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).

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.

CILIP CIG conference: The value of cataloguing

I had a great few days at the CIG 2012 conference in Sheffield last month. Although I've been to CIG events before, I'd never been to the conference. It was a very intense couple of days and I'm not going to attempt to blog all of it, so these are some of the thoughts and reflections I've brought away.

First of all, and I should really know this by now, librarians always seem to keen to share their knowledge and get to know you. This group was no exception. I only knew a couple of other attendees IRL, although I "knew" some of the others from Twitter, yet I quickly met a whole crowd of people all exchanging information, opinions and advice. Apart from anything else, it was enormous fun (well, have you ever been in a pub with about 30 cataloguers before?!). People had even made cake to share.

Second, don't be scared about the future. Yes, there are big changes coming - not only RDA, but also the world we work in is changing, especially in the current economic climate. Yet we heard from some brilliant speakers about how their libraries had weathered storms in the past (Heather Jardine pointed out that everyone had survived the arrival of AACR2). There was such a range of experience present: some libraries were still using UKMARC, others were about to jump to RDA. There was controversy: is MARC really about to die? (probably). Many people talked about the advantages of collaborative working, which offers so many advantages. My favourite was Deborah Lee, on NACO funnels. I'd love to join a NACO funnel, but I doubt it would be possible for me at the moment! And I really enjoyed Ian Fairclough talking about collaborating to improve bibliographic data quality - check out Typo of the day for librarians! There was a definite feeling of we're all in this together.

Third, librarians can really make a difference. Well, we knew that, but does the rest of the world?  Dave Pattern's keynote address reported on research that shows how library use can predict what grade students will get (amusingly, there is even a 2am rise in library use for students who get lower grades - demonstrating that they've left it to the last minute. Apparently the best achievers are in the library by 9am). How does knowing that affect how we promote our library services?

Other key points, which I've made into a list of Things To Do (either immediately or later):

• Make the most of the functionality in your catalogue and what it can tell you about how people are searching it. Then use that data to enhance catalogue records.
•  Cataloguing consistency AND workflow are important - how to catalogue consistently, speedily but still providing what users need. This means making some strategic decisions about outsourcing work, prioritisation, using tools that can speed things up and making use of controlled vocabularies.Areas all touched on repeatedly in presentations by Lucy Bell, Michael Emly and Gary Green.
• Also, don't ignore the history of your catalogue. Keep a record of the cataloguing decisions you take, so that future generations of people working with your catalogue will know what they're dealing with (Anne Welsh and Katharine Whaite).
• Start thinking in terms of data in networks, rather than hierarchical trees (Simon Barron). RDA is the perfect opportunity to think about how we can do this.
• Find out more about RDA. Céline Carty updated us on RDA, having been to the ALA annual conference in Anaheim. She provided a handout with helpful links to the RDA Essentials webinars, amongst other resources. Stuart Hunt provided practical tips on implementing RDA in your ILS. Both recommended exploring the RDA Toolkit, if you have access to it.
• Look into ways to promote the value of cataloguing, for example, through the High Visibility Cataloguing blog. Try to make the most of networking opportunities. (Céline Carty, Karen Pierce and Rachel Playforth)

I've got pages of notes from this conference, so this post is just selected highlights from it. Speakers' slides are available here. A massive thank you to the organisers and speakers  - I had a wonderful few days up in Sheffield and learnt an enormous amount.

I also attended the FRBR training after the conference but I'll blog about that separately.

CILIP LIHG: Lost libraries walk

Back on 22nd June I joined an evening walk around London, organised by the CILIP Library & Information History Group (LIHG). It was entitled: "Lost Libraries: a walk through some of London’s forgotten book collections", and I wasn't really sure what to expect, after all, if a library's lost, how can you go and see it? But the blurb attracted me:

Twenty-first century London contains some of the finest book collections in the world, but what about the libraries that haven’t survived? If you know where to look, London’s streets and alleyways are crammed with the ghosts of libraries past.       

This brand new walk will carry you back through London’s history, to long-forgotten libraries, readers, librarians and collectors. In the company of Alice Ford-Smith (Principal Librarian, Dr Williams’s Library), Lost Libraries uncovers some of the links between London’s past and present book collections. From Bloomsbury to the City, you will hear tales of enterprise, transformation, obsession and destruction.

I wasn't disappointed. Not only did the organiser (Renae Satterley) and leader (Alice Ford-Smith) miraculously manage to arrange for the rain to stop for an exact 2 hour window whilst we walked, I also found out more about London's history and its libraries, as well as exploring all sorts of hidden corners I wouldn’t normally have ventured into.



The rendezvous was at Gray's Inn library, one of the Inns of Court and the only library we were able to see inside. We were allowed a silent look around upstairs (it was still open to users) before Alice gave us some background. Although the origins of the library lie back in the 15th century, the Holker Library building was opened in 1929 and subsequently destroyed (along with about 32,000 books) during World War II. The library you can see in the picture below was designed by Sir Edward Maufe and opened in 1958. This was one of several moments during the tour when the sheer scale of destruction at various points in history took my breath away.

Our next stop was a short walk along High Holborn, where we stood outside branches of WHSmith and Boots whilst Alice told us about the earliest subscription libraries, including those run by Smiths and Boots.

And on to stand outside the old Public Record Office building, and hear about its history, as since 2001 it has been the home of the Maughan Library of King's College, London. Of course, the old PRO is now part of the National Archives, housed at Kew.

On again to near Samuel Johnson's house where there was an opportunity to sit down by the statue of Hodge, whilst Alice told us about the sale of Johnson's library. The books were in poor condition, but were sufficiently annotated and signed by him to make it easy to reconstruct his library.

The following stop in Crane Court (now a tiny and unprepossessing alleyway but once the home of the Royal Society) was the site, in 1742, of the first circulating library. This was launched by Samuel Fancourt, a dissenting minister and librarian. He popularized the idea of a subscription library, and the Leeds Library is now the oldest surviving model of this type.

Down another alleyway by a pub we found ourselves in Devereux Court, where there were once four coffee houses. These offered newspapers and journals, as well as libraries of books. In Tom's coffee house here there were about 2,000 books available for use. Many of these coffee houses were wiped out during the Great Fire of London (1666) when more than 13,000 buildings were destroyed.

Although it isn't a library, we walked past Temple Church, which I thought warranted a photo.

as well as the huge picture attached to Sea Containers House for the Queen's Jubilee!

Which we walked past on our way to Sion College. Founded by Thomas White in 1630 and entitled to receive a copy of every book published in London between 1710 and 1836, it closed in 1996 and the collections were split between Lambeth Palace Library, King's College London and Guildhall Library. It seemed very sad, as the building is now home to investment managers and the trading floor is in what was the library.
 

Further over towards the City we stopped near where Samuel Pepys was born, outside St Bride's library. Although not a lost library as such, it is currently closed to researchers and is at risk, although recently it was announced it will reopen at the end of September 2012. Alice talked here about ways in which to support this and other libraries under threat, such as the Women’s Library (you can read about this in my earlier blog post).

Final stop on the walk was Stationers' Hall. This has its origins in 1403, and is a City Livery Company, which once held the right to enforce legislation over publishing. Their hall in Ave Maria Lane was another casualty of the Great Fire of 1666, when another book collection was lost. However, there is still a library available on site here today.

We ended the walk by St Paul's Cathedral. Many booksellers stored books in the crypt beneath St Paul's and during the Great Fire John Evelyn records that these remained burning for a week. After the fire over 90% of booksellers returned to the area, but World War II caused more chaos and destroyed business records as well as books and catalogues. Nowadays the area is very different.

My account doesn’t do the evening justice, as there was an immense amount of detail provided by Alice and a lot of work must have gone into preparing the walk. I would highly recommend joining a future walk if you haven’t already done so though, as I thoroughly enjoyed my evening. Thank you to both Alice and Renae for organising the evening.

APML: Disaster management

Before I started working in library world I had no idea how many related organisations there are out there. Of course, I'd heard of CILIP (in those days the Library Association) and I'd vaguely heard of the Cathedral Libraries & Archives Association (CLAA) through volunteering at a cathedral library, but I hadn't heard of any others. In those days I'd only just acquired my first email address and email bulletins were unheard of so it was quite hard to find out about organisations, especially as the smaller ones didn't seem to have websites. Of course, we're in a whole new world now, it is so much easier to find out about relevant organisations, and there are so many of them out there, often providing ways of networking with librarians working in a similar field, or inexpensive training opportunities. One of those groups is the Association of Pall Mall Libraries (APML). I went to a talk they organised before one of their meetings, on the subject of disaster management.

The speaker was Sarah Hamlyn, Lead Preventive Conservator at the British Library, who gave us an overview of disaster management issues and ideas of what to do in our own libraries both before a disaster and in the aftermath. I'll just pull out her main points to write about here.

She emphasised the importance of planning in advance what to do if an emergency occurs and practising. With the growth in social networking and the ease of taking photographs any incident is likely to be in public view very rapidly and you need to know how to deal with it. If you have one, use your press or PR department's expertise to prepare a statement.

Potential risks

The part to send shivers down any librarian's spine is the list of potential risks. These include both problems that would affect just one library or institution, or much wider emergencies that affect an entire city or area. These include: theft, violent incidents, power failure, pandemics, transport infrastructure failure, extreme weather, loss of IT systems, fire, flood, environmental problems, mould outbreaks, pest infestations, physical damage (e.g. buildings being brought down by the force of flood water). Obviously these affect collection items, but it's important not to forget about your staff. What are you going to do if your staff can't get to work, or get home again at the end of the day?

Sources of information

Relevant standards to follow are ISO 31000 2009, Risk management: Principles and guidelines, available here as a free download and ISO 22301, Business continuity management.

Many disaster plans and templates are available online, but make sure you update them to reflect your library's individual circumstances.

The British Library Preservation Advisory Service (BLPAC) has an e-resource about disaster and emergency planning. This has much more detail about what to do and links to other sources of information.

Sarah emphasised the points to consider:

Prevention and preparedness

• Try and avoid a disaster happening in the first place by eliminating as many risks as possible and identifying key staff and functions.

Emergency plan

• Keep your emergency plan updated, including emergency contact numbers for staff and a priority list of items. For instance, you need to be very specific about groups of items to help the fire brigade know what to rescue in an emergency - you may not be allowed in the building yourself. Be aware that both personal phone numbers and the location of valuable items are sensitive data and treat them accordingly.

• Test the plan. This is the only way you'll find out what doesn't work, before you have to "test" it in a genuine emergency. Practising also helps your staff in a real emergency as they already know what to do.

• Be clear about who has what role in an incident, including substitutes in case of illness or holiday. 

• If the site is compromised you need to know whether you can work normally and who makes the decision to close. You also need to know the minimum number of staff you need to be able to open. Be aware that in a big incident, you will also need to update your library users about the emergency situation, as well as staff.

• The plan should be easy to carry around and use. Many institutions use a small checklist that can be carried in a wallet or handbag. Check that staff know what they need with them if they're called to an out of hours emergency - things like money and keys. Large institutions, such as the British Library, have pre-loaded mobile phones with relevant numbers in and a paid staff out-of-hours rota for the staff who carry these.

•  Make salvage and the disaster plan part of induction training, and revisit the training frequently.