Library Camp – Dumpling in a Hanky

Reinventing the wheel

I noticed an advert on the TV during the summer, and while watching it, I found myself becoming increasingly more irritated by its content as it went on. Then, not long after that, I saw another advert along the same lines, for the same group. I was reminded of my reaction to viewing those adverts last weekend, when I attended Library Camp Glasgow. One of the sessions I took part in covered advocacy, and what can we do to better promote the profession. The existence of these adverts is evidence of, to me, why we need to continue to work hard to show the wider public that “librarian” does not (and never has) equal “timid person who stamps books and says shhhh a lot”.

So, this is one of the adverts that so annoyed me, for Barclays Digital Eagles:

https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/7hG6c_mz6JQ&source=uds

Now, I’m not disputing the fact that the concept is great: Barclays are funding people specifically to assist those who don’t have the skills needed to make full use of the internet, and the many opportunities it offers. This is an excellent thing to be doing, and will certainly help those that most need support to get online. It’s fabulous, and a great thing for Barclays to fund!

But this is where I get frustrated with the initiative. Did nobody at Barclays realise that an infrastructure to support these activities, and experienced staff were already available…in public libraries? Is there such a low awareness of what public libraries offer that not one single person involved in this campaign at any point stopped to think “Hey, you know what? Rather than reinventing the wheel…why don’t we provide the funding to public libraries to allow them to have a dedicated information skills member of staff to be a Digital Eagle? We’d still get the excellent PR of our name being associated with something that’s being done for the good of others, but we wouldn’t have the problems of creating a whole new system, and having to make space in our branches for this initiative.”

Nope. This idea didn’t occur to anyone, apparently.

I can understand that there’s probably an element of a corporate desire to get people into the Barclays branches, in order to eventually persuade them to become Barclays customers, but surely the conversion rate of “came in to be shown how to use a computer” to “being suddenly inspired to switch bank accounts” must be so low that the cost of the areas being used for Digital Eagles activities must far outweigh the commercial benefit?

The coverage and reach of this service certainly isn’t anywhere near as good as the public library service – if I wanted to go to one of their “Tea and Teach” sessions, I’d need to go to…Aberdeen. That’s the only place in Scotland that provides this service. There was an event there on the 6th of November, held between 10am and 3pm, which as a working adult, means that the Digital Eagles service and support is totally unavailable to me. Yet if I wanted to pick up computer skills via a public library, I could go to Edinburgh City Libraries, and use their Adult Learner facilities, which include an online computer skills programme. Library staff would be on hand during evenings and the weekend to assist me to get access to these resources, so I could fit in access around my working life. Unfortunately, the public library staff available to help me don’t have the time or resources to give the more intensive support I’d need as a person with minimal or no computer skills. Surely this is where the Digital Eagles should be: where people are already going, looking for help? The public library is where the public are used to coming for assistance with a wide range of information needs, and although library staff are not there to teach information skills, they nonetheless do end up squeezing them into their days, as an unpaid, unofficial additional responsibility. It would have been far more effective, in both cost and PR terms, to have given the funding used for the Digital Eagles programme to local authorities, ring fenced to be used to fund equivalent roles, in public libraries.

So Barclays: your Digital Eagles are a good idea, but wouldn’t they be an even better idea if they were in libraries?

Thing 15 – oh lordy, I’m behind

Oh, Thing 14 was the last thing I did, back in August! Life and busyness in work got in the way, but I’m aiming for a full-on assault of lots of Things now, while I have a moment!

Ok, so this was about attending, presenting at, and organising events. Now – two of those activities I’m perfectly happy with, and one puts the fear of God into me.

Attending events
I love doing this: I get to meet lots of interesting people, learn new things, and generally go away from them having gained lots of useful tips or contacts. The only problems for me attending events are:

Time
Time out of work to attend events is time that I’m not available to deal with enquiries, or do my day-to-day tasks, so it’s got to be something relevant enough to my duties that being away from them will be recompensed by better skills to do those duties afterwards.

Distance
Often the most relevant courses and seminars for me are nowhere near me, usually in London. Attending a course in London would involve me getting a 3.5/4 hour train each way, and usually need an overnight stay the night before, to get me there for a 9am start. That’s not cheap – at least £100 for the train usually, and approx £60 for a room, even before the cost of the training. Which brings me on to the third problem…

Money
I don’t know about you lot, but my workplace isn’t in the habit of throwing money at me to allow me to attend any random event I feel like (as interesting as lots of them may look). I need to be able to justify the business relevance and cost-effectiveness of the events I wish to attend, and quite often, it’s just not worth it as the event is only marginally work related.

So, what I do is…keep an eye out in various places for all sorts of free events, and evening events, which have an interest for me, either law, or library, or technology related. The Society for Computers and Law do some seminars, The Royal Society of Edinburgh too, Mashlibs pop up here and there, and mailing lists and Twitter feeds publicise events, and archives and other libraries often offer tours. I may end up attending some random stuff, but it’s all free! And local!

Organising events
Through my involvement in the Scottish Law Librarians Group, I regularly help out with co-organising formal and informal events, or even organising an entire event myself, in order to get the sort of events and training the group members need, without having to go to London to get it. I’m currently taking bookings for the most complex thing I’ve run yet: an all-day event with a Big Important Person (who, through the power of inane emails, I have managed to get to deteriorate into taking about jelly babies with scarves), with catering (and all sorts of non-meat/non-wheat/non-nuts options), and so far, I think I’m coping quite well with it.

It does involve lots of elements – defining the requirements for the event for the trainer, finding potential venues, getting estimates from them, working out the best value, booking the best venue, setting pricing, publicising the event, taking bookings, noting special requirements, liaising with the trainer…

And I live in constant fear, when things are going smoothly, that they’re only going smoothly because I’ve missed out some Very Important Element by mistake, and everything will collapse at any second. Thankfully, so far, that’s not been true, but you never know…

And now…the horrible one…

Presenting at events
No. Nonononononono. I hate it! HATE IT! Even the thought of standing up in front of people and speaking makes me feel sick. I am a bit shaky and have a racing heart when I do have to do this – as Convenor of my professional group I must speak at the AGM to give the report on the groups activities for the year, which I just about manage to do without doing it at a full gallop – I sometimes even stop for breath, or to take votes. Lets just say our AGMs can be very quick, when I’m speaking at them!
I also introduce the trainer at any events I’ve organised, or our annual festive networking meeting, which is slightly less traumatic as it’s often a smaller group than the AGM, but can still get me in a minor panic.

I have always had a phobia of speaking in front of groups (because I hated doing this, in secondary school, my genius English teacher forced me to go and stand up in front of the class and make (thankfully unanswered) phone calls with everyone listening, to his wife and the school office, thus not only reinforcing my phobia of speaking in front of groups, but also giving me a new one about using the phone when anyone can hear me. Great.), and I just don’t think it’s worth me putting myself through the stress and terror of having to do any sort of presentation, especially when I don’t have anything to present about, so this is one activity I’m scoring off my list, for good!

What do I get from these activities?
Well, I get either (depending on whether I’m attending, organising or presenting), fun interactions with interesting people, a headful of details and a lurking feeling of not doing things right, or a huge dose of extreme stress and mild terror.

I think that I get most out of attending an event – it’s the easy option. I turn up, I enjoy, I go home (and write a blog post or newsletter article about it). The organising is far harder, goes on for much longer, and has so many more elements to tie up. It is however, the most beneficial, both for my professional group, and for me too. Yes, it can be hard, but it’s quite an achievement to pull it off, and satisfying when an event goes well and people go away happy and feeling that their time was well spent.

What more could there be?
What I do keep coming back to is the thought that it’s difficult to find an affordable event that people from different library sectors can go to here in Scotland. I’m going to Library Camp in Birmingham because it’ll allow me to meet and speak to a lot of people I know online, but who work in different library sectors and who I therefore would not be able to meet in a professional capacity or event, because we simply wouldn’t be at the same events. And it’s at the weekend, so there’s no need to justify my attendance to work. It’s free to attend, but I’m paying the travel and accommodation costs myself, so no need to ask for funding fromt he training budget.

At the back of my mind is the thought that perhaps people would want to come to a Scottish Library Camp event, perhaps pay a nominal fee per person in order to enable a venue hire, and just have a day of mingling and informal presentations from other library professionals across all fields, along the same lines as the Birmingham Library Camp.

What I think it would really need is an academic venue to host it at, as they’re usually large, easy to get to, and not extortionate to hire, but I don’t know the right people to look into that. Maybe someone else would like to create a Haggis Camp? Or help me to do it?

"This one time, at Library Camp…."

So yesterday, I was browsing Twitter at lunchtime, and Jo Bo Anderson posted that she was going to something called Library Camp in Birmingham in October, and wondered who else was interested in attending.

The actual content of the day so far is totally vague and woolly, but that also means that no-one is excluded by it being too sector-specific, and I started seeing lots of people I’d love to get to meet in real life post on Twitter that they were signing up to attend. There’s no way with most of these people that our paths would ever cross at professional events otherwise, so this seemed like a great chance to get together with a wide range of information professionals from across the country. And it was free! And on a weekend, so there were no clashes with work! And in not-London, so therefore travel and accommodation were reasonably affordable! And there was to be CAKE!

So, in the course of an hour I had signed myself up to attend, booked train tickets, found myself a roomie for the hotel room I booked, reassured my partner that I wouldn’t be killed by any of the random people from the internet I’d be meeting, and suggested my boss attend too.

And, amazingly, in less than 24 hours, the whole event has sold out!

The official hash tag is #libcampuk11, if you want to follow discussions about it on Twitter.

Really, I think that one of the major selling points (apart from the chance to network with people across the whole of the profession) was the promise of cake. And as is well known, librarians and cake are a very happy partnership.
To add to the sugar rushes, I’ll bring homemade tablet too, if there’s space in my stuff.

Also…there will be no flutes.