Aurlog

Criticism of CILIP

There have been a number of recent posts debating, and in some cases criticising, CILIP and why one would join or become a chartered member:

In CILIP: What is it good for?, Information Overlord asked

if you're a member, why are you a member? Out of habit? because you think it looks good if you are? some other reasons? If you're not a member, what would make you want to become one??

The many commenters were mostly law librarians and mostly unenthusiastic. There was some debate, including some rare input from CILIP people who focussed on the publicity angle. Elspeth Hyams of CILIP made the point in response to CILIP's silence on difficult issues with reference to the Kent "deprofessionalisation" that CILIP cannot intervene publicly in these cases as they represent both sides:

Kent was an interesting case because it illustrated why, unlike the Royal College of Nursing, CILIP cannot act like a union: the disagreement was between managers and their staff, at both levels, members of CILIP.

I think this is an admission that CILIP cannot and will not do public advocacy of the profession and support its members. In reply I wrote:

However, I cannot see why CILIP could not have even made a statement of the kind you just made, explaining the case, even[if] it only appeared on its website. Why when I read about this [issue] in the Guardian were CILIP not mentioned emphasising the importance of professional librarianship- which is surely half the point of the organisation- while the AUT were mentioned as campaigning against job losses? Surely too, there were also AUT members on both sides of that dispute: many university managers are also AUT members.

Matthew Mezey (news editor of Update) and Debby Raven (editor of Gazette) seemed to suggest that part of the answer lay in contributing more to these internal publications, to which I replied:

Update is an internal document. I doubt that many university or council managers outside the library read it, so I don't think this is publicly advocating the profession at all. You talk of publicity, but preaching to the converted is hardly the issue. It is people and organisations outside the profession that need to be convinced. For example, when library closures are in the news, why is Ian Snowley [CILIP president, or not anymore I believe] not on TV?

Information Overlord provides an excellent summary and discussion of the above comments (without the vain self-references as above). In a comment to this second post, Jennie points out another Kent story, this time of a library closure, where the local community are marching and protesting and forming action groups, and still no word from CILIP

Anne Welsh picked up on this post by asking Why CILIP? She is a lot more positive and while noting,

I also noticed that although the post went up on 26 January, the first comment from a Cilip representative / employee was not until 11 February, indicating, perhaps, that RSS flows slowly to Cilip HQ.

she is generally much more positive and gives a number of reasons which she summarises thus:

So, I guess for me Cilip is all about keeping informed and networking. Further, I'd say that, as a member, I think of Cilip as something that I am part of, that I can contribute to, and, if there are enough other members with similar views, change.

Fair enough, although I think there are increasingly more ways to keep informed without handing over cash to Ridgmount Street, and that CILIP has failed to lead the way in information delivery and dissemination. I understand that CILIP will be invaluable for networking, depending on how you view networking and its necessity/benefits, something I don't want to go into here. Anne also wrote a related post called Why charter? which discussed a talk she attended on the subject. There are some reasonable reasons given at one point (my numbering):

These are all things (no. 3 excepted) I feel I can, and should, do myself without having to rely on a crutch such as CILIP or part with money for the privilege. What worries me is the observation near the end that:

She and the other chartered librarians in the room all agreed wholeheartedly that chartering is a personal journey, so that although everyone fulfills the same criteria, the experience they gain along the way is totally unique.

I believe a qualification (counting chartership as a qualification) should not be about the journey but should prove something to a current or future employer. I don't go to work for personal gratification or for a journey: I do so because I need the money but I want to do the best I can while I am there. A commenter, James P. Mullan, says something similar which I wholeheartedly disagree with:

I also think Chartership shows a committment to a career in Librarianship, I'm always concerned about anyone who doesn.t want to become a Chartered Librarian as a result.

The library profession seems obsessed by proving commitment (rather than providing skills): I've heard that used as a reason to pursue the M.A. too. Surely this is something for an employer to worry about: commitment to a job is surely far more important than commitment to a career or a profession. I'm happy to do my job to the best of my ability and don't think I am a worse librarian in any way because I don't attend certain seminars or training courses in order to pursue chartership.

101 Tips for School Librarians has a different take on chartership:

CILIP are often accused of non-representation in the school library community. They take £17 off my pay every month, and I still can.t figure out why, other than the fact that I can continue to call myself .chartered.. My wife pays £30 a year for the same privilege as a teacher. Something doesn't add up. I'm sure CILIP would disagree with my assessment, so their end of the stick can be found here.

However, they do have a couple of useful spots on their website, and they offer decent training events if you can afford to travel to London.

Most of this of course is available without membership, although training events will obviously cost more; the range of training courses, especially in terms of specificity, also needs drastic improvement in my opinion. He also mentions LisJobnet (freely available online, even to non-members), and their special interest groups. Having never been a member, this latter is one area which I really cannot comment on, although Mr 101tips says they "vary between the bland (2 shoddy leaflets a year) to the sublime (real support)".

I would in any case recommend you read the actual posts and comments, especially the Information Overlord ones.

A.D. V ID. MART. MMVIII

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Public library cataloguing savings

Tim Coates thinks the unthinkable about cataloguing in public libraries: Fifteen million pounds each year to re-catalogue books that have already been catalogued. If I understand him right, he wonders why all the public libraries in the UK are all cataloguing the same books, when the booksellers supply perfectly good records in the first place. This kind of idea has occurred to me in the past:

Why are thousands of trained cataloguers around the world all cataloguing the same books so we can all put variant records onto international cataloguing utilities? In the vast majority of cases, we would surely only need local holdings appended to one centralized catalogue record.

My idea differs in one significant point, in that I would prefer to see at least one library cataloguer go near the record, with great care, to make sure it is properly up to scratch. Vendor records are sometimes, though by no means always, a bit iffy. I'm not familiar with Neilsen Bookdata and or Bibliographic Data Services records, so I can't comment on them. As long as someone dedicated and trained in the relevant standards looks at the records and is willing to vouch for their quality, then that is good. A second person shouldn't have to.

The great difficulty here is arguing myself and my colleagues out of a job. For the forseeable future, I don't think this could possibly be an issue. There are the still enormous backlogs of retrospective cataloguing, upgrades to cataloguing, and bumping up the newer cataloguing units to a strength that they are able to deal with swift and very high quality records that everyone else is able to trust (I'm thinking in terms of academic libraries more than anything). It would also release cataloguers to deal with special collections, really have a proper go at decent serials and electronic records to share, not to mention journal issues and articles. That wouldn't save the money that Tim Coates would like, though.

Mr Coates also has a go at CILIP:

I see that CILIP are organising conferences to teach public librarians how to do cataloguing at a rate of 400 pounds per admission for 3 days in London. Why?

A.D. XVII KAL. SEPT. MMVII

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CILIP advocacy

After using the word advocacy a lot (but being rather shy about it), it seems that CILIP are actually going to do some public advocacy of the library profession and support the quality of the public library service. They have just written a letter to the recently appointed Culture Secretary James Purnell. Bob McGee, who rather baffled me once at a chartership talk some years ago by explaining that CILIP did all this kind of thing behind the scenes and we should be grateful, is now saying things like:

We'll certainly be referring any Public Library Authority which we believe to be in breach of its statutory responsibilities to the Secretary of State for investigation," said Bob McKee, "and we'll also be asking the Audit Commission to take the availability of professional expertise into account when reviewing library service as part of the Comprehensive Performance Assessment of local Councils.

More importantly, he's saying it publically on CILIP's website. Ian Snowley, the new CILIP president, is quoted as saying:

It's time to campaign vigorously for the value of libraries in society and the for the importance of ensuring that local people in every community get the professional standard of library service which they deserve and to which they're entitled.

Arguably the time was ten years ago or more. However, at least something is being said if not done. I wonder how much is Mr Snowley's doing, and how much is a more fundamental strategy shift (or both). That's two positive posts about CILIP in a row. Whatever next?

A.D. XIX KAL. SEPT. MMVII

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CILIP on Second Life

After all my criticisms of CILIP not embracing new information technology, in particular RSS feeds, they went and opened an office in Second Life. Ian Snowley (IanSnowley Allen), CILIP president, explains how he gave the inaugural address at the office (which can be found at wales1 28, 122, 24) and how the office has already hosted a session during our recent Conference (see the Umbrella 2007 blog). See also Mark Taylor's Blog for pictures, including IanSnowley Allen and Sheila Yoshikawa [a CILIP member] having a chat. All this is to be applauded.

However, from the two entries on Sheila Yoshikawa weblog it looks as though the launch was a fairly low-key affair with only about three people there, one of whom was late for the speech. Anyway, that is probably missing the point: at least CILIP are establishing a presence in an online environment early rather than waiting for everyone else to do it first as happened with RSS, although I'm not really sure how involved CILIP was in actually setting up the SL office, or whether it was set up on the initiative of a member. Does it matter?

Spurred on by this and a general curiosity about SL, I decided to join up, have a snoop round, and visit the CILIP office, as it is at least somewhere on SL that I knew about. Downloading SL was not hard, even though I have Ubuntu and SL is only available in an alpha version for Linux. The only problem I had was getting dressed. That, and my body was female. This seemed to be resolved when I logged in a second time and I've had no problem since. After floating around aimlessly for a while I managed to teleport to the address given above (linking from SLURLS didn't work from Firefox for me, for whatever reason) which is the arrival point for wales1, the island where the CILIP hq is and which is, apparently, a virtual Wales (there are some sheep there, but I couldn't see too much else Welsh). There wasn't much in the CILIP office besides some chairs to sit on, an RSS news feed (ironically) which was a bit confusingly presented, and some posters on the wall. It is one room on one floor. However, this is all you need for a meeting place and it looked smart enough. Needless to say, there wasn't anyone else there, or on wales1 as a whole.

I don't know what to make of SL generally. As I'm not prepared to pay actual cash money to buy land or to invest in some activity to acquire virtual money (Linden dollars: $L), my options are limited unless I have a brain wave and can get a virtual job. Even if I could, I don't want to spend that much time on it. I do find it fascinating, however, and I will go back and have a look around when I have the time and inclination. BTW, In the unlikely event you run into Orangeaurochs Woodget, that's me.

A.D. IV NON. AUG. MMVII

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CILIP Lisjobnet RSS feed

I have now created an RSS feed for library jobs presented at CILIP's Lisjobnet vacancies site: subscribe to http://www.aurochs.org/internet/blogging/ciliprss.php. As I've said before, I am amazed that the professional organisation representing those who are meant to be at the forefront of information delivery haven't already done this. They only have a simple search interface and an email sent every fortnight. I would like to add the ability to refine the RSS feed, much as you can refine the search on the site itself, but that will have to wait until I have the time/inclination/etc. As I am not actively looking for jobs at the moment, this is not such a high priority.

That there is a clear demand for this service is shown by the fact that I've had an unadvertised not-fully-functional version of this working for ages, only really findable through Bloglines, and two other people (sadly anonymous) have signed up for it. It was not fully functional before as the full list of Lisjobnet vacancies is presented over an unpredictable number of separate pages (at the moment 8). The old version could only read page one, so it threw up only a handful of vacancies and ignored many of them. The new version reads the number of pages from the first page of results and then checks all of them. In the end, the final fix would have taken 2 or 3 minutes were it not for me missing off a $ in a really stupid place in the php code.

I must really stress that there are some caveats to its use: firstly, it is not official and should be taken as is. Secondly, although the prototype version has been stable in serving up jobs in the correct format, I cannot guarantee what CILIP will do to the format or availability of their vacancies: even a small change in the HTML coding will bring it down until I can correct the code. Thirdly, I have done as much testing as I can to determine whether it shows all jobs, but have not done enough testing over time to be 100% sure. Yesterday it showed all 75 jobs with no problems in Google Reader; I'm not so sure about Bloglines, but I think it is OK. If you have any findings about this let me know.

Finally, I would be very interested to know if anyone uses this RSS feed and if people find it useful or have any comments.

A.D. XVII KAL. IUN. MMVII

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Professional and non-professional librarians

Tim Coates has written a post suggesting that the distinction between professional and non-professional librarians should be abandoned, something I am whole-heartedly in favour of. He argues this from a public-library standpoint and with two main observations:

  1. That the librarians the public see are often not the professional ones although they are the ones the public, superficially at least, judge the profession on.
  2. In a situation where budgets are to be cut, to be a professional makes one more likely to be targetted by councillors, who also don't understand the distinction between professional and non-professional, aiming to get rid of staff.

I'm not too au fait with the public library situation. However, the following paragraphs I think are valid anyway to librarianship as a whole:

I think it would remove an obstacle that prevents modernising the library service if the "profession" would stop making this distinction in every possible sense. Library services should stop referring to jobs which ones which only a "librarian" can do. There should be no more demarcation.

This doesn't mean a lack of respect for the qualification or experience that trained librarians have; on the contrary. It means that experience can be as usefully obtained in doing the work and can be as valuable to the public when it is. It means that jobs and tasks should be given to the person most able to carry them out, and not on the basis of a paper qualfication.

(My emphasis). I made a similar point, though from a different angle, in a comment on the CILIP president-elect's weblog:

A library qualification is a sine qua non for many jobs whereas chartership is not (at least in the academic sector where I work). As someone who has sat on interview panels, I would also value a candidate's proven skills rather than whether they are chartered or not. For similar reasons I only value qualifications as far as they confer the relevant skills on an individual. For instance, neither qualification nor chartership can say whether a librarian can catalogue or not; we have to test candidates at interview for this.

I've seen a number of librarians arbitrarily and needlessly halted or delayed in their careers by the need to acquire the necessary bit of paper. On the other hand, I've seen enough to know that the bit of paper is by no means a guarantee of any skills or aptitude. The distinction between professional and non-professional (as opposed to qualified and non-qualified) also goes some way to create a degree of elitism within those who work in libraries: "proper" and "non-proper" librarians. They are all librarians in my opinion.

A.D. IV NON. APR. MMVII

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Chance for free CILIP membership

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.

KAL. FEB. MMVII

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Bunch of RSS

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.

A.D. X KAL. FEB. MMVII

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Exclusive car buying service for CILIP members

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.

A.D. IX KAL. NOV. MMVI

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CILIP silent on public library problems

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:

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.

A.D. VI KAL. OCT. MMVI

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Tom