Transforming Libraries - RLUK 2021 conference

 I         I was really keen to attend RLUK’s 2021 conference on Transforming Libraries, and so was delighted to win a bursary which covered my conference fee. I have been working in the area of special collections and archives for well over 15 years now, and had the opportunity to attend various conferences and events, but invariably closely connected to my specialist area. Having completed a teaching qualification in Higher Education (AFHEA) and the Aurora women’s leadershipdevelopment programme, I was keen to attend a more broadly focussed conference, broaden my knowledge of the research environment and put my recent learning in context.

I wasn’t disappointed. The key points I took away from the conference were that:

• Most (all?) university libraries already do a huge amount to contribute to the research environment of their institutions. What they’re often less good at is communicating this, both to their users and to those higher up the university hierarchy. There was much to take forward about alignment with strategic objectives, finding out user needs and communicating how we meet those needs.
• The pandemic had created opportunities for research libraries to demonstrate how central they are to the university – often staying open throughout lockdown to provide study space and resources for students, as well as providing digital content. For many, this had helped to communicate the library’s worth higher up the university, and there was a sense of urgency around making the most of this opportunity to influence and advocate.

I also found much more content than I had expected about teaching, with its links to research, and especially teaching with special collections material. From this I have noted down ideas to explore further, including around inquiry-based learning, aligning our services with what users want/improving communication with users and using visualisers to improve the service we can offer both now and when in-person teaching in the reading room is possible once again.

I also thought the practical aspects of the conference worked very well. I had anticipated missing the opportunities for informal networking at an in-person conference, but there were several ways around this. I enjoyed exploring the virtual terrace, including the swimming pool(!) and having the chance to chat with whoever I came across. This went some way to replicating the conference experience of chance meetings over coffee. Similarly with the ability to explore the virtual marketplace of vendors/sponsors and see what they have to offer. I also found the searchable list of delegates useful, and used the chat feature to contact a few delegates directly and to follow up with questions after one of the talks. In some ways, this worked even better in this environment than at a large in-person conference where you have to physically track down the person you want to talk to. Although it was a rather intense three days, it wasn’t overwhelming, as the talks were spread out, with plenty of time inbetween to have a break from my computer screen or to contact other delegates. There was a very friendly atmosphere, and everybody I approached to speak to was happy to talk to me, or to refer me onto a more appropriate person.

 
So, what next? I switched off my computer feeling like I’d got a better grasp of the ‘bigger picture’ in HE and research libraries, as well as picking up some useful tips for teaching using my collections. I’m hoping I’ll be able to put some of those into practice in my job over the next few months.

A big thank you to RLUK for sponsoring my place at the conference.

2020 and onwards

One of my aims a year ago was to blog more often - as you can see, that didn't happen. I had a plan, but ended up with so little time available thanks to lockdown and WFH with a small child around, that I had to prioritise other things. Whilst 2020 had many negatives, we were very fortunate - able to keep our jobs and WFH in relative comfort (especially once the small child returned to preschool!). We already had a regular Ocado delivery slot, and were able to share it with our elderly neighbours and also get supplies requested for the local food bank. In fact, Ocado gave us a very regular delivery slot because of all this spending!

Although I found the initial lockdown uncertainty rather frightening, I got a sense of perspective from my work. An early enquiry about 19th century cholera epidemics, and looking into those sources for a researcher (who had no way of accessing the finding aid for themselves with all libraries shut), really brought home how much better off we are in a 21st century pandemic. I also recalled even earlier pandemics, the Pharmacopolium, dating from 1630, at Kedermister Library, where I am the Hon. Librarian, includes remedies against plague. I am very glad not to be in a 17th century plague outbreak!

Plague remedy from Pharmacopolium [Kedermister Library]

Thankfully, my well-established work social media really came into its own. I'd been teaching a group of MA students not long before lockdown, and they produced creative writing assignments, which I published weekly on the blog - it ran for the final eight weeks of the first lockdown. And I was able to use existing blog content to take part in Twitter campaigns running at the time - a great way to make the collections known to a wider audience. Whilst it was strange to be separated from the collections for a while, I enjoyed making connections online, and also found much more accessible CPD opportunities became available. Whereas I'd been struggling to attend some things previously - it's hard to go to a full day or longer event involving travel if you don't have childcare available on that day - it became a lot easier to drop into short webinars/mini conferences/AGMs on a range of topics and I even ended up co-organising one for the Cathedral Archives, Libraries and Collections Association. 

Professionally, this was the year I'd been planning to complete a teaching qualification (Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy) and to revalidate my CILIP Chartership. I had also been fortunate enough to win a place on Aurora, a leadership development initiative for women in HE, the previous year and was due to join this between February and July 2020. I successfully revalidated early in 2020. I had been working on the AFHEA since the summer of 2019, had a plan for the reading I needed to do, which teaching observations to do and knew which evidence I was going to write up when. Which meant I was in a good position when lockdown happened, as I'd already completed a lot of the work. I still managed to submit on time and was delighted to discover later on in the year that I had passed!

Aurora ran for one session in a central London hotel in February. It was amazing, and I came away with some tools and tips to use, plus some new connections. It then restarted in October, all online. It is still amazing, and I am learning a lot from it, but I am still rather sad not to have the full experience all the way through - particularly those incidental conversations at breaks and lunchtime. It also includes some mentoring, which I am finding really helpful.

So, what does 2021 hold? I will finish Aurora early in the year. I am planning to revalidate my Chartership again, this time making the most of the online learning skills I acquired in 2020. Last year I also started working towards Registration with the Archives and Records Association, the equivalent of Chartership for the archives world. I am really pleased with how my planning and organisation paid off last year, despite having such seismic changes to deal with - my blog post back in 2017 on getting organised seemed really apposite and I will definitely be carrying on with this, although I need to update that post with tweaks I've made since.

What are your professional plans for 2021? 

Developing collaboration between archives services and Higher Education

The National Archives

I attended this day long event at The National Archives in June - it was designed to launch a refreshed guide to collaboration between archives services and Higher Education worked on by History UK.

Background
The previous guide was produced by RLUK in 2015, based on research done in 2014, so this is a much needed update. It had been found that individual archives were being approached by academics keen to collaborate, but archives were unsure what REF2014 was, and the relationships that formed were not particularly resilient as they were often reliant on a single academic. From this the DCDC (Discovering Collections; Discovering Communities) series of conferences emerged.

The new guide
Includes refreshed case studies and references to REF, TEF and KEF, the 2017 HE Bill, UKRI and the Office for Students, all of which affect the landscape in which collaboration is now happening.

Several case studies were offered. These included Our Criminal Past, which brought together academics and archivists through engagement vehicles such as workshops, an advice forum and social media. They used HistoryPin to allow members of the public to add information about their criminal ancestors. I found the case studies particularly useful as they outlined the obstacles they had found to collaboration. It was apparent the same issues cropped up repeatedly, namely:

• Time/resources - without the resources for an assistant it becomes very difficult to keep the momentum of the project going.
• Maintaining relationships with the other collaborating organisations, each of whom may have their own interests/objectives, which are different to yours.
• Collaborators will have their own routines, working practices, lack of expertise and skills. There may well be several layers of processes that each collaborator has to work through internally before a project can happen
• Managing a website, particularly the costs of developing and maintaining it
• Copyright issues, particularly around using images
• Lack of awareness of the amount of work involved, eg the timeframe to produce an exhibition is usually years
• Some funding streams aren't available if you're not an accredited archive service

My group worked on identifying the challenges and benefits of collaboration

The audience at this event was fairly evenly split between archivists (working in a variety of sectors) and academics. We weren't allowed to just sit and listen either, there were several group exercises including "speed dating" where we had a few minutes at a time to talk to various academics in turn about what we were hoping to gain from a partnership. These were a great way to meet academics engaged in a variety of areas, plus people looking after other collections. 

The guide itself outlines the steps needed to be taken when instigating a collaborative partnership, and encourages the answering of some key questions, such as who are the key decision makers, finding out what is important to each partner and getting everything in writing. It also provides a complete project template to use.

Priority cards

The final exercise was to arrange a series of priority cards into a diamond nine shape, which encouraged us to explore in groups why others had different priorities and how they might align with ours. I particularly liked this diamond nine produced by another group, who had added an extra priority card for 'budget for cake and refreshments'!

Prioritising cake!

Actions
As a result of attending this event, I:

• have joined the HEAP (Higher Education Archive Programme) mailing list so that I can remain informed about developments in this area
• am looking into using HistoryPin to put our collections on the map
• have put a reminder in my calendar to check for the publication of the new collaboration guide this summer
• have followed up with a couple of academics from other universities who are interested in using some of our Special Collections in their research and/or teaching
• have put a reminder in my calendar to check on work being done to track citations of archive services across published papers and journals

Getting organised

I've always been interested in organising things (I am a librarian, after all) and I've always done a lot with my time: work, volunteering, hobbies and now being a Mum so was keen to learn more about being organised and making my life more streamlined so that I could get more done and make the most of the time I had available. In a previous job I read up on time management, and tweaked what I did a little, and a few years ago read Jo Alcock's series in CILIP Update on Getting Things Done, which I adopted. I was quite late getting a smart phone (in 2013!) and I am still only on my second phone, but have appreciated the opportunities offered by apps for helping with productivity and organisation.




Back in May I did some staff training at work called "Stress less, achieve more" run by Think Productive. I thought it was going to be more about time management, but it was more far-reaching than that, and involved not trying to stuff more things into an already over-stuffed day, but working on prioritising and working more effectively in the time I have available. Escaping from the tyranny of the to-do list, to evaluate what is on the list and why so that you free up brain space to actually do things. We also looked at dealing with interruptions, paperwork and keeping the ideas flowing. I found it a really useful day, particularly as a chunk of the afternoon was devoted to implementing what we'd learnt in the morning into our own workflows and schedules. That meant I could be quickly up and running with a new way of doing things. Since then, I've worked with the new system, making a few tweaks as I go.


Some of the key tools I'd already implemented are:

• Inbox zero. I keep my email for incoming items only. This makes it a lot less overwhelming to look at. There is a link to Jo Alcock's advice on this above.
• Calendar management. Make sure I add all appointments, meetings etc to my calendar and keeping an eye on upcoming events so I don't miss anything.
• IDoneThis is grammatically awful, but a useful way of keeping track of CPD activities. I have it set to send me a daily email on the days I'm at work, to which I reply with a short summary of what I've done that day. This is really helpful when it comes to reflect on CPD, which I try and do monthly when I update my revalidation log.
• Saying no. I've struggled with this one for years, until I heard someone say that it isn't rude to say no, but it is rude to say yes, but then have to back out of the commitment at a later date, which cast a whole new light on the matter! I still feel guilty when I have to say no to things, but at least I know now that this is the best option in the long run.

Other areas I've worked on the last year or so and made changes are:

Calendars
I've had a play around with various tools over the years and am still tweaking what I work with. For a calendar, I've found that using my iPhone personal calendar with my work Outlook calendar connected to it means I can see at a glance what I'm doing when, and, because I'm part-time and occasionally change days or work different hours, it avoids any problems with an event being in one calendar and not the other. Whilst I was on maternity leave I found that having an old-fashioned diary-style organiser worked better for me outside work than an electronic calendar, and I've carried on with this since coming back to work. I still use my Outlook calendar for work commitments and this still appears in my iPhone calendar too. So, I use that heavily at work, and to check in with it easily when I'm not at work, but my outside work life now goes into a Life Book from Boxclever Press (used to be called Organised Mum, which annoyed me hugely as I'm sure other people than Mums can be organised too). I was very very tempted by Bullet Journals, as I love their appearance, and that might be something I explore more in the future. I have integrated some bullet journal things, such as habit tracking, into my Life Book, as well as the use of different colours...




To do lists
The Think Productive course advocated having one place to download all your projects from your head, whether work or home related, and then have actions relating to them. I didn't like the idea of having work and home all together like that, so having tried it for a couple of weeks, I now have a spreadsheet for work productivity, and use my Life Book for home productivity. With both methods I review each week what I've done, what needs doing and any upcoming activities, whether it's a meeting to prepare for, a big project to organise or a birthday to remember. I also do a tiny five minute review every day which keeps me on track. I've found that it's meant I arrive at work very focussed on what I need to do that day - usually five tasks chosen from my actions list (I have found that three big tasks, plus a couple of smaller ones works well) and it's also created more headspace for me outside work, which means more time to spend with my family and doing hobbies!






Email and phone
Can be really disruptive whether you're at work or at home. At work I have notifications turned off so I check my inbox when I choose to, rather than reactively, which tends to steal time away. Similarly, I keep my mobile on silent (it is set to ring only if my daughter's nursery calls) when I'm at work so that I'm not interrupted by personal calls.




Helping your future self
Can't find the minutes for that meeting, or forgotten what you need to buy at the shop? I started storing information based on when I would need to use it, rather than when I first came across it. At work I use Outlook, and at home my Life Book. This has revolutionised the way I deal with things and meant it's much less painful to get up to speed with upcoming events as I already have everything to hand. Admittedly it doesn't always work perfectly - a couple of weeks ago I found myself in Sainsburys with a shopping list but without my purse!


Please leave me a comment if there's anything you've used to help be more organised.

CLAA conference 2015

The theme for the 2015 Cathedral Libraries and Archives Association Conference was 'Placing the library and archive at the heart of the cathedral', which doesn't immediately appear to be connected to my current job! However, the theme could be applied to any institution and proved to be highly relevant to many working situations.

Westminster Abbey

The conference was held in the beautiful historic surroundings of Cheyneygates at Westminster Abbey. The first speaker was Ellie Jones, the Archivist from Exeter Cathedral Library & Archives, who spoke about the cathedral's highly successful HLF funded project to share their treasures more, which eventually also led to them becoming one of the first institutions to earn Archives Accreditation.  She outlined the improvements they had been able to make to their facilities, and how their increased outreach had made it possible for more people to experience their collections. This included a year 8 teacher who had seen one of their blog posts, leading to a project about Shakespeare. They have had a big push to make material more accessible online, partly via having an EOSweb catalogue, although there is currently no archive finding aid available online. Working with colleagues in the cathedral was very important, so they encouraged directors to bring their families in to visit to support more engagement with the collections.

Emily Naish, from Salisbury Cathedral Library and Archives, then gave a talk on the dangers of encouraging collections to be for scholarly use only, as had happened at Salisbury from 1983 until recently. This had resulted in the library becoming invisible within the cathedral and attaining an almost mythical status, with the only catalogue one printed in 1880 and available in a few Oxbridge libraries. The big change in recent years had led to the creation of a number of policies covering access and collections. Collections have been consolidated, spotlight talks now take place in the cathedral, with improved information available on the website. They are also working with the Education Officer to encourage school groups to visit. Volunteers and cathedral staff now have dedicated drop in sessions twice a week, which has encouraged guides to know more about the library. It is important that the library is relevant to the cathedral rather than an historical curiosity - it has to be useful to staff and volunteers, and has to be useful to the fundraising department.

General Synod chamber

After a trip round the corner to Church House to see the Cathedral and Church Buildings Library, Synod chamber, an extremely good lunch and the CLAA AGM, we returned to Cheyneygates for the afternoon's speakers. First was Lisa di Tommaso, from Durham Cathedral, on the renewal of their collections. Durham had already supported scholarship and learning for 1000 years and are working to make their collections more accessible now. Lisa gave a brief overview of the history of the collections and the team working there, before explaining the "Open treasure" project, designed to bring the collections into the heart of Durham Cathedral's visitor experience. The project encompasses an exhibition space and a new specialist search room, along with outreach programmes. This includes developing reading groups with people who historically have had less contact with the cathedral, and 11 - 15 year olds will be able to have a go at curating an exhibition. Key activities have included taking a replica of the Lindisfarne Gospels to visit people who couldn't visit the physical exhibition and raising awareness of the collections by making exhibition loans.

Finally Vicky Harrison, Collections Manager at York Minister, spoke about unlocking their collections. She gave an outline of York's successful HLF bid for "York Minster revealed". Communication with the rest of the cathedral, particularly Chapter, was key, and reports were structured into four sections as per the Accreditation standard, which helped to show that they were working to the future rather than concentrating on the past. The future will involve working together rather than as three separate disciplines (library, archive, collections). The key is to plan what you're doing, and to communicate this. And always have three top messages you want to get across at the forefront of your mind.

HLF conference 2014: Beyond the bid

The 2014 Historic Libraries Forum conference took fundraising, project management and related issues as its theme. I was one of the co-organisers, and also hosted it at Brunel University Library. These topics had been suggested by attendees at previous conferences and workshops. Slides from most of the speakers are available on the HLF website.

I found all the speakers really interesting, although I must admit that I missed some parts as I was running around behind the scenes as the host too!

The first speaker was Fiona Talbott, Head of Museums, Libraries and Archives at the Heritage Lottery Fund, who talked us through the various funding streams available from the Other HLF and offered guidance on making a successful application. The key thing seemed to be to take advantage of all the help and advice offered from the HLF, such as submitting a project enquiry form and then taking note of any feedback in your final application. Fiona was very encouraging, urging people to apply - they have £375m in grants to award each year, and I found it particularly useful to be able to ask questions at the end of the morning.

The second of the morning speakers was Louisa Yates, Director of Collections and Research at Gladstone's Library, who introduced us to the library and talked about what they need to do to keep it running, as it is completely independent and needs to generate all of its own income. Louisa talked about the implications of higher education funding, and looking for collaborative opportunities (which are very attractive to funding bodies). Gladstone's Library has been working on a huge project to make manuscripts available as a collaboration between libraries and universities. This meant a lot of cataloguing and recording (using standardised terms, Dublin Core and LCSH, plus some local subject headings) before digitization could take place. Some of the problems they faced during the project were:

• Took time away from working on other projects - with a small staff someone still has to do the work
• Many of their volunteers were reluctant to use laptops or tablets. You have to work with the people you have. The solution here was to go low tech and use pencils and paper.
• Working out IT issues as they needed equipment. They already had a Heritage OPAC, and opted to use cloud storage.

Following a rather tasty lunch, the first afternoon speaker was Ann Barwood, Canon Librarian at Exeter Cathedral, who talked us through their collections and how they had managed to go from 2001, when the collections were at risk of sale, housed on different sites, and with little space and no money, to the present day, which is very different! Ann's talk was very positive and encouraging, relating how things had started with a Preservation Assessment Survey from the National Preservation Office and started to make approaches to grant-making trusts. They also began public engagement work, holding a month long exhibition in the cathedral and used Heritage Open Days to link with events in the city. There first application to the HLF was unsuccessful, but they talked to English Heritage and local authorities about improvements, and tried to move away from the previous "culture of elitism", where the library was only used by academics and clergy, to making everyone welcome. The building they now have has brought the collection together, and includes a space for exhibitions. This meant that a subsequent application was approved, and they have since gone on to become one of the first accredited archives in England!

Louise Anderson, Librarian at Downside Abbey, told us about their experience with managing volunteers. Volunteers are generally an essential part of projects, particularly as funders often want to see volunteer contributions as part of the project before they will award funding. Downside is in receipt of an HLF grant for their 'Beacon of learning' project and is using volunteers initially to work on modern accessions, preventative conservation and recording bibliographic details. Once building work has finished, they will help to invigilate the reading room, re-shelve items and act as tour guides.Volunteers were asked to stick to a particular day/time so that a rota could be organised. The arrangement was formalised with a handbook. The main issues with using volunteers were:

• The original volunteer ad wasn't viewed by the archivist/librarian before it went out, resulting in a mismatch between volunteer expectations and the reality of the work. This could make maintaining job satisfaction difficult.
• Supervising volunteers can take up a lot of time, as does scheduling. It can help to keep at least some of each week volunteer-free. Sourcing work of the right level for them to do can be challenging.
• All volunteers had to be DBS checked, which was done by Downside School, but took a very long time as it wasn't a priority for their HR department.
• There is a limit to what volunteers can be asked to do, and they may be unreliable, after all, they are under no obligation to turn up!
• Remember that resources are needed - computers, desk space, as well as staff time.

Using volunteers had been a success though. They were providing social media content and helped with book moves at the start of the project. They have been able to speed up cataloguing times, by counting pages and undertaken preventative conservation work that otherwise would not have happened. Getting volunteers involved has also helped to improve public perceptions of an institution that had been perceived previously as inward-looking.

The final speaker of the day was Dunia Garcia-Ontiveros, Head of Bibliographic Services at the London Library. Dunia explained how they had managed their retrospective cataloguing project to bring three different catalogues and finding aids into one place and update them. This was an enormous project, which is still ongoing, and commenced in 1991 with their 150th anniversary appeal. Apparently attaching fundraising to an anniversary can be a big help! They have needed to maintain momentum throughout their project and some things that have helped are:

• Each cataloguer works on one subject at a time to help with consistency.
• Try and take into account staff interests when assigning cataloguing, as this helps with motivation.
• Track and keep regular statistics. Monitor productivity.
• Stay flexible
• Have regular meetings, as this also helps with motivation.

Highlights of their project had included contributing to COPAC in 2012 and gaining designated status, a brilliant indicator of the worth of their collections. This can also help with fundraising.

I really enjoyed my day at the conference. I feel like I have learnt a lot about managing projects as a whole, and not just about fundraising for them.

Webinar: forward planning

I'm a bit behind with blog posts, but getting caught up again now. Back in June I joined a forward planning webinar put on by The National Archives.

This lasted about an hour, and was a good way of finding out more about forward planning for archives, particularly as I could "attend" it from the comfort of my own office without incurring any travel costs or having to take time away from work.

We started off by testing out the webinar voting buttons by comparing how much progress participants so far had made with forward planning. Some of the reasons we might not be looking into it at the moment were: no time, no budget, things change too fast, organisation is too small BUT the emphasis was really on using our resources wisely, which means forward planning is essential. In times of uncertainty a forward plan is a useful advocacy tool to show the capabilities of your service and that your resources are used well, as well as how you are contributing to wider corporate priorities.

The essential (but flexible) ingredients of a forward plan are:

1. Mission
2. Review and evaluation of previous plan(s)
3. Analysis of internal and external environment in which service exists
4. Stakeholder consultation and analysis of views
5. Strategic aims
6. Specific objectives beneath each strategic aim
7. Action plan(s)
8. Resource plan(s)
9. Date plan(s) will be reviewed

As far as timescales go, it is good practice to plan in detail for the next year

Guidelines for writing the plan:

• Keep it simple
• Focus on highlights
• Include things that haven't happened (and why)
• If you have no previous plan, review the previous couple of years.

Analysis

Use SWOT or PESTLE analysis to determine the factors affecting your service.

Aims, objectives, actions and resources

What people and budget are needed to meet the archive's objectives and deliver the plan?

Who will write the plan?

• Don't write it alone - another pair of eyes is always useful!
• Have someone in a co-ordinating role to oversee the content
• Include a range of perspectives from within the organisation
• Compare notes with colleagues in other services.

Once you have a plan:

Use it-

• to plan work loads
• identify grants
• monitor progress
• to know how well you're doing
• to make the case for new resources

Renew it-

• don't let the plan die
• revisit each year's aims and objectives
• make sure your plan moves with time

Consulting with users and volunteers?

• Don't ask too many questions - keep it targetted.
• Ask quite specific questions, not "what could we do better".

Forward planning resources

Forward planning resources on TNA.
Collections Trust

I found the webinar very reassuring, as it helped me get a handle on what I need to do to create a forward plan. It was also good to be told that it doesn't have to be 110% perfect in order to be put in for the Archives Accreditation standard!