Aurlog

CILIP, the organisation that brought you £20 Amazon vouchers for members who recruit new members, and an exclusive car buying service with Nexus Cars now says:

Renew your CILIP membership by 14 February and you could win 1 of 10 free memberships for 2008.

I understand this kind of marketing approach for baked beans or magazines but it doesn’t quite seem right for membership of professional bodies. I can’t wait to see what they come up with next.

The CILIP RSS feed threw up a training session from UKeiG which, untypically for the CILIP RSS feed, amused me. It said:

Don’t know your RSS from your elbow? Haven’t a clue where to hang the blogroll?

That’s the stuff. It was however sad to see one of their reasons compelling people to come as:

Awareness of them [RSS, blogs, and wikis] amongst users will increase as Microsoft incorporates RSS and blogging into Office 2007, Outlook and IE 7 so don’t get left behind.

Do we all have to wait for Microsoft to integrate everything before we jump in? Isn’t half the point of all this that the platform shouldn’t matter?. Never mind.

Exciting news from CILIP:

An exclusive car buying service has been secured from Nexus Cars as the latest addition to Special Deals for CILIP Members, the package of affinity benefits that provide extra value for CILIP membership.

Nexus Cars can deliver the lowest cost cars for CILIP members via a free service. Prices delivered are guaranteed to be the lowest – with the backing of a 110% price guarantee. Full details are available on a special website set up for CILIP members at www.nexuscars.co.uk/cilip.

Sign me up then.

Following a continued attack by Tim Coates on the management and policies surrounding public libraries in the UK, Chris Armstrong criticises CILIP for failing to wade in. He makes a few points:

• That CILIP should respond in a reasoned and robust way to the charges made. The response should be published widely and be highly visible. (my emphasis)
• That CILIP – which rightly makes much of its advocacy role – should advise the Minister, the MLA, and government in general on an appropriate policy to rescue public libraries.
• This is the reason that CILIP members pay their subscriptions – to hear their professional body speak on their behalf. (my emphasis)

I am no expert on the actual situation of public library administration, management, or finance, so I will omit commenting on that, but what interests me here is the lack of leadership, and public advocacy by CILIP itself. The last point indeed highlights one of the reasons why I don’t pay a CILIP membership subscription, something I (and Librarywebbie) have pointed out before. Ian Snowley, president elect of CILIP, said when I raised this on his weblog, I do agree that CILIP must do all it can to make an impact in the wider media on libray issues, and plans are in hand to improve its media presence. Here’s one chance.

The above quotations from Chris Armstrong are only a selection from what he says. Do read the full arcticle.

In lieu of a proper post, I would like to point you in the direction of a post on Ian Snowley’s weblog from April about the Value of CILIP on which we had a short exchange of comments. Ian Snowley went to a meeting with other CILIP councillors at which Bob McKee suggested an exercise to assess the value of CILIP membership:

Bob started by asking us to list the five main benefits that members receive from CILIP:

• Qualifications
• Publications (Update & Gazette)
• Networks
• Community (Jobs Market/Info & Advice/Advocacy)
• Discounted Products (Courses and Facet Books)

And then asked us to put a value on them, on a monthly basis – taking into account what we spend on other ‘comparable’ activities.

I disagreed with his conclusions: The main reason I have never been a member of CILIP is that I don’t think it is worth the money. I could quote the whole post, but probably best to read it there.

CILIP (via Edith Speller) have come up with a shortlist of ‘membership messages’, the idea being that:

If someone asks you “why join CILIP?” can you give a simple, compelling answer?

Well, apparently now you can, and since I have been asking this question for a while now, I was most intrigued to know what these compelling reasons are. You will have to look at the website via the link above to see what the items on the shortlist actually are, as this organisation for information professionals has provided the list as an image without any alternative text, so I can’t cut and paste some examples. Thank goodness my visual impairment only extends as far as short-sightedness.

However, they are all of the following ilk:

CILIP: progressing your career, advancing your knowledge

Presumably this knowledge doesn’t include web standards. In all seriousness, what use is a phrase like that to someone who wants to know why they should join CILIP? Maybe they should stick to paying people to join.

Tom Roper links to a couple of interesting online debates concerning CILIP and its purpose, particular one on Freepint.

I’m playing with weblog setup, in particular tags, so if this post keeps reappearing and changing I apologise.

The Times reports some research that has been done…

…which suggests that being a librarian induces more stress than working for the emergency services, driving a 125mph express, or teaching a class of ill-behaved children.

I offer no comment except to say that it seems that CILIP have their work cut out.

CILIP are offering £20 Amazon vouchers to those who recruit new members. It doesn’t strike me as the best of reasons to join:

ME: Why should I join?
CILIP MEMBER: I get 20 quid

I appreciate they have to market themselves, but they should surely stand on their own merits without this kind of gimmick. I also like the way the CILIP marketing manager attempts to argue herself out of a job:

“All our research shows that existing CILIP members are by far the best recruiters,” says CILIP’s Marketing Manager Louisa Myatt.

CILIP recently revamped Lisjobnet, its job advertisement site. You can now search by keyword, location, or secor, which is welcome if overdue.

It would be nice to have definitions of their geographical areas. I live in Bedfordshire, for which it is always hard determine the correct region. I think I would come under East of England. Something few job search sites do is let you combine areas: I would like to look at Hertfordshire (South East), Bedfordshire, and Cambridgeshire without checking two times or more times. There are other related problems, such as not being able to combine sector and location.

Most importantly, there is no RSS feed, although it wouldn’t be much use if you couldn’t refine a little more than All Jobs. There is at least an email alert now, but that does just give you All Jobs.