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? 

Buildings, books and blockbusters: balancing access and preservation

In November I attended (and co-organised!) the 2019 Historic Libraries Forum conference, which was a great opportunity to explore issues around access and preservation. It took place at Westminster Abbey and we were lucky enough to get a look round the new Queen's Diamond Jubilee Gallery at the Abbey as part of the conference. These are well worth a visit in their own right, offering both spectacular views of the inside of the building and a chance to encounter myriad items from their collections. Photography isn't allowed inside the gallery, so all my images are of elsewhere in the Abbey.

The Cloisters

The conference kicked off with Caroline Bendix, exploring what we mean by access -  any means of using a book, including reading, seeing, touching, smelling, hearing. Of the 25 causes of damage to books, 14 of these can be attributed to poor handling, which is why it’s so important to have handling guidelines and make sure they are followed, especially by staff, who are setting an example to users. She offered some tips, including:

• Have supports readily available to readers and make sure staff know how to use them, eg they need to be adjusted as different pages are opened.
• Provide regular training to staff on handling books and archives.
• Train staff to intervene positively when they see a reader exhibiting poor handling technique (eg by offering "help").
• The key is to reduce the rate of deterioration to the lowest possible. Users may not understand the need to handle books in a particular way - so it's helpful to have some spectacular examples of the results of poor handling to show them.

The damage that can occur, includes:


• Abrasion from removing from shelf.
• Shelves at the wrong height
• Historical application of leather dressing (too much and to books in too poor condition)
• Wrong boxes used (eg box too big for book so it can move around). Boxes and enclosures need to provide support.
• Using acid free paper slips for shelfmarks in the book cuts down on handling
Books on brief display can be preserved by:
• Creased sheet of melinex on top of book will stop some damage
• Mitchell book shelter – protects book whilst making it available
• Blickling Hall put books on temporary display with one person by each book to talk about it and ensure it is protected.

Remember – any step taken is a positive action to reduce deterioration

Susan Jenkins from Westminster Abbey collections then provided an introduction to the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Gallery, followed by our visit.
The Gallery has been a very positive development to showcase items from the collections. Creating them had been a lot of work:

• Work had to stop everytime a service took place in the building.
• Light plans undertaken to understand how light would fall around cases.
• Computer modelling of the space used to work out where to lay out objects.
• Annual lux budget decided to try and get balance right.
• Continuous programme of improvement eg clerestory windows were discovered to be letting direct light in in March and October.

Visit was very inspiring with a chance to discover all of the treasures gallery – well worth a visit - I highly recommend!

View from the conference room

After a delicious lunch and the HLF AGM, Rosemary Firman (Hereford Cathedral Library) spoke about Screen sharing: the role of broadcasting and the media in extending access
Hereford Cathedral is the only library remaining where all books are still chained to shelves. References to chained libraries generally echo Hereford, but they have a total lack of control over people using images of chained libraries eg Game of Thrones is assumed to have been filmed at Hereford (it wasn’t!). The publicity is good but it can lead to increased requests for more access – observed increase in visitor numbers after TV programmes, but often little control over what is said in them, with much repetition of basic facts. Hereford doesn’t charge for factual/documentary filiming but filming can take up large amounts of staff time.
Some top tips:
• Don’t expect producers to be well prepared
• Have some key messages ready for them.
• Review recordings before release (this may be difficult to arrange)



She was followed by David Iggulden on Empowering Global Research: the Biodiversity Heritage Library
These are natural science research collections – literature and archives critical to studying life on earth eg species descriptions, info on extinct species, history of scientific discovery. Lack of access to this literature impedes scientific research especially in developing countries.
The BHL provides open access to digital library, inspiring discovery through free access to biodiversity knowledge. Much of the material is out of copyright but agreements are negotiated for the rest. 57 million pages – Kew was a founder member and the initial idea was a joint union catalogue. Reduces the need to consult physical items although the digital should exist alongside the physical. Had nine million users since it started.



Molly Bigwood, a student who had researched the balancing act between conservation and access, then spoke about her study into how historic libraries manage preservation and access as part of her undergraduate degree. There have to be concessions on either side eg the optimum temperature for storage isn’t compatible with reader comfort. She compared four collections.
Seeing books in worse condition can be beneficial to their future – the visually shocking helps emphasise the point.


Sarah VanSnick (The National Archives) finished off with a talk on mouldy books: preservation improving access
Over 1% of TNA’s collections are mouldy and they have changed their processes so that readers can still access them. They clean on demand, as they don’t have time to clean everything, but have to be careful as mould damage is cumulative and is classed as a biohazard. They carried out research to inform risk assessments and looked at how access could risk cross-contamination. It was found that boxes were good for keeping the fungal count low, so additional mechanisms were not necessary for moving items around. They now clean based on the risk of transfer. Readers now requesting mouldy material are given a list of the risks, and provided with an apron and mask (if they want to use these) – which means they now have access to a mouldy item when previously they would have had a long delay for cleaning before being able to use it.


It was a great conference, and included plenty of networking time in breaks too, so I left with plenty to think about! My actions to take forward:


• Review our handling guidelines and ensure readers know what to expect
• Review staff training to ensure staff are confident to help readers handle books correctly. Make sure volunteers are confident to handle items correctly and understand why it is important.
• Work on a media pack, including key messages for film crews etc about our collections
• Look into the Biodiversity Heritage Library (personal interest)
• Have a couple of “worst examples” available (physical and photographs) to demonstrate consequences of poor handling

Citation capture: what's in a name? Citing collections consistently for greater impact

The view from lunch

This was a one day workshop at The National Archives to explore the findings and recommendations made in the report Citation capture: enhancing understanding of the use of unique and distinctive collections within academic research published in 2018 by RLUK, TNA and JISC. It brought together practitioners from across the research lifecycle to look at the future direction of this work and how it might be taken forward. I particularly appreciated the chance to network with a wide range of practitioners on this topic.


As anyone who works in Special Collections will know, there is no standard way of capturing citations recording use of our collections. This makes it difficult to demonstrate impact (particularly crucial for funding applications) and meet KPIs, as well as understand how collections are used.


Some repositories do provide guidance on citation, but this often has poor visibility and is not provided pro-actively to users. Many currently depend on researchers telling them about citations (which is our current approach at work, although we do follow up pro-actively with researchers who have given their consent).


The report identified that there is no silver bullet in terms of tools and platforms. Two key approaches were identified in the report:

• 3 letter code
• ARCHON code (a unique code that each repository already has, but which would mean academics would either have to find the correct code to cite (they aren't intuitive, ours is 1975!) or the code would need to be included within catalogue references.

Then, several speakers talked about the implications around citation capture for their particular area:
Eleanor Harris (Herefordshire Record Office) - using citations for internal advocacy
Christina Kamposiori (RLUK) - measuring impact for Special Collections
Michael Rowlinson (University of Exeter) - quantitative capture of citations to archival material via Google Scholar
Jo Pugh (TNA) and Ben Crabstick (JISC) - citation capture in practice
Frances Madden (British Library) - persistent identifiers in an international context
It was very clear that improving the way in which citations are captured which make a big difference to a wide range of institutions holding archives. It would improve internal advocacy (as evidenced by the Herefordshire Archives example, where they had used citations as evidence to show the true extent of their users and the impact of research done using their collections), show that archives inform research that ends up in highly cited articles, raise awareness of the role of libraries and their collections in creating impact, learn more about researcher behaviour and interests, and the relationship between cataloguing of collections and use.


In our groups, we then went on to consider the best way forward. One possible route would be to include widgets in catalogues, for example Discovery and ArchivesHub, to make citation much easier. Another would be to involve publishers. By the end of the day it had been decided that JISC, RLUK and TNA would coordinate sorting out the requirements, and it was recognised that it would need to meet the needs of all types of organisation (eg, not every archive has its own catalogue, and it may not be online).


One to watch with interest!

Future past: researching archives in the digital age

Last week I took part in this research symposium at the Institute of Historical Research in London. It was a great opportunity to find out what other archives are doing about digitization and born digital records, and how academic users of archives are finding their experience. It was a really interesting day, and my notes go on for pages, so I'm going to attempt to pull out some of the common themes that emerged. There were many opportunities during the day to ask questions, get feedback and talk to others, so my notes are a mixture of speakers and thoughts/ideas found from networking.


The hashtag was #digfuturepast and the symposium was recorded and should be available soon on the IHR website.

Barriers to using digital material

Paying for content. Digitization is expensive but academic users are used to having "free" access to collections (actually paid for by their institution). Yet, the digitization has to be paid for somehow, whether through institutions funding it themselves, grant funding or commercial companies providing a paid-for service (eg Ancestry) 

Making copies available. Gone are the days when a student or academic would come into an archive every day for a week or a month to do their research. Pressures of time mean they want to make the most of a single visit and be able to take copies away with them or download copies to use at home, yet it is impossible to digitize everything, and there are various reasons why copies may not be allowed at all, eg copyright, commercial sensitivity or preservation.

Poor documentation and/or OCR mean that researchers can't find what they're looking for. They may miss relevant items in a plethora of search results, or not get the result they need at all. A reliance on keyword searching misses the opportunity to search the collection more widely and loses the connection between archival sources.

Lack of a seamless user experience make it hard to use the material eg legacy systems, different systems for library/archive material, system not optimised for finding archival material.

Information literacy issues. We can't always assume that researchers will know how to search in our system, so we need to equip them with the tools to do this. We also need to address the common misconceptions found below.

Misconceptions about online access to archives

• Any online resource is complete and comprehensive. Many only represent a tiny fraction of an archive's holdings, so how do we alert users to this and encourage them to look beyond the digital? It is impossible to digitize everything, due to copyright, staff and equipment resources, having metadata available, issues with storing electronic files etc.
• Everything will be catalogued. No, digitizing is not the same as cataloguing. Most (all?!) archives have a cataloguing backlog, and, until the material is catalogued, there is no way to access it. This then gives rise to the question about whether it is better to spend resources digitizing some already catalogued material, or catalogue unlisted material that cannot be used at all yet.
• Digitized version is just the same as the original. No, frequently this isn't the case and their are users who will still need to see the original. This is also one of the reasons why it is vital never to destroy the original.

Educating researchers

Time and again the need to educate researchers came up. It was agreed by all present that this is a vital part of training as a historian and that it should be done as early as possible in an academic career. I was pleased by this as we are already doing several of the suggested activities to encourage researchers to engage with our collections, including:

• Running workshops for all history undergraduates to find out how to use Special Collections material
• Running dissertation drop ins and workshops for students needing help with a dissertation using Special Collections
• Looking for entry points beyond history - we get a lot of use by creative writing students and have widened our reach to include English and Sports Scientists too. This has repercussions for collecting policies too - are we collecting material that resonates with our researchers?

Case studies

• The archivist from Boots Heritage who explained how Boots had moved from an entirely internally-focussed business archive to one that was available to researchers thanks to funding from the Wellcome Trust to develop a new digital resource aimed at academic researchers. She had found that getting the right tools was essential so proper cataloguing software (CALM) had been acquired and material was catalogued to stringent standards to make it helpful and meaningful, including creating authority files to be a repository of information about buildings, brands and people. For many researchers this has turned out to be the entry point into the collections. Preservation issues affected the usability of some items and repackaging them into smaller units greatly improved this issue. Care had to be taken to protect Boots' interests, so images are watermarked and download prevented, and commercially sensitive information is not available.
• Transport for London archives are aiming to collect the evidence that every journey matters, including the digital output of the organisation. They took the opportunity presented by needing to archive born digital material to overhaul and restructure their cataloguing. Although this was resource heavy it has created a more useable catalogue for staff and made it much more available to researchers.
• Kathleen Chater talked about her research into black people in England in 18th century and how digitized records hadn't helped her solve research problems such as identifying where "black" didn't refer to a person, or to those instances where a black person was identified using another term. Keyword searches frequently produced unusable quantities of results. One of the more helpful things she did was spend three months going through 10000 Old Bailey records on microfilm, which also gave her the helpful context of many other cases (eg how common was it for anyone to be convicted of a particular crime). Although the Old Bailey records have now been digitized they are difficult to search because of OCR problems (the long s) and context is lost.
• Jo Pugh, a digital development manager at The National Archives, discussed his PhD research in information journeys in archival collections. He related how the problem now isn't amassing information, but restricting what we see. His research had compared how enquiries are formulated on email, phone calls or Twitter and had looked at how the experts (archivists) worked with researchers to resolve archival queries. He had found that research guides could help to reduce uncertainty, eg by explaining how to get the best out of a search.
• Tom Scott from Wellcome Collections explained how the context of their collections isn't just medical and so users don't know what's in the collections. Searching digitized collections meant items were isolated from their context "searchable but not understandable". They wanted to provide access by having a good reading experience, whether in person or online, so had tried to "encapsulate a librarian": a single domain model from a mix of systems for books, archives etc, extracting meaning of enquiries (eg cross references for TB/consumption/tuberculosis). He stressed that it is really important to record the metrics of what people are actually searching for.

The symposium rounded up with a discussion of how we could futureproof our collections. My take aways from the day are:

• Keep doing our existing work on educating researchers as early as possible, and look at how we can expand that with the resources we have.
• "Futureproofing requires quality cataloguing" - making sure our cataloguing is up-to-scratch.
• Assess any digitization project to ensure that high quality metadata is in place first and that it will support the needs of researchers wanting to use our collections.

RBSCG conference 2015: Hidden collections: revealed

In the first week of September I attended one day of the CILIP RBSCG's conference, Hidden Collections: Revealed. The conference was split between Friends' House Library, Lambeth Palace Library and the Friday was at the British Library's conference centre.

Where they have possibly the comfiest conference seats I have ever sat on.

It can be a bit strange arriving towards the end of a conference, when it feels like everyone else has already been networking for a couple of days, but I think the different venues for each day made this a bit easier? The conference had been divided up into six sessions, and I was there for the final two.

Session five was uncovering your collections - promotion
The first speaker was Adrian Edwards, Head of Printed Heritage Collections at the British Library, who spoke about the work they had done with the BL's comic collections to bring them to a much wider audience. The initial problem was having a large collection of comics, but not all of them catalogued, many of them poorly catalogued (wrong end dates, missing issues, hardly anything before the 1930s referenced) and stored in three different locations, all of which made it very hard for all but the most determined researcher to use them.  When the library at Colindale closed and two comics experts approached the library wanting to celebrate British comics, the decision was taken to put on an exhibition. Now, any exhibition is a huge amount of work, and this one was no exception, as the objectives included getting all that cataloguing done and supporting a wider range of researchers in using the collection. The eventual exhibition, Comics unmasked: art and anarchy in British Comics was successful, containing 217 unique exhibits and attracting a lot of new users into the building. Achievements included:

• Many comics catalogued for the first time
• All comics available on one site for the first time
• The material is now used more, including two doctoral students working on it.
• Staff expertise in the subject has increased enormously
• Selected rare material has been moved to a higher level of secure storage

Adrian concluded by saying that the exhibition had been a good way of highlighting hidden collections, and a good way of getting management support to get the essential cataloguing and collection moves completed. It is important to seize opportunities such as this.

Lara Haggerty from Innerpeffray Library then spoke about the difficulties in dealing with people's perception that it's just a load of old books. Her library is physically difficult to access, being five miles from the nearest town with only one bus a week. It is highly significant though, as it is the first public lending library in Scotland. The library had effectively become a museum but was doing very little promotion before she was appointed as a result of a business based forward plan. The key to success has been concentrating on the visitor experience and making it unique. They are too small to attract big tour groups on their own, but by working with other local organisations, have been able to increase the numbers.

Katie Sambrook, Head of Special Collections at King's College London then spoke about the Foreign and Commonwealth Office library, which was transferred to KCL after two years of negotiations. The collection had been rather hidden at the FCO as their primary remit wasn't to run a library. The transfer to an academic institution meant it would be more accessible, but the initial problem was how to reveal and promote this collection? Initially there was no catalogue in a useable form, so the first task was to catalogue the books (this took eight years with 2 or 3 project cataloguers working at a time. About 30% of the collection is now catalogued) as having the items on the catalogue is the most important form of promotion you can do. The cataloguers became expert in the subject matter so were able to assist readers and answer enquiries, whilst student assistants were employed to do basic collection processing and download catalogue records for non-special collections material. The collections were then promoted via real and virtual exhibitions, and visitors have come from all over the world. Promotional activities have included:

• Have a poster on the library gates, as many visitors spot it when walking past
• Produce leaflets and guides on certain aspects/themes of collections
• Bear in mind that many exhibition visitors will never make the transition to reader but will help to spread the word.
• Foster teaching and research for academic users by developing teaching seminars using special collections material and introducing students to the material. Getting use of collections incorporated into teaching assessments is key.

Katie also stated that she had found it easier to engage English academics with Special Collections, than History academics, which certainly echoes my own experience.

Session six covered Beyond the library and first to speak was Katharine Hogg, Librarian at the Foundling Museum. This is a research library of c.10,000 items, and the first priority when the collection first arrived there was to create an online catalogue. Paintings and prints have been catalogued and digitized, and making sure items appear on external websites has been key for promotion, such as Your Paintings, Concert programmes database and the English Short Title catalogue.  Collaboration has worked well for conservation projects with West Dean College and Camberwell College of Arts.

A PhD student, Hannah Manktelow, then spoke about discovering provincial Shakespeare with the British Library playbill collection. This collection had never been used for research as many of the playbills had been closed to public access. The key here was a digitization project which also captured a lot of metadata, including dates, keywords from bills and an indication of what would attract audiences. It was a really exciting project to work on as there is very little work on provincial theatre of this period, and the collection includes c. 75000 playbills. Her PhD has focussed in on case studies based on five provincial towns, although a major obstacle is that playbills of many performances won't have made it into collections.

Finally, a rare books collector, Mark  Byford, talked about his collection focussed on Tudor and Jacobean books. He has c. 1000 books, and has no catalogue whatsoever, but welcomes people to come and see his collection, or takes them out himself to events. He also loans books to academics.

I had a really interesting time at the conference. Not only did I find that others' experience echoed my own (for instance, that it is much easier to engage English depts. in Special Collections than History depts.), but it also emphasised the importance of cataloguing first and foremost in promoting collections. Repeatedly it was made clear that you can't choose what items to put on display without them being catalogued first. You can't plan outreach activities if you don't know what you have. No one will be able to find the item for their research, or do their PhD on your collection if it isn't catalogued.

My thanks to the RBSCG for an interesting and enjoyable conference.

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.

CILIP Conference 2015

At the beginning of July I spent a couple of days in Liverpool at CILIP Conference 2015, having been lucky enough to win a bursary from the ARLG London & South East region. I was keen to attend the conference, having worked in the area of Special Collections for well over ten years, so my conference attendance had tended to be restricted to those events that were closely connected to my specialist area. 

Concert Hall, where the keynotes took place

Keynotes

Perhaps what I most enjoyed about the conference were the keynote speakers. They included R. David Lankes, Erwin James, Cory Doctorow and Shami Chakrabarti. At previous conferences I’ve attended the keynotes have all been very connected to the specialist conference theme, and invariably given by someone from the library or archive world, so I had been interested to see in advance that this wasn’t so much the case with CILIP conference keynotes. It was great to see how engaged all the speakers were with the world of libraries and information, and brought an interesting perspective from the outside. Indeed, Erwin James’ account of the difference a prison library had made to his life after his conviction, what it had meant to his rehabilitation and then to his release had me almost in tears. R. David Lankes on ‘World domination through librarianship’ (you can’t beat a title like that!) was more controversial from a Special Collections perspective, as he talked about how collections are the demon, and how you may not have one to be a librarian, as often now they are leased or rented. But I could agree with him that librarians are educators, even if I am educating users about our special collections!

Erwin James

Session speakers 

The sessions I attended were mostly in the ‘demonstrating value’ stream, and I found many of the workshops particularly useful. I found that it was helpful to have to think of real life examples, and we were encouraged to share our ideas and processes with someone sitting near us, which also helped break the ice. I enjoyed the practical elements of these workshops, which provided a nice contrast to the keynotes. I also took some time out from ‘demonstrating value’ to go to the ‘digital futures’ stream and a session on MOOCs and small-scale CPD for library and information professionals. I found this interesting, having participated in one MOOC so far, and working towards my second year of revalidation, always being on the lookout for different ways to do CPD.

Exhibition

As I very rarely buy anything other than preservation supplies, I hadn’t been expecting to get much out of the exhibition, but, spurred on by a sheet to fill in with a sticker from each exhibitor, and the possibility of winning an iPad if this was completed, I spent some time on both days visiting each stand. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed meeting all the exhibitors and finding out about their products. Most of them also appeared to be interested to meet me, and I think it was a good way of finding out about new products and services, which I can always tell colleagues about, even if they aren’t so relevant to my own role. 

Rather amazing surroundings for the exhibition

Networking

Taking part in networking between sessions was one of my main reasons for wanting to attend the conference. It proved to be very different to networking at the smaller conference I have been used to attending, as with 600 people there and no delegate list in advance, it was hard to work out who I would like to meet with once there. I found that manning the ARLG stall during one of the breaks helped, as people then came up to talk to me and found out about ARLG, and I did manage to arrange to meet up with a few people by using social media in advance of the conference. I think this was something of a missed opportunity though, as with a delegate list in advance and people’s Twitter details, for instance, it would have been a lot easier to arrange a meet up. It was possible to register as an event attendee on the conference app in advance, which I did, but very few people did this.

ARLG stand

What now?

So, what next? The conference was an intense couple of days, but I came away feeling like I’d got a better grasp of the ‘bigger picture’ in librarianship, as well as picking up some useful tips for demonstrating value. I’m hoping I’ll be able to put some of those into practice in my job over the next few months. I’ve provided feedback to CILIP on ways in which I think the conference was beneficial, as well as how it could be improved – particularly the venue, which really wasn’t very accessible with huge numbers of steps everywhere, but there were also issues with timekeeping and sessions running over. My thanks go to the ARLG London & South East for sponsoring my place.

The speakers' presentations are now available on the conference website.

Out of the box: enabling access to archives

The day after the charismatic connecting course, I went on a very different day. This was held at Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives, and was themed around the issue of accessibility to archives. I'd thought we were doing OK on accessibility where I work (as a couple of people who use wheelchairs had been able to use our collections with no problem) until a dyslexic student with a looming coursework deadline had arrived needing help with some handwritten autobiographies and I didn't know where to start.

This was a free day organised by THLHLA as part of the "out of the box" project, with support from The National Archives and a local disability arts organisation, Film pro. It started with seven 10 minute case studies (with a break halfway through!) from a range of organisations, demonstrating accessibility projects they had worked on. These included:

• Out of the box project (Tower Hamlets)
• Film pro
• Royal Air Force Museum - which had won an Autism Access Award. Their information packs are available to download from their website.
• Hackney Museum, which actively encourages people to say how the museum can be made more accessible.
• Sara Griffiths from The National Archives talked about their There Be Monsters [pdf link], which built a permanent legacy in the grounds, and Prisoner 4099 projects.
• Surrey Heritage about how they try to be accessible by having a guide on their website, working with groups to tailor a particular approach (e.g. they have records from asylums that have since closed, and they worked with Woking Mind to identify the places and people in photographs), have different mice and keyboards available, have a handling collection for use by people with visual impairments and produce tactile books based on stories from the archives. All the staff have been trained in being dementia-friendly and they are holding trial coffee mornings to try and help stimulate the memories of people with dementia.
• Chris Haydon from Freewheelers Theatre talked about their work producing a series of films about the history of disability in Surrey and on the Epsom Cluster of mental health hospitals.

A free (and very tasty) lunch was then provided, with plenty of time to talk to other participants about accessibility in their archives and special collections, plus an opportunity to look at the exhibition in the foyer area of the library.

The afternoon kicked off with a poetry reading by one of the Out of the box participants, Sarah. Her poetry was very funny and gave a great insight into how she had felt about using archival collections. As with the There Be Monsters project at The National Archives, it was good to see different, creative, outlets for research in archives, rather than an academic article etc.

The participants then divided into three groups to discuss topics of interest to them from a suggested three:
a) Improving access to the archives searchroom and catalogues
b) Access to collections for people with learning disabilities
c) Use and promotion of archives as artistic/creative stimuli
I opted for a), as I felt this was the most pertinent to my own situation. Ideas that came out of my discussion group included:

• Having "creative enablers" around to help on targeted days, much like a "buddy" type system. The creative enabler can help to remove those barriers to research.
• Implications of the Care Act 2014, which encourages co-production between health and social services, service users and providers. It may be that there are funding sources available from adult social care as the key is personalisation - that it's geared to the needs of the individual service user.
• Have an "access group" with the aim of demystifying a visit to archives/special collections and building confidence to help get people through the door. This might suit a volunteer who is already a keen user of collections.
• Running a new user induction session, which would apply to any user, not just someone who is disabled.

We also talked about the problems of making archive catalogues accessible. Archives Hub is very clear and easy to use, but specific archive catalogues tend to be much less so. The catalogue at The Keep was recommended as particularly good though. We all agreed that one of the huge problems is lack of resources - everyone had a cataloguing backlog, which then makes it hard to justify spending time doing things like transcribing records.

At the end of the day each group reported back to all of us. I really enjoyed my day on this workshop. There was a lot to think about, and I also made some useful contacts. My thanks to the organisers.

Training: Charismatic connecting

I'd spotted that our Staff Development department at work was running a day's training on networking skills, which I thought looked interesting and useful.  The day was led by Russell Wardrop from Kissing with Confidence, an organisation that offers training in public speaking, networking, coaching, influencing and negotiating.

I had wondered in advance whether we were going to spend the day learning how to shake hands etc, and, whilst we did do a tiny bit of that, there was a whole lot more to it! The day was split into four chunks, and at the beginning we were each given a reflective sheet to fill in, to note specific skills we'd learnt each time, plus what we should start and stop doing, do more of and change. This helped me to think about what I'd learnt in each section and reflect on it.

We started off by talking about self-confidence, where it comes from and how you can develop it. It is connected with both skills and self-awareness, so being aware of a skills deficit and taking action to acquire those skills, will help you to develop self-confidence. Simple preparatory measures, such as looking into who the other delegates are in advance of a conference and thinking about who you would like to talk to, all help.

Then we worked our way through the seven principles:

1. Self-awareness
This covered self-regard and resilience, optimism, happiness and assertiveness. We looked at practical ways of building optimism and happiness.
2. Accentuate the positive
No one wants to hang around with someone negative, so think about your personal narrative and how you can focus on the positive.
3. Be a chameleon



A chameleon. From Wikimedia Commons

When networking, you need to adapt to the other person's style. Every word they say is a clue to their lives and really good networkers really listen to what is being said. We then went on to discuss the different types of listening (active, passive, selective) and how to be a good active listener, which means making it obvious that you are listening. One of the great things about the day was the opportunity to keep practising what we'd been learning by engaging with the others on the course. At one point I had to be a deliberately very passive listener, which was actually quite hard!
4. Be appropriately memorable
I could think of so many ways to be inappropriately memorable... But that wasn't the point. We talked about dress, body language, small talk and knowledge and how, whilst you can show your personality, it's important to demonstrate respect for the other person and show that you have made an effort. Think about how you would like people to remember you after your meeting. We then did an exercise working on small talk and swopping partners as we added in different aspects to work on. It was helpful to try out different postures, and think about how each makes you come across. I also found this section useful as we had a diagram of a room at an event, with various people identified on it, and we discussed the pros and cons of approaching these people.
5. Mastering modern manners
This section started with us brainstorming in groups the top ten things that annoy us. A lot of the annoyances seemed to be about the appropriate use of mobile phones(!), but the general theme was behaviour that seems to indicate someone isn't thinking of others, such as poor timekeeping, being unreliable or failing to say please/thank you. Again, much food for thought, as the lists were individual to each of us, although with significant crossover, and it made us think about how we come across to others, and simple things to do to help people think well of you.
6. Guard your reputation
Related to this was guarding your reputation. Once people are thinking well of you, you want to it stay that way! We talked about what we'd like to be known for, including professionalism, discretion and knowledge of our specialism. We also talked about our three levels of network: our personal networks, which consist of our friends and maybe social activities/clubs we belong to, our operational networks, which are our colleagues at work, and our strategic networks, which are the people with the bigger picture, and include our coaches and mentors.
7. Follow up
Finally, we learnt about following up. How many times have you taken someone's card or email address at a conference and promised to be in touch, and then not followed through?! Yet, without follow up, there's no point doing all the previous six principles. We discussed being assertive in following up, how to end a conversation with a promise of a future meeting, and then how to go about arranging that. For example, you are far more likely to get someone to agree to spend 20/30 minutes meeting you for a coffee, than suggesting a lengthy meeting a long way from where they work.

This is only a brief overview of the day's course, but I learnt a huge amount from it, plus a lot which I can hopefully put into practice at events I'm attending over the summer for work.

Archives for All?

Last week I went to a day's workshop with the Education and Outreach department of the National Archives.

I found it a really useful day, with plenty of networking opportunities with other attendees (especially over a free lunch!), and a range of speakers.

First of all, Krishna Kaur (TNA Equality & Diversity Co-ordinator) talked us through Equality and Diversity at the National Archives, and we discussed the question how does your organisation promote Equality and Diversity across policy and practice?  in groups. I found this really interesting, as I've done Equality and Diversity training in both my current job and my previous one, but wanted to know how to take it to the next step, as it came up whilst I was putting together a funding bid. Not only is it important to remove physical barriers to people using your service, but how do you actively promote it so that a broader range of people use it? We talked about the protected characteristics (age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage & civil partnership, pregnancy & maternity, race, religion & belief, sex, sexual orientation) and how to actively promote equality and diversity through all kinds of areas such as: providing alternative formats for information (exhibition captions, for instance), positive action at interview (such as the Positive About Disabled People symbol that some organisations use in recruitment), and what events are recognised and celebrated through work at the archives/special collections. We also discussed barriers: time, money, resources, perceptions, listed buildings, conservation requirements.

Then the Outreach Manager, Sara Griffiths, talked to us about the new directions their outreach is going in, to inspire creativity as well as research. Their Caribbean Through a Lens project had made the most of social media, and encouraged participation by inviting comments and contributions, as well as working with community groups.

After lunch we heard about educational resources on the web from the Education Web Manager, Clare Horrie, and a colleague. This focussed on the lesson plans and more that TNA has available on its website, mainly about history and centred on their collections. It looks amazing, although I was a bit overwhelmed by the amount they had available (and how much work it must have taken to get it there). However, the ideas are scaleable. This is their document of the month feature, which is quite relevant to one of the collections I work with... They are also making a lot of use of Pinterest, Flickr, Facebook and Twitter, which is good to hear.

Sarah Hutton, the Onsite Education Manager, with Lizzie Skeaping, the Education Officer, then gave us a taster of various educational activities they offer, including a table full of documents to have a look at, and a Magna Carta lesson where we all got to play with iPads. Did people take Magna Carta seriously? is taught by TNA but the children are in their own classroom back in school. It was fun having a go at the activities, and it also helped to see the range of things on offer, some of which I can imagine using. TNA is moving to a WordPress platform for their online lessons, which is free, so something that could be used in many places.

Finally, Fleur Soper and Kate Wheeler (Collections Knowledge Managers) talked to us about the Archiving the Arts programme (which I've already participated in at work by submitting details of some of our collections), and related areas to support the arts. This included a discussion touching on a range of issues, including funding. It is looking like the introduction of the Archives Accreditation standard means that most, if not all, future funders will expect the recipients of their funding to be accredited.

I really enjoyed my day at TNA. I had several useful discussion over lunch, and also learnt a lot from the speakers and activities. It was an interesting day, that had been thoughtfully arranged to include plenty of networking opportunities and hands on activities. My thanks to TNA for organising it.

Visit: Bromley House Library, cataloguing projects, volunteers and fundraising

Last week I went on an Historic Libraries Forum workshop covering retrospective cataloguing projects, working with volunteers and fundraising. I found it really useful, with lots of great networking opportunities, as well as a chance to see a lovely library and get some new ideas to try. The photos on this post were taken by me, with permission from Bromley House, but I didn't use flash so they aren't the best photos I've ever taken!

The visit was hosted by Bromley House Library, a subscription library in the centre of Nottingham, which has existed for nearly 200 years and been in its current building since 1821. The library is home to about 40,000 books, (about 200 of which could be described as "rare" and about 100 manuscripts), and the staff have spent the last couple of years getting them catalogued using the Heritage LMS from ISOxford; the OPAC will be available shortly online. The visit was centred around this process, but commenced with a tour of the building and its garden, which really helped to set the context for the project.

Children's book section - there are some lovely classics I remember from my childhood here!

The building is tall, with rooms leading off each other, and the in-house classification system had become split between rooms making it hard for people to find items using the card catalogue. The collections have been gathered together over the years, and although sections such as modern fiction are weeded, anything published pre-1970 isn't. Whilst environmental control is difficult in a building like this, an enthusiastic conservation group meets each week, trained by a conservator to take basic book conservation measures, such as cleaning, making boxes and tying tape. Other issues are the beautiful gallery room, with books shelved to quite a high level (although it now takes 2-3 people together to get books from the highest shelves) and a vertiginous spiral staircase on which only one person at a time is allowed!

 Background and staff
 A series of talks gave the background to the cataloguing project, which was funded by a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Before the application, research had been done into how other libraries had coped with using volunteers to catalogue books, and it was clear that a system of training and supervision would need to be set up. This entailed recruiting a part-time project leader, plus several part-time professional cataloguers, who would then each oversee a team of volunteers, covering the whole week between them. Volunteers were mostly drawn from the library's own members, and to ensure consistency, each were asked to commit to at least one half day session each week. Adverts were placed for the professional staff, and copies of the job descriptions for these and the project leader were available for us to see.

Cataloguing process
The new professional staff put together a cataloguing procedure for their newly acquired LMS, together with the compact agreed with volunteers and handlining guidelines for the books. The cataloguing procedure was revised and updated as they went along and learnt from their experiences, particularly as the volunteers had varying levels of IT ability. Help sheets were developed for difficult groups of items. Although Heritage doesn't use MARC, records could be downloaded from the British Library and the cataloguing procedure used AACR2 and DCRM(B) (where appropriate). They aimed for a greater level of detail than in most of the downloaded records. Quality control was achieved by sampling and checking work, creating lists of commons errors to watch out for and conducting a stock check near the end using the accessions register to make sure nothing had been missed.

Rare books
Work on this area was done by two people who already had experience in cataloguing rare books. These books again were catalogued to a much higher level of detail, using DCRM(B) and with help from the CILIP RBSCG guidelines. Particular attention was paid to recording details of bindings, provenance and marginalia, in a standard form in the Notes field in Heritage. A useful feature of Heritage was the ability to add local notes (not visible in the OPAC) to record condition, meaning that reports can now be run to pick out items for conservation work. Where appropriate, items were submitted to ESTC, contributing to the international world of scholarship.

Fundraising
Money for the project had come from the Heritage Lottery Fund, and a variety of small grants from charitable trusts. Tips shared about fundraising were:

• Consider carefully the goals of each trust you are applying to and make sure your aims are tailored very specifically to their terms.
• Generally you won't get funding for things that should be a normal part of the library operation, e.g. the expense of acquiring a new LMS.
• Local trusts are particularly worth looking out for, although individual grants may be small.
• Be aware of what the rest of your institution is doing, you don't want to be obstructing their fundraising efforts, or vice versa!
• Be aware of reporting and evaluation requirements throughout the project, and try to involve the funders in your work, e.g. by inviting them to volunteers' parties.
• Be aware of outreach potential, often a key part of making a fundraising application. Trusts will often want to see outreach beyond your usual customer base, and maybe a culture change in the organisation so that this is sustained in the long term.

Photocopies are paid for by putting money in the frog

 Lessons learned
I found it really useful to hear what might have been done differently with the benefit of hindsight, as well as what had gone well.

• One good point was that the volunteers were in for 10 sessions a week, which left no time for system maintenance or downtime. 
• There were also useful tips on communication between part-time staff, especially where they don't overlap, and in motivation (apparently sweets are the key, as well as parties!).
• It was clear that both the staff and volunteers had really taken ownership of the project and had gained a lot from it, both in terms of skills acquired (such as IT) and by building networks and adding value to the institution.
• I also found it very useful to see the documentation, ranging from job descriptions to cataloguing manuals.

And finally, a picture of the garden behind the library, a little oasis in the centre of Nottingham, maintained by volunteers and much enjoyed by members.

Thank you to Bromley House for a really interesting day.

Voices for the library

On behalf of the Historic Libraries Forum, I was asked to write a blog post for Voices for the Library to help public libraries with rare or historic book collections find support and advice. You can read the post here: Libraries in danger: a different angle.

This was a nice example of networking - I met Gary Green, from Voices for the Library, at the CIG12 conference, where he spoke and I introduced myself to him afterwards, mainly at that point because he works for Surrey libraries, the public library service I use myself. It was when the sale of books from Wigan public library became public that we came up with the idea of a blog post.