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.

Historic Libraries Forum conference 2018: Any other duties as required: skills for non-traditional library responsibilities

Our conference venue - the beautiful Christ Church, Oxford

It was great to be back at another HLF conference, having organised the previous year's! This one was especially pertinent to many of us, because who hasn't found themselves dealing with all sorts of things as part of a library job? Particular highlights for me included:




Ann Sylph (Zoological Society of London) on managing the many weird and wonderful items that make up their collections - as well as books and archives, this includes sculptures, paintings, pictures, slides, transparencies. She described how they had done a SWOT analysis, identified their USPs and a vision of where they would like to be in five years' time and then worked on this. They had begun by

• Spending an initial six months focussing on documentation and doing a strategic review, which then led the way forward.
• addressing storage issues by obtaining suitable boxes, monitoring the environment and for pests (all of which we do already in Special Collections) and developing a disaster plan. Evidence from the monitoring was then used to improve conditions.
• Celebrating outreach wins - eg produced bookmarks rather than leaflets as these are more likely to be kept, featuring in magazines and newspapers, putting on talks for staff enabling them to get to know the collections, using zoo events to attract a different audience, lending items to exhibitions external to the zoo. They also targeted historians to publish about their collections eg by targeting history of science departments.
• Did a monthly blog to highlight examples from their collections, rather like we did with Brunel 50 library objects

Ann's suggested actions were to:

• Multi-task!
• Constantly promote and use to engage
• Have a disaster box
• Use volunteers to help in practical ways
• Be inventive/creative
• Read. Go on visits and to conferences
• Seek advice and talk to others in a similar boat
• Don't forget the bigger picture - the rest of your organisation and the world
• Take opportunities when they come up
• Have work-life balance

Louisa Yates (Gladstone's Library), the only residential library in the world had won a grant from the Carnegie Foundation in New York. Over the previous six years they had brought upon a huge increase in usage, from no data being kept and no strategic plan, and only an average of three people a day using the library, they now have a plan, six years' worth of usage data and are now at daily full capacity, with bedrooms at 95% occupancy. The grant was to pay for a project they had always wanted to do - digitisation of Gladstone's books, thus making them available to a much wider audience. He had carefully collected books that were important to them, and annotated richly. It was quickly realised that the original plan, to digitise 350,000 items would be impossible, as they weren't catalogued and very limited metadata already existed, and transcribing this amount of material unrealistic. A revised, much more feasible, bid was written, detailing the digitisation of 15,000 letters (70,000 pages) and 5734 books and involved establishing a digital studio on site, with crowd-sourced transcription of a limited amount of the material. They had used SMART goals to set the project stages but did encounter problems along the way:

• Images couldn't go onto the existing server as they were too big and the cost of alternative storage hadn't been included in the bid.
• Adding subject keywords, whilst straightforward for trained library staff, wasn't a suitable task for many volunteers or work experience students.

Her learning points from the bid experience were

• People delivering the project should have been involved from the start.
• Library staff needed improved knowledge of tech
• Get paperwork in place before recruiting staff, eg manuals and workflows

I also enjoyed talks by Freda Matassa on valuing your collections, Judith Curthoys who managed to make a talk on implementing GDPR very amusing, Dorota Antoniak on accessibility and Sian Prosser and Laura Dimmock-Jones on developing professionally.

Oh and the conference lunch venue - Hogwarts!

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.

ILM Level 3 Leadership and management

I'd been keen to take a qualification in leadership and management for a while. My MA in Library and Information Studies included a module on management, but that was only one module, so it had to cover a lot, and I felt like I could do with more of a grounding in theory and chance to reflect on practice now that I've been working in a variety of professional posts. Fortunately the chance came up through staff development where I work, to take a qualification through the Institute of Leadership and Management (part of City and Guilds), over the course of about six months. There were five one day training courses, and five coursework assignments to be completed. A group of us from across the university took it, and it was a great opportunity to get to know how other parts of the university work. The units were chosen by staff development, reflecting the needs expressed within the university.

Unit 1: Solving problems and making decisions
We looked at how to define a problem and different methods of finding a solution to it. The coursework involved defining a problem within our own workplace and then examining ways to solve it. In advance, I'd thought this was going to be relatively straightforward - I was just amused that I was going to have a whole day's training on making decisions(!) - but it turned out to be really thorough and included learning some useful techniques: such as making sure you've defined the problem before you get started on trying to find a solution, collecting all the data you need to help you find a solution, and then applying problem solving techniques such as brainstorming, mind mapping and using SWOT analysis. We had a go at various techniques to find out what worked best for each of us. I also found that the decision making checklist useful, as not only do you have to make a decision, you then have to communicate it to others successfully, set SMART objectives to make sure it is achieved and follow up to make sure that progress is as you expected. The course also looked at interpreting and presenting data.

Unit 2: Understanding innovation and change in an organisation
This unit was to develop knowledge and understanding of innovation and change within our own institution. The coursework focussed on outlining the benefits to change and what any barriers could be, as well as what could be done to overcome the barriers. Then we looked at what planning and review techniques could be used to manage change and innovation. This really helped me to put things into context, as a couple of organisations I have worked for have either restructured just before I arrived, or restructured whilst I've been in my role, and this unit helped me to see the bigger picture, and also how reactions to it are to be expected. What was definitely essential to take on board were that innovation and change are definitely going to happen and aren't something to be feared!

Unit 3: Understand how to establish an effective team
The year before I'd already done a staff development one day course on effective team management, so this reiterated a lot of what I'd learnt then. It was useful to revise what I'd learnt, learn a bit more and talk about what had worked in practice. We talked about developing trust in the workplace, and how it relates to building a team, and then how to develop that team. I found some parts hard to relate to practical work though - looking at the average composition of a team (60% backbone/reliable producers, 20% developing, 10% fairly new and progressing well and 10% either very new, inexperienced or inadequate), I'm not sure how that relates to the often very small teams of people who work in a Special Collections environment?! Again, I'd looked at team roles using Belbin in a couple of jobs, and found it useful for the insights it offers into how some teams work, and how teams can be helped to work.

Unit 4: Understanding organising and delegating in the workplace
This unit was to develop knowledge and understanding of how to organise and delegate. The coursework again needed us to use examples from our own workplace. We had to show that we understood how to organise people to achieve objectives and how to delegate in order to achieve them. There was some reiteration of techniques learnt in the earlier solving problems and making decisions module, as well as effective team management. Obviously, good delegation requires planning well in advance and being organised, skills we'd already looked at in some detail earlier on. I found this module helped me clarify what I understood about delegation - who is responsible for what, and what the guidelines are for successful delegation to take place. Again though, as with the previous module, some of this seemed to be aimed at large teams of people, rather than the much smaller teams typically found in Special Collections.

Unit 5: Understand how to lead effective meetings
This unit covered what makes a meeting effective and the procedures and planning to put in place to ensure that this happens. The coursework required us to demonstrate that we knew how to prepare, plan and manage a meeting. In advance I thought this would be pretty straightforward - who, after all, hasn't been to hundreds of meetings and thought of ways they could be improved?! It was actually really helpful: covering such things as defining the purpose of the meeting (otherwise, what is the point of having it?), the roles and responsibilities of everyone at the meeting (if you don't have a role or a responsibility, then why are you there?), practicalities (checking everything is in place in advance of your meeting), taking minutes and how to chair effectively. It was good to know that it's sensible and more productive to include breaks in the agenda of longer meetings (every 45-60 minutes is recommended), even if those don't necessarily involve having another cup of tea! And I particularly appreciated the hints to help the meeting flow smoothly, such as not allowing Any Other Business to be included, but instead making sure all topics to be discussed are on the agenda in advance.

The course also included an introductory workshop on writing the coursework assignments, something I benefitted from as this was a very different style of writing to the one I'm used to, and a final work-place implementation meeting, where we discussed what had worked for us on the course, and what hadn't. 

Although it was a struggle at times fitting the coursework in, I am very glad that I had the opportunity to take this course and that I completed it. I feel like I have learnt a lot, and brought new skills away. I would recommend it to others thinking of taking a leadership and management qualification.