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

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.

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.

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.

HLF conference 2012: Part 3 Social media

 Here's the final part of my write up of the HLF conference on 20th November 2012.

3) Social media in libraries 
The main speaker in this section was Alison Cullingford (Special Collections Librarian at Bradford University), who I suspect needs no introduction to any special collections librarian who's dabbled in social media already! The case study was provided by Jill Whitelock (Head of Special Collections, Cambridge University Library).

Some conference attendees were already using social media in their libraries, others were not, and Alison emphasised the importance of using it at the right level for both you and your institution. It is now ubiquitous - all good websites now include things like comment boxes and links to share pages on Twitter, Facebook etc.

• Social media is particularly good for small libraries, as it allows them to punch well above their weight.
• Much of it is intuitive and easy to learn, and there is a lot of help available out there.
• Use responsibly and with common sense. Your institution might perceive there is a risk from social media so be prepared to put together a case.
• You can only use pictures to which you have the rights, so this might limit what you can post online.
• Blogging and other social media are an excellent CPD opportunity for staff.

Where to start?
Blogging is the most comfortable place to start from, as you can use the story of your special collections and go beyond what you can do on a corporate website. Both Alison and Jill are using Wordpress. Put anything ongoing and dynamic on the blog and remember it has a long shelflife so people searching even years later on will still be able to find it.

• Moderate comments to weed out any spam. 
• Remember that the blog will not look after itself, so act like an editor and find and commission content. 
• Have some posts queued so you're never without one handy. 
• Join in with other blogs to do themed posts and make your content go further by using other social media. 
• Ask to be featured on your library's homepage to increase the number of hits. 
• Always ask someone else to read through your posts before they go live.

The 100 objects style format has worked well at various places (100 objects Bradford, 52 weeks of fantastic bindings, 52 weeks of inspiring illustrations) and ends up working like a FAQ about the collections. The  Cambridge Special Collections Blog has a mixture of post styles, some time-specific to mark anniversaries or publicise events. There are also separate project blogs, such as the Incunabula cataloguing project, and the Tower Project. Guest posts are used to demonstrate relevance and that collections are being used (you can see a guest post I wrote for the Cambridge Incunabula Project blog here).

Flickr works well for special collections images, and avoids the need to invest in expensive image management software (Special Collections Bradford Flickr photostream). Some institutions have used students to film special collections work as part of their projects (Tyne & Wear archives, LSE).

Twitter can be controversial as it's easy to say things you shouldn't, but it's a brilliant way of getting conversations started, being interactive and getting feedback quickly. During the day there are a lot of professionals using it, and a good international angle emerges when people in other time zones get to work too. I liked Alison's tip of never using Twitter if you're in a bad mood!

Golden rule: think about what you're doing and why you're doing it

Sources to find out more:
CPD23 provides a good overview of getting started with social media.
Ned Potter (the Wikiman) has guidelines for using social media on his blog.

HLF conference 2012: Part 2 Exhibitions

Continuing my write up of the 2012 Historic Libraries Forum conference: Making the most of your special collections.


2) Exhibitions
The main speaker on exhibitions was Tanya Kirk (Lead Curator of Printed Literary Sources at the British Library), who had recently curated the summer exhibition, Writing Britain: literary wonderlands and wastelands. Case studies were provided by Katie Sambrook (Special Collections Librarian at King's College London) and Emily Dourish (Exhibitions Officer at Cambridge University Library).

Tanya outlined the exhibitions process at the British Library. It is run as a project, with each exhibition usually taking 2-3 years of planning and implementation. I have added comments made by Katie and Emily in their case studies to the outline below.

• Proposal - sell exhibition ideas to colleagues and your marketing department/wider institution. Why do you think your institution is the right place for this exhibition? Does it have a broad or narrow focus, and is this likely to appeal to enough people? This will also depend on whether you are trying to generate revenue, or just raise awareness of your library/institution and promote your collections. An exhibition is an immense amount of work, even if you only have a few display cases, so are you going to be a single curator (and if so, what happens about the rest of your work whilst this is going on?) or curate jointly with someone else? Emily talked about how academics at Cambridge were keen to be involved with an exhibition because it could count as evidence for their impact rating in REF.
• Marketing - does it link with your institution's "brand"? There was a difference here between case studies. Some had marketing departments that liked to link the exhibition to modern times, and avoid having a "dusty image", other institutions were keen to emphasise the historical aspects of what they were displaying.
• Audience test and find out what people would expect to see if they came to your exhibition. Similarly. talk to colleagues to ensure you are remaining on track topic-wise. Know your audience - the BL aims exhibition labels at a reading age of GCSE grade C to make it accessible. Knowing your audience also means you know whether you can use technical terms or not.
• Build a list of collection items considered for exhibition, otherwise you'll forget them. Record information about the copy you want, which opening you want and the book's condition on a spreadsheet, and take photos to remind yourself what the item looks like. Keep in mind the overall look and aim for variety in each display case. You can also use colour pictures to mock up the display case.
• Check whether items are suitable for display, bearing in mind the limitations of your display space, for example, is the environment suitable and is the book happy to open far enough for display purposes?
• Arrange exhibition loans, if necessary. Most institutions want to receive loan requests at least six months before the exhibition. Bear in mind that loans can be expensive.
• When writing labels be rigorous about fact checking and always have someone available to proofread and edit. Avoid writing consecutive labels as people don't read everything and may miss some out. Start with a hook at the beginning of the label to draw people in and use active language and metaphor. Encourage people to look at the object, not just read the label. Always test your labels with non-expert.
• Publicity - encourage people to blog about your exhibition to raise awareness. Make sure your front of house staff know about the exhibition so they can "sell" it too.
• Katie and Emily had different policies about online exhibitions. At King's they publish the online exhibition only after the physical display has been taken down, to encourage people to go and see it whilst it's there. Whereas at Cambridge the online exhibition is published at the same time.

I thought there were some great ideas in this part of the conference, and definitely some I'll be able to use in the future. I also found it helpful to have an overview of the whole exhibition process at the British Library. Obviously, that's a lot bigger than anywhere I've worked, but the same principles apply.

HLF conference 2012: Part 1 Filming

Earlier this week I was at the Historic Libraries Forum conference, held at the Bishopsgate Institute in London. I thought it was an excellent conference, although I may be a little biased! ;-) Well, I certainly took away a lot of useful ideas, and I think, from the feedback we received, that others did too.

The day was structured with three longer talks in the morning, and five case studies in the afternoon, but I'm going to group them into themes for the write up. I've split this into three posts as there was a lot to take in.

1) Filming in libraries
The main speaker was Harvey Edgington, the National Trust's Broadcast and Media Manager, who gave us an overview of how the NT works with film companies who want to film on location at any of the properties. This covered an immense scope, from Pride and Prejudice (yes, both the Colin Firth one and the Keira Knightley one) to documentaries and fashion shows.Whilst I doubt most libraries can replicate the scale (5 or 6 new enquiries a day from film crews, and 3 crews filming every day), there was a lot of pertinent information about actually dealing with film crews.

Case studies were provided by Suzanne Paul (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge) and Naomi Percival (Lambeth Palace Library).

Main points about filming:

• Filming can generate money (both for your library and the local area) and also raise awareness of your library. Remember that TV advertising costs a fortune so publicity like this can be fantastic.
• Risks involved include the film being a flop and possibly having to close to users, causing alienation. Harvey mentioned that films don't necessarily show a property as it actually is, thereby causing disappointment amongst visitors - I still remember my teenage disappointment at arriving at Lyme Park to discover there wasn't a great sweeping long drive leading by the lake where THAT scene with Colin Firth was filmed. Suzanne recommended checking that the filming will fit with the brand and direction of both your library and the wider institution.
• Don't underestimate the time involved. Film crews always run over and can also be very last minute about getting in touch.
• Have a contract setting out very clearly what your charges are (at the discussion afterwards people mentioned amounts such as £250 per hour, or £1000 per day, with extra charges for filming outside normal working hours). It should also state clearly whether items are allowed to be moved or handled, use of lights and floor protection and that the film crew will be supervised at all times by a member of library staff. Don't believe the film crew when they plead poverty, just be clear about what your charges are (some places asked for a 50% deposit before filming could be agreed, most places demanded payment up front before filming could commence).
• Encourage the crew to do a recce before filming, and to specify in advance what books they would like to film. Ensure those books are robust enough to withstand filming, and take precautions if something is requested a lot.
• Check the film crew understands the contract - if they want "establishing shots" outside, do you have the right to grant this, or do you need to involve someone else in your institution?
• Establish practicalities in advance, for example, if parking is limited nearby or if the access is via a spiral staircase.
• Be prepared to be a talking head - if you don't want to be on camera, find someone in advance who is prepared to do it!
• Take photos of the film crew at work, which you can then use to publicise your library.
• Take care with copyright. Film crews tend not to understand this so make sure that it is clear in the contract that getting copyright clearance is their responsibility. Also watch out for potential copyright implications if they want to take close ups of books, objects, portraits etc. 
• Make sure your library/institution is mentioned in the credits.
• After broadcast, be prepared for people getting in touch demanding to know why white gloves aren't being worn. The British Library has some information about this to which people can be referred!
• Review the filming afterwards to inform your future decisions. Was it worth doing?

This all backed up my own experiences of working with film crews. It isn't glamorous, but it can be worth it to get your library publicised. And, OK, I did get to meet Joanna Lumley once! I have also found lis-rarebooks and Twitter very useful for finding other librarians willing to share their filming policies (and horror stories).