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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More Cataloger's Desktop comments

The Library of Congress's Cataloging Distribution Service is doing a survey on the development of its Cataloger's Desktop, which they are planning to overhaul. They seem keen to rework it for the web rather than replicating the CD product it is based on. I hope they think profoundly about this to make sure it is properly a web-based resource or, as I would prefer, a loose collection of separately accessible resources. Below are the comments I put in answer to one of the earlier questions on general satisfaction:

The content is second to none, but the presentation of the content is appalling:

  1. It is extremely unwieldy: there is no reason to shoehorn everything into one package and one great list. E.g. AACR2 would be better presented as a separate product as it is complex enough as it is. Rather than having shaky preferences, I would like to see separate sites for which I can produce my own list of links, as I do anyway for other sites.
  2. Despite being presented on the web, the site tries its hardest to discard the advantages of the web by imposing its own interface. This is bad practice as it means another interface to learn and is not intuitive (e.g. I cannot use the Back button to go back, or link to a section of a resource). Standard HTML pages are more than up to the job. I don't think a system like this is very successful if you have to provide training in how to use it: it would be like inventing a different kind of book where you have to train readers in how to turn the pages.
  3. There is no need to have a system which has to find its way round popup-blockers: this just shouldn't be an issue. These factors prevent me from using Cataloger's Desktop nearly as often as I should. I mostly want it for quick look up of AACR2 and other standards. Instead I often find myself referring to an out-of-date paper copy for simple rules and abbreviations. I was hoping to have weaned myself off it by now.

My previous comments on a similar survey in 2005 are here.

A.D. IX KAL. MART. MMVIII

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Library-themed weddings

Speaking as a librarian married to another librarian whose brother is a librarian I still cannot find the stomach to appreciate this library-themed wedding (via post on Autocat mailing list), although I am unusually sensitive to work-home infringements. One commenter also apparently had a library themed wedding with Dewey-numbered tables at the reception. Another commenter also claimed:

We did the same with the birth annoucment [sic] for our youngest. We put a shelf of books on the announcement, each with a name of our older children and ourselves with a Dewey number on each book befitting each of us. We sent these announcements out to library friends...

When our youngest was born, I barely had enough energy to compile a round-robin email and throw a few photos onto the computer. Quite how this person managed something so elaborate with at least two other children to look after I don't know. Good on them though: maybe the other children helped, or something.

PRID. ID. FEB. MMVIII

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Queen of cheese

To us it is a glorious theme
To sing of milk and curds and cream

While cataloguing some poetry books I came across a book called Pegasus descending : a book of the best bad verse / edited with notes and an introductory dialogue by James Camp, X.J. Kennedy and Keith Waldrop. In it is a superb poem, written in Canada in the 19th century by James McIntyre, called Queen of cheese. It was written about a prize 4 ton cheese made in Ingersoll, Canada, which later went on a tour of Toronto, New York, and Britain. The third stanza particularly appealed to me:

Cows numerous as a swarm of bees
Or as the leaves upon the trees
It did require to make thee please
And stand unrivaled, queen of cheese.

Now that's poetry! McIntyre became known as the Cheese Poet. Wikipedia quotes one of his other poems about cheese in Canada called Oxford Cheese Ode:

The ancient poets ne'er did dream
That Canada was land of cream,
They ne'er imagined it could flow
In this cold land of ice and snow,
Where everything did solid freeze
They ne'er hoped or looked for cheese.

Interestingly, the last stanza of the Oxford Cheese Ode also re-uses the comparison of many cows to a swarm of bees:

Cows numerous as swarm of bees
Are milked in Oxford to make cheese.

If you want to read more, which I am sure you do, Poemhunter has the full text of James McIntyre's poems, including the two above, although beware of pop-ups, even with Firefox with the pop-up blocker on.

A.D. IV KAL. DEC. MMVII

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Library pr0n

Tom Roper points out a series of photographs of beautiful libraries. I did mean to at least pick a favourite, but it is too hard: they are all so breathtaking in different ways, such as the ceiling of the Abbey Library St. Gallen, Switzerland, or the sheer height of some of them, such as the Real Gabinete Portugues De Leitura Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. However, in terms of what I want in my country house, I would like something like the Theology Room at St. Deiniol's library, North Wales (not unlike the Great Hall of Matfen Hall, where I got married) with a spiral staircase like the one at the Handelingenkamer Tweede Kamer Der Staten-Generaal Den Haag. One day.

Finally, I must apologise to Tom Roper for stealing the title of his post.

A.D. V KAL. OCT. MMVII

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No evidence on bibliographic issues

Lorcan Dempsey makes a much overdue point:

In all the discussion about bibliographic data and catalogs, and about their advantages or disadvantages when compared to other approaches, it is striking how little appeal there is to actual evidence.

I've noticed this on email discussion lists where appeals are made to personal experience (of the librarian/cataloguer) and to how a user should use a catalogue, but rarely is this backed up by research as to how library users could use catalogues most intuitively and effectively and how they want to use catalogues to find material. I think this has profound implications for the cataloguing rules and OPAC design.

I expect the framers of RDA are using a wealth of such research data diligently compiled by the researchers at our library schools to compile the rules. With this much academic research behind us, Amazoogle doesn't stand a chance!

NON. SEPT. MMVII

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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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WorldCat puns list correction

Following my post about my list of author-title puns on WorldCat, Andy Havers (Manager, Branding and Creative Services at OCLC (who run WorldCat)) contacted me to let me know that the book I said wasn't on WorldCat is on WorldCat: Wieber E. Bijker's Of bicycles, bakalites, and bulbs. I have duly added it.

I'm not sure what this means for my 133t catalogue searching skilz.

A.D. VI NON. IUL. MMVII

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Tom