conference of this scale; but this time it’s just a 50 minute train journey away!  And one of the most exciting things about this conference, in addition to it’s line-up of speakers, is that it’s looking at the public sector as a whole and the vital role that libraries can play within this sector.  With such a wide remit, the conference is appealing to a remarkably wide audience.  Liz McGettigan, Head of Edinburgh City Libraries reports that the conference will be attended by delegates from across the UK, Europe, North America and New Zealand and from fields as diverse as journalism, policy and strategy, education, leisure, universities and health.

Sounds like the perfect opportunity to communicate the value of libraries to an audience that extends well beyond those of us already working within libraries.I’m sure there will also be some unique opportunities to share ideas, network, build partnerships; and ultimately communicate our value and relevance as a public service to a non-traditional audience, thus enhancing our profile and extending our potential to make a positive impact in the 21st century.

If you’re interested in finding out more about The Edge 2010 then why not check out their blog?

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