I was a newbie to the library mashup scene, and took in a lot of information yesterday at Middlemash, hosted by Damyanti Patel and her colleagues at Birmingham City University. It was every bit the friendly and stimulating event that I’d expected to be, but by the time I, along with an impressive number of co-malingerers, got to the Barton Arms at the end of the day, I was able to pinpoint what had made me mildly uncomfortable at intermittent points of the day.

The discomfort had nothing to do with either the organisers or the participants, or indeed with the concept of mashing itself. The problem is that the same forward-thinking librarians who celebrate the advent of electronic resources and innovative technologies for discovering them, are the same people who, in a mashing context, are forced back into the world of print. And this has to be about ownership of data. Bibliographic data is much more “ours” than electronic resource metadata, that has traditionally been proprietary, locked away in abstract and index databases, available only in academic institutions and certainly not mashable by a bunch of librarians with a strange predilection for creating more exciting experiences of scholarly information.

Mashing the reading list

Like many people at the event, Edith Speller from Trinity College of Music was concerned about her institution’s reading lists. She felt that they were getting too static, and out of date, and, like many Talis Aspire customers, wanted to raise awareness of all those expensive subscriptions to e-resources among academics who would then be more likely to include them on resource lists. However, the solutions arrived at seem to be very book-specific, involving the following:

• Using the ISBN of a book on a resource list to look up recommendations (along the lines of “people who bought that also bought this”) using Amazon Web Services.
• Using the Mosaic API to:

• Perform an ISBN look-up to find the courses associated with the people who have borrowed that book.
• Use course codes to look up what other books were borrowed by people on those courses.

Paul Stainthorp at University of Lincoln is using RefWorks to create embeddable lists of new titles and communicate them to users, by sharing folders within RefWorks publicy and creating RSS fees on that folder. He’s also used Yahoo! Pipes (the mashup panacea du jour) to pull in the book cover image and description from Amazon. Because their academics prefer notifications by email, as opposed to running their own RSS feed, an email now comes in when a new book arrives in their subject area.

No doubt academics are availing themselves of current awareness services provided by publishers to find out about new e-journal articles, but it comes back to the disintermediation of the library from e-resource metadata. Owen Stephens from Open University reflected in the pub afterwards on the decisive break that occurred with the electronic journal, when the library no longer owned the item, but merely licensed it. Tony Hirst concurred that the library world had never challenged the proprietary nature of abstracts and indexes.

Mashing the library floor plan

Owen ran a workshop in the afternoon to develop his idea for mashing library floor plans with Google Maps. We used the University of Sheffield library floorplan as a working example, and it was fascinating to hear about how Open Layer (an Open Source mapping tool) works. Apparently maps are divided into tiles of 256 by 256 pixels, and then some javascript asks for each tile as needed as the user navigates around the map. And as the user zooms in, the map simply moves to a more detailed set of tiles. The exercise of converting a floorplan into a zoomable map forces the library to consider how granular and practicable their floorplans – is there enough detail to establish on which shelf a book is located? Maintenance is also an issue and Owen suggested augmenting the shelving workflow, so at the end of shelving, the librarian records the start and end classmark of the shelf. We also considered separate scenarios where the user wants a particular book, on the one hand, or books on a subject area on the other.

University of Sheffield plans to use heat maps to analyse how users are navigating the library. With the Ranganathan maxim in mind (positioning the stock to minimise the need for users to move around the library) they would then be able to optimise the library layout.

Sure it’s funky, but I just want to renew my books

Earlier in the day, Mark Van Harmelen from Hedtek Ltd. based at the University of Manchester, urged us all to listen more to the student voice, through focus groups and other mechanisms. I know that Owen Stephens and many other Middlemash attendees are making every effort to engage with students in the idea and design stage right now. It will be interesting to see whether we’re expending too much energy on over-sophisticated solutions for the dying format of print. As Chris Keene from University of Sussex stated, the response of students to tag clouds and other features at the discovery layer is, “Sure it’s funky, but I just want to renew my books.”

Personally, I’d love to see more focus on work-level data. The published works of an author or indeed a subject area plotted against an appropriate timeline could be tremendously useful – the works of Dickens plotted against key social legislation of the 19th century springs to mind. But the approach would come into its own with non-fiction, where there is a more direct relationship between published literature and real world events. That would really add scholarly value to bibliographic data, and would enable us to break out of transactions such as reservations that are rooted in the past not the future of scholarly life.

When recording my previous Talking with Talis podcast with OCLC’s Karen Calhoun, in a hotel lobby over the road from the British Library in London, we suffered a technology failure loosing the last third of our conversation.

Karen kindly agreed to spend some time in a follow up conversation so that listeners could get to hear her thoughts on a couple of further questions I asked, including one about the future for library metadata formats. 

In addition I also gained the opportunity to ask her reflect upon the presentation she gave on that day.  The slides for which are available to view from the OCLC site.  The other benefit being that we were not competing with the music, staff, and hotel guests during the recording.

Having read some documentation recently around the plans of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France (BNF) for what they call a “pivot” – a mechanism based on semantic technologies for optimising the value of the BNF’s entire web presence, including Gallica, its digital library, it was great to have the opportunity to hear Dominique Stutzmann from the BNF speak at the recent Eurolis Seminar in London.

The future of the library (Doom or Bloom?) was what the day event was all about, and according to Stutzmann, we’ve already invented it. We’ve got the nice buildings, and so ostensibly the library of the future will be the same as that of today. If the library space vanishes, he argued, it will only be the result of a self-fulfilling prophecy because librarians aren’t confident about what they’re doing. I think he’s really onto something – there is indeed an element of subjective crisis in the problem of the future of libraries. He admitted, though, that Web 2.0 re-presents the user-librarian relationship in quite a fundamental way; the user becomes both publisher and librarian. But users don’t want librarians to disappear. He seems to be saying that our library spaces continue to be successful, so leave them alone but engage with some interesting technological stuff as well, because libraries are well-positioned to do so. He added that users trust libraries with everything including long-term preservation of data, and BNF is clearly poised to exploit that trust, but not for its own ends, but for everyone, in the great universal tradition of libraries.

Stutzmann perceives the potential of semantic technologies very clearly in terms of the user experience – giving everyone improved and accurate access to the information available, and had an impressive array of exemplars to reel off, citing Google Book Search’s use of data mining tools taking city name from search results and pinpointing them on a map, and Bibliosurf’s map of novels as examples. Along similar lines, he demonstrated an interactive map with mashed up data from last-fm to produce a map of composers, where proximity indicates artistic commonality rather than geographical proximity – for example Beethoven is situated alongside Vaughan Williams.

As a Modern Languages graduate, I loved hearing about semantic search developments at the European Library and specifically in their TELplus project, where multilingual search (i.e. a search query with terms from more than one language) has been achieved. Stutzmann was clear that authority data is indivisible from semantic web developments, and that is where the librarian tradition really comes into its own; he demonstrated search results with LCSH headings as a facet on the side-panel. He pleaded with librarians to use metadata to give more accurate access to data.

The only downbeat element to his presentation was a survey carried out at BNF in 2008 to get a clearer picture of their users. A key finding was that the average user of the digital library 48, although there is an overall age range of 14-94. Europeana suffers from the same problem. Funnily enough, when I was out on Saturday night, a friend was saying how almost all the people who queued up recently in Birmingham to see the Anglo-Saxon treasures recently discovered in the West Midlands were white people aged 50+. Stutzmann pondered whether there was anything that could be done about it – does it come down to lifestyle fundamentals?

In the same survey, there was a fascinating finding about Library 2.0. Many users questioned felt that library sites should not be spoilt by the comments of user. They are happier to share their information and collaborate with the librarian than with other users. Obviously this goes against received Library 2.0 thinking, and left me wondering, is that a specifically “French thing”, or do UK users have more in common with their European counterparts than we think?

Aiming high is rarely the wrong thing to do, in my opinion, and Jonathan Purday’s presentation, at the Eurolis Seminar Doom or Boom of Europeana, a digital library offering a single, direct and multilingual interface to cross-domain European cultural artefacts certainly wasn’t short of lofty aims. Europeana isn’t just about making library resources available, it’s about breaking down the cultural institution-based silos right across the European cultural sector, and in the process it has created an exciting online resource for the public, researchers and teachers and learners in education.

It’s easy for British people to forget the risk that the Google Book Project will overshadow non-English artefacts in Europe, and this has been an important concern since at least 2005, when the European Commission launched its Digital Libraries initiative. Initiatives such as Europeana are, in Purday’s words “making available the intellectual record of other languages”. And it will also “harmonise digitisation practices across Europe”. All good stuff.

It was also great that Purday acknowledged that every search now begins with Google, and that if you don’t find material, you think it hasn’t been digitised or it doesn’t exist. I and a number of delegates were left wondering at the end of the session, though, whether the full text of content in Europeana will be exposed to Google, and if Purday could come back on that point, that would be useful.

It’s worth mentioning that every single speaker at the Eurolis seminar mentioned the need to consider copyright harmonisation and Purday was no exception, but he probably deployed the most powerful arguments to support this. We can’t digitise at the scale now technologically possible, he argued, unless we reconsider and harmonise copyright, he said, and that the risk was of creating a “20th century black hole”, whereby we will be unable to represent the published output of “the most documented century” and we will end up with a distorted picture of the past as a result.

I would urge people to take a look at Europeana. The search interface is available in 26 languages, and in the next 2 years they plan to be able to translate search terms on the fly (currently only the interface is translated). Purday demonstrated a search on Don Quixote, which not only came up with an impressive range of book editions, but also images inspired by the work, plus videos, including a 1956 news broadcast in which Salvador Dali recreates a vision of Don Quixote at Moulin de la Galette. Europeana holds metadata in the central index and takes the user back to the original site to look at the full artefact, so decentralised and collaborative in a sustainable way.

Europeana is currently attracting 15,000 users a day. Purday is concerned, though, that most people interested in the site are over the age of 45. He plans to address this by creating an API so users can put Europeana into their own web space, although in discussions afterwards, people wondered whether such a measure would succeed in engaging younger people.

At the PLA 2009 conference last week, Bob McKee, Chief Executive of CILIP, proudly presented a new set of guidelines as to what makes a good library service. In comparison to the traditional bulky, text heavy and complex use of language presented in traditional library guidelines, this A5 pamphlet could easily be overlooked as an advert or flyer rather than library guidelines. However, this is not to be perceived as a bad thing. The concise manner in which it is presented leaves no room for hot air and leaves it do exactly what it says on the tin: guide.

The guidelines urge the library service to be:

“Continually refreshed and improved to respond to the adapting needs of local communities”

And

“Library buildings, equipment and ICT facilities should be well-designed and kept up-to-date.”

The ten questions to ‘test’ whether your library service is up to standard, highlight many benchmarks which could only ensure a good service is being achieved. The one which caught my eye in particular, was point four.

“Does your library service provide what local people expect in terms of location, accessibility, materials, resources, staffing and activities?”

There is not a ‘one size fits all’ solution to turning around the current perception of the library service; each should not be a clone of another. Whilst sharing best practise has a valuable role to play, we must engage with those around us ensure the local library service is engaging, and as odd as it may seem, local.

Download the guidelines here.

Last week, the All-Party Parliamentary Group launched their new report: an inquiry into the governance and leadership of the public library service in England. On the basis of the progression we have seen with the DCMS modernisation review, I had little expectation of this report providing any real insight or vision. As I worked my way through the report, I found myself scribbling and highlighting away, only to find the very thought I had just noted to be clarified in the upcoming paragraph. So I was pleasantly surprised to say the least, as I found the report to consider more perspectives than I anticipated.

It would have been too easy for the scope of the report to be wide and vague, which no doubt would have provided a foggy vision if any. So it was good to see that the focus of this report is specifically on the effectiveness of arrangements for the governance and leadership of public library services. The six lines of enquiry were very appropriate in light of the current situation. They were:

1)      What are the strengths and weaknesses of the present system for the governance and leadership of the public library service in England?

2)      Should local communities have a greater say in decisions about the public library service?

3)      Should central government do more to superintend the public library service?

4)      Are local authorities the best agency to provide library services?

5)      What are the governance and leadership roles of the Advisory Council on Libraries (ACL), the Museums, Libraries and Archives (MLA) and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)?

6)      What changes (if any) are required to improve and strengthen governance and leadership?

Perhaps a closer look into the role of technology and innovation may have been a potential area for inquiry, though this may be something which stems from point six. As the report began to take a closer look at the strengths and weaknesses of the public library service, they acknowledged that:

“The submissions presented a bleak national picture with more weaknesses than strengths being identified.”

Amongst some of the more legitimate and agreeable points raised, there were a few points which led me to frown as I read. For example, the group believes the library service is diverse and innovative, listing it as one of its strengths. But is this really the case? Would this report really be necessary if they were? A couple of contradictions arose too, for example, listing staff to be helpful and experts at one point and then ill equipped and unhelpful at another.

In summary, the key recommendations were to develop one lead voice for libraries through the establishment of a single Library Development Agency for England (LDAE). A reassuring recognition, as a vision leading the library service could not be any more crucial than it is today. The current role and purpose of the many national agencies has brought confusion to the service, lacking a prominent player leading the way. The report rightly recognises the library sector has lost its way, and is sadly regarded to be of low value by decision makers.

Whist the LDAE is in the making (I assume answers around who, when and how are yet to come) we can expect a mid-term communications strategy and training and development programmes for public library personnel to improve management and leadership skills, from the MLA. Interesting, as the report recognised the MLA’s poor record with libraries in the past, and some contributors felt regret around the recent changes to its regional structures. The formation of LDAE would result in revision to the role, function and allocated funding of the MLA, making them a surprising/uncertain candidate to lead the way on the mid-term plans.

Overall, I was pleased to see the group recognise dramatic action is required and quickly. Yet it could be argued that recognising the problem is the easy part, finding and implementing the solution is the real challenge.

Image copyright of APPG. Publisher, CILIP.

Full report available to download from CILIP.

Day 3 and it’s the final day of the Public Library Association conference 2009. I had low expectations for the day, as I misread the conference programme to believe the day would be dwindling to an end. Yet as the first session began, I was quickly proven wrong.

I assumed the ‘Libraries opening doors to health’ session would be bland and irrelevant, so was attending a little half heartedly. But as Bob Gann, Head of Strategy and Engagement for NHS Choices programme began the session, he had me engaged straight away. The NHS Choices web site allows patients to review their own health services, and has been (informally) described as the “NHS Trip Advisor”. Aside from the direct work the programme does with libraries such as bibliotherapy and community information centres, it was clear the programme and the strategies used to execute it could be mirrored in libraries. For example, he crucially recognised the importance of syndication. Though the site gets lots of hits (attracting over 7 million visits a month), he acknowledged early on that people are less likely to visit a government website out of all the websites they could choose from, so by syndicating NHS information to over 100 different channels, such as YouTube to showcase videos and Boots to support their existing health information etc. they were able to reach a wider range audiences. An enjoyable presentation which I dare to describe as insightful, and hopefully something which librarians recognised as something they could emulate to achieve such similar successes.

The second presentation was from Senior Library Managers at the Nelson Mandela Bay Library Service and Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan University and it began with a 15 minute thank you to the conference organisers. This is all very well, but I would’ve much rather preferred that that time was spent talking us through the projects. Just as I began losing my patience, some interesting aims began appearing on the screen. The NMBM aims to meet the information needs of those less privileged social groups, recognising that university and public libraries are building blocks of local information and knowledge infrastructure. Key projects were showcased during the session, including a reading project working with the youth of South Africa and New Zealand. The project encouraged participants to become avid readers – a unique fact in itself, as resources are not easily accessible in South Africa. Another project to develop partnerships to improve service delivery, increase the flow of information was adopted as it was believed to be the way forward. By the end of the session I was left thinking, if a library in South Africa can achieve so much with so little and really make a difference to their community, why can’t we?

Following a well deserved break, John Fisher, CEO of Citizens online began his session. He believes the focus should not be about getting everyone a computer, but ensuring everyone benefits from the use of a one. Conscious of his semi-graveyard slot, John began some quick interactive surveys to demonstrate the scale of the population who don’t use technology. Apparently, 15-16 million people (one quarter of the of the UK’s population) doesn’t use technology. And a further third of those are totally disconnected, and see no benefit in using it at all. He went on to explain the Everybody Online project, where a digital champion has been recruited, Martha Lane Fox, the Co-founder of Lastminute.com to launch a strategy to improve these statistics. The project aims to optimise social media tools to engage with communities by allowing them to choose their own information, and encouraging them to share and build online communities. It was a nice change to see a speaker actually speak and not read from a card or slides; in fact John’s entire presentation had no slides, resulting in a highly engaged audience.

Following the last few sessions, I began concluding my thoughts of the three days and of my first PLA conference. Though officially the themes were centred on community engagement, in hindsight, I felt it was something quite different. Reading between the lines, I felt the main focus of the delegates wasn’t around engaging with their communities at all, but more about justifying their existence. Cases like Wirral and more recently, the proposals of library closures in Aberdeenshire, has left librarians constantly thinking about how they can build their portfolio of ammunition, should their service come under the firing line some time soon. And if recent goings on are anything to go by, it’s almost certain that they will have to in the coming years. Each speaker seemed aware of this too. Though not literally, each was providing ideas and models to do so, with the term ‘outcome based accountability’ sneaking in quite frequently.

Throughout the conference I was keen to speak to as many people as possible and gauge their opinion on the sessions as they happened. It was interesting to see the two distinct interpretations of the presentations that emerged. Throughout the conference, many librarians felt many of the speakers weren’t as insightful as they’d hoped, lacking an understanding of the real issues. Whereas particular Councillors and Senior Executives were nodding enthusiastically when informally discussing over lunch that the declining library usage would rightly justify library closures. There appears to be a distinct difference in vision for the future of libraries between librarians and those elsewhere, begging the question, do we need to engage internally before externally? Should my assumption be correct, librarians have no option but to fail if half of the team has already given up…

Today, my day didn’t begin in the most ideal way. As I’m staying in a hotel a few minutes away from the conference, a complementary shuttle bus has kindly been provided to escort delegates back and forth. This morning, a combination of a late dash for breakfast and the shuttle bus being reliably late, led me to be a little more flustered than usual, only just managing to make the start of the conference. However, I didn’t let this dampen my outlook for the day as, of course, today was the day the DCMS publish their long awaited Modernisation Review; at least it was supposed to be. But more on that later.

Andrew Cozens, Strategic Advisor at the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) kicked off the day with his interactive workshop, introducing the approach – outcomes based accountability. He explains that currently there are too many terms defining performance measures, and not enough discipline in using them. By using three key particular definitions, ‘outcomes’, ‘indicators’ and ‘performance measures’, a real outcomes based accountability approach can be achieved. The term outcome would be used only to describe the high level goal, for example, ‘improve the well being of children and adults’. The term indicator would then go a step further, by highlighting the measure which helps to quantify the achievement of an outcome, and finally performance measure would then measure how well the programme is performing. Overall, this was an interesting session which challenged delegates to re-think their current thought processes, as all too often, it’s easy to focus on the measuring performance elements and lose sight of whether the outcome is improving.

Then the session many were waiting for began, as the Rt. Hon Margaret Hodge, Minister for Culture and Tourism took to the stage. She began by acknowledging that public libraries are very precious, but from time-to-time, we must question whether things could be done differently to ensure a comprehensive and efficient service fit for purpose in the 21^st century is being delivered. She then went to on to provide some ‘interesting’ statistics which appeared to paint a sad and downward spiralling trend in library usage. However, these statistics were later questioned, to which Margaret was only able to respond “I don’t know where they [the statistics] came from, they are just given to me”.

She believes engaging with young people requires radical innovation, as they require something new and something stimulating. Her acknowledgment of the technological revolution being at the heart of future of libraries hinted at what the (once again delayed) Modernisation Review would focus on, looking to models such as LoveFilm and Amazon. Some ‘innovate’ suggestions for libraries included a loyalty card that rewards every ten book loans with a free DVD hire and a library card for every new born baby, bringing frustration to many delegates sitting at my table, as they squealed “We’ve done that for years”. They felt such suggestions demonstrated Margaret’s lack of understanding of the library profession and felt patronised. However other ideas to provide an internet lending service to have books delivered to your home; selling books as well as lending in conjunction with companies like Amazon, led to more positive reactions.

The Modernisation Review itself is to be published in a much faster paced climate than previously published reports, she explained, and therefore, the DCMS do not intend for it to be the last word in the conversation. Margaret would like the time to input her thoughts on the paper before release, and publish as a consultation document. The cynic may read this as a lack of ideas or direction on the DCMS’ part, yet others may believe wider consultation is a genuine attempt to engage with those experienced in the field. In her closing statements, she encouraged librarians to get in touch, as she would like to produce a comprehensive and controversial report. She promised that the Government remains committed to strong and modern public library services and will continue to value and champion them.

The third session was lead by Liz Forgan, the Chair of the Arts Council, highlighting the importance of reading. From the conference programme, I got the impression that this would be a bad case of preaching to the converted, however, I was proved wrong. She explained, for a library to support reading is instinctive, but today, everything must be evidence based, therefore the difference that reading makes must be highlighted. “Libraries are central to reading, and reading is your jewel” she explained.  Miranda McKearney, Director of the Reading Agency explained how they can work closer with libraries to do this. Firstly, national reading programmes can be worked harder. Secondly, stronger partnerships can be established with publishers, broadcasters and media to publicise reading further. By setting up a digital taskforce to take up reading developments online can help showcase achievements as well as build stronger networks. Thirdly, a 21^st century library workforce created via strategic training could also contribute significantly to wider reading. And finally new thinking would be essential to develop clear messages and creative new projects. The session finished on thoughts of cross authority reading strategies, where a show of hands indicated a mere two local authorities were actively adopting them. A second show of hands highlighted how many would like to adopt such strategies in their libraries and this time there were significantly more than just two.

For the afternoon session, we were given the opportunity to visit local libraries providing unique and innovative services. I chose to visit the Hartcliffe Library and the Knowle West Media Centre in the South of Bristol. The Hartcliffe Library was built in 1974 in what was once a vibrant part of the area. Following the closure of a nearby factories and banks, the library began to suffer. It wasn’t until the adjacent Morrisons supermarket was built that the area became revitalised and the close nit community was reformed. In 2003 the refurbishment of the library began, in which the local community remained faithful to the service, bringing flasks of hot drinks through times of power cuts. With strong support from youth in what is described to be a ‘challenging area’ the library acts as a social environment engaging with all, simply by opening up.

The Knowle West Media Centre is a stunning building; the walls of which are made of straw bales and a rubber roof which harvests rain water. As we were shown around the building, we were told about the activities that take place within the centre including photography, music and film maker projects. But what was really interesting was how the local youth had been engaged in the development of the building. And we’re not just talking minor consultation. Real decisions such as choosing designers, architects and creating the design brief were all done in close conjunction with the local youth. This way, not only is the passion ignited within the youth straight away, but they are presented with a building that they are a part of and something which is made to their requirements. The Media Centre staff believe they learn just as much from those who use the centre as they do from them. They believe the jobs of the future require a solid understanding of digital skills and therefore the centre has a massive role to play.

Today I have enjoyed speaking to delegates from all sorts of backgrounds and the coach trip around Bristol. Though my highlight has to be Margaret Hodge’s presentation, simply because of the debate she stimulated. Tomorrow promises more interesting sessions as the conference draws to an end. Watch out for PLA Day 3 tomorrow…

Images published by _satunine and ourcreativetalent on Flickr

I confess: I am a PLA virgin. My expectations for the next three days had been built up of a combination of colleagues’ experiences, event reviews and a bit of imagination. However, on my journey into Bristol this morning, I decided I would put those expectations aside and approach PLA 2009 with an open mind.

It became clear quite early in the conference that the themes for this year were three fold: community engagement, governance of the library service and public library buildings – all quite timely with the imminent release of the DCMS review, the announcement of the public library buildings awards and the Wirral Libraries u-turn.

After being warmly welcomed by those who were “truly delighted” with this year’s conference programme, the first session was kicked off by Jayne Hathaway, the Director of 2QAB Community Interest Company around engaging with local people. Jayne began her presentation stating she knew very little about libraries, which became evident with the declaration “I no longer use libraries as I am now fortunate enough to purchase books” which needless to say, sparked stunned looks around me. Is Jayne suggesting (in her opening few words) that libraries are only for those who can’t afford books/computers/access to the Internet? Her attempt to get the audience on side went down as noticeably patronising.

But fortunately, Jayne did raise some interesting thoughts: local people have the right to be engaged in local service planning and the delivery of it. But do they always know what is going on to be able to get involved? She went on to explain how excluding the local community in such planning could risk wasting the resources of an already under-funded service, and how local people are barely aware of their own rights and responsibilities. This is something that must change, Jayne explains, people must be more active in the community, aware of their power and be confident enough to use it and ultimately, become economically, socially and politically fulfilled. But how? Jayne believes the answer lies in allowing the community to choose what they want, and empower (a word Jayne was reluctant to use) communities. She then introduced a local person who thoroughly entertained us with his powerful story of how he overcame his alcohol addiction and then sang African chants (although great entertainment, I wasn’t entirely clear how it related to 2QAB’s work, or in fact public libraries at all).

The second session introduced us to the Public Library Building Awards, the winner of which will be announced at tonight’s dinner. Norma McDermott, co-Chair of the awards took us through the trends they were seeing throughout the nominated libraries, as it became clear the ‘feel’ of libraries was changing. In summary, a large majority were incorporating minimal designs, vibrant yet airy colour schemes and more interactive spaces. User experience was a higher priority, as well as working with other local services such as health centres and gyms. Later in the day, the shortlisted libraries were showcased via video.  Newcastle City Library certainly is the most impressive, and the most likely to win on wow factor alone. However, my vote went to Ramsgate Library (Kent County Council) largely because of its traditional exterior appearance and contemporary, yet welcoming feel inside. I felt many of the libraries adopted the ‘clean’ and ‘minimal’ look to the extreme where (on video) they appeared to be cold and uncomfortable, but overall some great libraries achieving some impressive transformations.

The presentation from Julie Finch of the Museum of Bristol was extremely rushed, and presented in an incredibly monotone manner, with very little engagement with the audience. Disappointing, as so much could have been explored. For instance, Julie could have explored how the library could mirror the success experienced by museums in their transformation of their public perception or how museums can look to the library community to influence their stock selections and strategies to engage with communities. Overall, it came across as a presentation which had been previously delivered elsewhere and no attempt to cater the content to this audience had been made.

Following conversations with other delegates, the next session from John Hicks of Kentwood Associates got mixed reviews. Whilst many thought this was the best session of the morning, others thought it required more substance and avoided real practical issues that appeared to have been completely over looked. John proposed four types of alternative governance for libraries. Firstly, community governance. Local people running their local services would bring benefits of knowledge and dedication; however it would compromise direction, focus and deciding who exactly runs the library would be tricky as personal agendas may interfere. Secondly, partnerships. Working with wider council services bring obvious cost advantages and bring in wider experiences, however control is compromised and contractual relationships are introduced. In the next year or two, John envisages one or two additional shared services appearing (as a minimum). Thirdly, trusts. Wigan is the longest surviving trust; established in 2003, and Glasgow is the largest, who may well provide the model for others to follow in the future. Trusts bring tax advantages, but can be expensive to set up. Finally, the private sector. We are starting to see private sector organisations such as JLIS, Tribal and LSSI making more of an appearance in private sector governance of libraries. In the future, John believes libraries will need to get used to writing service specifications to measure performance effectively, managing libraries through contractual agreements, strategic commissioning and more partnership working.

For the first afternoon session, I decided to attend the presentation by Elizabeth Elford, the Public Libraries Advocacy Manager at the British Library, which focused on marketing the public library. She explained by maintaining a good relationship with council communications teams, using one message/voice and presenting materials professionally (amongst other things) is key to achieving a positive lasting impression. Social media is a tool which must be embraced more in public libraries as a higher percentage of the target audience is highly responsive to such channels. However, as the session went on, it became clear that it isn’t as easy as “OK, let’s set up a Facebook page” as local authorities often face challenges internally, whether they are with IT departments or the senior management. Manchester City Library, a shining example in adopting such social medias, proposed an interesting ideology “Seek forgiveness, don’t ask permission” which may well be the way forward for libraries battling with departments internally. After all, the library would increase its reach and accessibility, improve its reputation and influence and promote transparency through doing so. This session was very well received by those who attended, with approx 90% of the attendees either asking questions or engaging via commentary, demonstrating the high interest in the topic and the desire for librarians to do more in this area.

My final session for the day was the public library partnership work with the BBC, presented by Elizabeth Waite, Library Partnership Manager at the BBC. After a clumsy and frankly unimpressive start fumbling around with technology, Elizabeth explained how the BBC sees itself to be very similar to libraries, with similar aims. As two publicly funded organisations, both want to promote education and learning so there were firm foundations for a partnership. So far, four successful projects have now been rolled out, including: BBC Raw, BBC Breathing Places, BBC Headroom, BBC Off By Heart. Staffordshire County Council has been a keen advocate of the projects, working with its different segments of library users to promote each. Janine Cox of Staffordshire explained working with the BBC enabled them to identify the contribution they made to education and learning and develop sustainable relationships. As some of the projects draw to an end, the BBC is looking to introduce new projects around digital literacy and history working closely with more libraries across the UK.

Day 1 has been an eventful day, packed with activity and conversation in a way I didn’t quite expect. I look forward to tomorrow as the DCMS take centre stage. Watch this space for PLA Day 2 tommorrow.

Image from @MichaelStead on twitpic.

Yesterday, the Society of Chief Librarians made national news with their new initiative attempting to make libraries accessible to all. The collections of more than 4,000 libraries across England, Wales and Northern Ireland will be open to any member of the public by showing their existing library card, or proof of address, to join or access any library they are visiting.

Tony Durcan, formerly president of the Society of Chief Librarians explains:

“If you’ve joined one library service, why do you have to go through the bureaucratic process of filling in forms to join another?”

The Society’s Chief, Fiona Williams supports this further by saying:

“Libraries are a public service for everybody. We want people to know that all libraries are open to them, not only the libraries where they live. This is an important step towards making libraries even more accessible to all.”

Though items borrowed must be returned to the library from where they came, so far the initiative has generated positive feedback and appears to be welcomed across the board. However, questions are now emerging including those raised by Mick Fortune of Library RFID Ltd.:

“Should I now be lobbying Oxfordshire to cancel their subscription to online information services because I, and everyone else in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, can now access them by joining say, Manchester online? How will the companies providing these services stay in business if only one authority pays a sub? Will Manchester council tax payers be prepared to pick up the tab for the whole country?”

This begs the question whether this initiative really is the significant move forwards that it has been painted to be? Have the consequences highlighted by Mick Fortune been taken into serious consideration? Watch this space as the debate continues.

Image published by framework_zend on Flickr