Are you a CILIP mentor?

Would you like the opportunity to discuss issues, problems and potential solutions arising from mentoring CILIP Certification and Chartership Candidates?

If the answer is yes then why not come along to a Mentor Exchange of Experience event run on behalf of the CILIP NW Member Network?

Experienced information professional Kate Arnold has been confirmed as Vice President of the Chartered Institute of Library & Information Professionals in 2016, and will become President in 2017.

Kate has over twenty-five years’ experience in the media, Higher Education, charity and public sectors. In 2014 Kate was the first non-American to be elected President of the Special Libraries Association, a global organisation for information professionals, and has just completed her term.

Kate said:

“I am honoured and privileged to have been chosen as Vice President. I am excited to be taking on this role at an important time for libraries and the profession. I look forward to being an ambassador for CILIP and for the skills and competencies that we as a profession embody.”

Dawn Finch, CILIP President welcomed Kate to the CILIP Presidential Team:

“I am delighted to welcome Kate to the Presidential Team. Her work with the Special Libraries Association has been fascinating to follow, and her broad experience within the charitable campaign sector will inevitably bring a fresh dimension to our work. I am very much looking forward to working with Kate throughout her time on the team.”

Martyn Wade, Chair of CILIP Board said

“Kate is a brilliant addition to the Presidential Team. Kate’s skills and experience as an effective advocate, strong leader and outstanding communicator will significantly benefit our members, the library and information community and CILIP as we launch our new strategic plan 2016 - 2020.”

About Kate

Kate has over twenty-five years’ experience of providing and managing the delivery of specialist information and research services - both virtual and library based - to a wide variety of users. She started off in media libraries including the BBC and a national newspaper, then moved to NHS Direct to run public facing health information services both on the phone and online. She continued to work in the health information sector when she managed Cancer Research UK’s information services to people affected by cancer.

Kate has worked on a number of fixed term contracts managing information services in the voluntary sector, including the National Children’s Bureau and Macmillan Cancer Support, and academic sector, working at Royal Holloway and the University of London. Having worked across a variety of sectors Kate is keen to highlight the importance and value of library and information services and the skills that librarians bring to their communities and workplaces. 

Throughout her career Kate has been committed to continuing professional development and has gained a great deal from active involvement in a number of professional associations: including CILIP, the Association of UK Media Librarians and most recently the Special Libraries Association.

The Presidential Team

Kate joins CILIP President Dawn Finch and Immediate Past President Jan Parry on the Presidential Team.

The Presidential Team works alongside the Board to support and promote the work of CILIP. Their role is to ensure good governance, provide scrutiny and to represent CILIP as ambassadors and spokespeople.

-ends-

Media contact:

Mark Taylor
Director of External Relations, CILIP
Email: mark.taylor@cilip.org.uk
T: 020 7255 0654 
M: 07792 635 305                                             

Notes for editors:

CILIP: the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals is the leading professional body for librarians, information specialists and knowledge managers. CILIP’s vision is a fair and economically prosperous society underpinned by literacy, access to information and the transfer of knowledge. CILIP is a registered charity, no. 313014. Visit www.cilip.org.uk for more information.

Proposals for papers are invited for the Cataloguing and Indexing Group (CIG) Biennial Conference 2016 “Innovation and discovery” to be held from 31 Aug - 2 Sept 2016 at Swansea University.

Moving from local to global, our audience's thirst for discovery is prompting a whole raft of innovations. In this era of convergence, libraries, archives and museums are all striving to improve resource discovery in order to meet user expectations. International committees are expanding and refining new bibliographic standards; libraries are adopting (and adapting) these standards, e.g. FRBRising their catalogue records; as a result, librarians are acquiring new skills in metadata creation and manipulation; and, in this ever changing environment, vendors of library management and discovery systems are under pressure to evolve their offer. Hidden from public view, library metadata policies, cataloguing workflows and practices, together with the systems we choose, ultimately determine the user experience. The 2016 conference aims to bring together the metadata community in order to debate systems and processes, shine a light on best practice and explore the unknown.

Themes:
CIG welcomes proposals that cover, but are not confined to, the following topics:

• metadata for discoverability
• linked data
• controlled vocabularies
• data manipulation
• authority control
• discovery systems
• impact of changes to scholarly communication

And - as always - we'd like presentations about current practice, recent research, as well as ideas for the future.

Formats:
We are eager to hear from information professionals and those engaged in metadata research and practice. We also encourage submissions from current and recently graduated LIS students who would like to take this opportunity to present their research to the cataloguing community. We welcome proposals in the following formats:

• Conference papers (30 mins). An opportunity to present how your work, project or research innovates discovery.
• Lightening talk (10 mins). Shorter presentations on the above topics and themes. Please consider this if you have something to share but do not have a full conference paper.
• Interactive sessions (up to 30 mins). With the venue offering breakout rooms, we particularly encourage presentations with interactive elements.
• Posters. An opportunity to present your work/project/research in visual form. Time will be included during the conference to allow poster presenters to engage directly with delegates and discuss the contents of their poster. Please consider this if you would prefer to present in a less formal way.

Submissions:
Proposals should be submitted to Robin Armstrong Viner (r.armstrong-viner@kent.ac.uk). Please include your preferred format, a working title and short outline (no more than 300 words) of your presentation. Proposals are due by 31st March 2016 and presenters will be notified by 30th April 2016 if their submission is successful. Speakers will be able to claim for travel and accommodation (if required) in line with the CILIP expenses policy (see http://www.cilip.org.uk/cilip/how-claim-expenses). Any presenters wishing to attend the full conference in addition to the day they are presenting, as well as those intending to travel from outside the UK are advised to contact Robin Armstrong-Viner (r.armstrong-viner@kent.ac.uk) before booking or making travel arrangements.

Presenters will have the option of publishing their paper in a future edition of "Catalogue and Index", the journal of CIG (see http://www.cilip.org.uk/cataloguing-indexing-group/catalogue-index).

The purpose of this course is to provide participants with a background to mentoring, a basic framework for conducting mentoring both long and short term.  The focus of the event is to enable participants to develop effectively as mentors in the context of the CILIP professional development scheme.

Mentor Training is a requisite for becoming a CILIP Mentor and this course is suitable for all CILIP members who have recently registered as CILIP mentors or are thinking of registering. Do come along and find out more about the mentoring scheme.

By the end of the day participants will:
•Have an awareness of the function of mentoring in the CILIP CPD
•process
•Have had the opportunity to explore and experience mentoring
•Be able to make an assessment of their capability as mentors and identify their development needs in this area

The morning session will focus on generic mentoring skills whilst the afternoon will focus on the CILIP regulations.

Members who have previously attended a course on mentoring skills may attend the afternoon only (14.00-16.30) to join in the elements relating to the CILIP scheme.

In April last year I applied for the Travelling Librarian Award which is jointly funded by CILIP and The English Speaking Union (ESU). The award is a professional development opportunity for a UK library and information professional, to build professional relationships with their counterparts in the United States or a Commonwealth country through a study tour.

This was an excellent opportunity to research new ways to engage with communities and keep libraries relevant. 

As research for my application I put together a list of libraries and community engagement initiatives I wished to encompass as part of a study tour. I focused on the United Statesas community engagement in public libraries has become very high profile there.I was keen to visit some large innovative public libraries but I also wanted to visit smaller libraries to see how they engage with their communities and make more direct comparisons to our town and village libraries.

My application was fortunate enough to be shortlisted and I started planning. I directed emails to senior members of staff who were responsible for community engagement or heads of service. I heard back from most libraries and was delighted to have enthusiastic responses as well as wishes of good luck. It was worthwhile investing this time and it enabled me to plan an itinerary and consider logistics and expenses prior to interview.

After my interview at the ESU’s Mayfair offices in London, I was delighted and amazed to hear that I had been chosen as the recipient of the 2015 award.

I spent a lot of time arranging my itinerary, finalising details with libraries and booking travel and accommodation. To minimise the amount of time spent travelling I concentrated the majority of visits along the East Coast of the United States heading from Boston to, Hartford CT, The Hudson Valley, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. and then moving inland to Chattanooga. 

My trip started in mid-September 2015 and lasted three and a half weeks. 

Programming

If I could only bring back only one key theme from my tour it would be programming (hosting events and activities). In the United States, much like the UK, there is a downward trend in footfall and circulation. However, in the U.S. there has been a cultural shift in public libraries; programming and experiential learning, for all ages, is a key growth area and is a way libraries can further a core activity of knowledge creation. Programming Librarians are now commonplace and in many of the libraries I visited there is now a greater emphasis on programming than anything else.

Common programmes included:

• Computer classes - up to 80 per month in New York Public Libraries’ (NYPL) Bronx Library Centerranging from the basics to internet safety, using apps and digital story-telling.
• Conversation circles - these offer an opportunity for patrons with English as an additional language to practice English speaking in small informal groups. At Boston Public Library this was their fastest growing programme.
• After school programmes - ranging from homework help at most libraries to targeted workshops for at risk youth at NYPL. Philadelphia’s LEAP after school programme operates at all 54 of their branch libraries. Sessions offer homework help but also extensive STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) programming to extend the learning that happens in school. 
• Skills sharing for business - Boston, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. libraries are developing Business Innovation Centres. There was a common theme that small businesses can use the facilities for free, in return entrepreneurs are asked to facilitate workshops sharing their knowledge and skills.
• Community skills sharing - workshops and courses provided by community members. In the village of Red Hook these recently included languages, bee-keeping, brewing and maple tree tapping.

While on the tour I attended a one-day workshop run by the Mid-Hudson Library System on ‘The Future of Programming’. The workshop focused onthe role of libraries in helping build communities 
by continually looking for new ways and ideas to meet changing community needs. 

Key thoughts from the day included:

• Treat programmes as you would your collections - categorise to ensure diversity; offer a range of formats; weed programmes regularly. 
• See communities as collaborators - skills sharing, peer-to-peer learning, intergenerational activities. 
• Get out of the library, deliver in community spaces, serving the whole community not just library users.
• Don’t charge patrons for programmes - have a programming budget. If it is needed obtain programme funding from grants, businesses, partners, philanthropists, and programming donation boxes.

Community Partnerships

Hartford and Red Hook Public Libraries are two of 10 libraries across the USA  chosen as part of the American Library Association’s (ALA) ‘Libraries Transforming Communities’ (LTC) Programme. The initiative seeks to strengthen librarians’ roles as core community leaders and change agents and help them engage with communities in new ways.

These libraries are thriving on partnership working. 

Hartford Public Library has a number of partners working from their space including the Passport Office; a local non-profit café; a careerscentre and the University of Connecticut. These partnerships offer the library some income generation while providing excellent additional facilities and resources. At their branch libraries Hartford has embraced co-location of services with community centres, senior centres and schools.

The much smaller Red Hook Public Library in the Hudson Valley, serves a community of 4.000. The library is nationally recognised for it’s community engagement work. Impressively they manage to deliver 15-20 programmes per week, much of this is achieved through partnerships,including working with the nearby University and High School. The library facilitates monthly meetings with village organisations and businesses sharing what they are doing, offering further partnership opportunities. Red Hook’s limited space means programming is often held in community venues, allowing for extensive outreach work and increasing the visibility of the library’s work.

Innovation

The Free Library of Philadelphia’s President, Siobhan Reardon and her team are leading the way on innovation; their projects include:

• Words at Play - a community outreach programmefor young familiesfocusing on increasing vocabulary through play.
• Senior Services - a relaxed, comfortable area with armchairs, newspapers, book and dedicated programming, giving senior citizens a homelier library space. 
• TechMobile - a custom built mobile computer lab with laptops and Wi-Fi delivering outreach computer workshops to community groups.
• Culinary Literacy Centre - the first in the States. The centre houses a commercial kitchen, prep tables and seating. Connecting literacy and cooking through reading, maths, measurements, conversions and sequencing. The centre looks at literacy in its widest forms including health and consumer literacies.

In Washington D.C. the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library have invested in new innovative spaces in their labs. These include:

• The Dream Lab with incubator meeting spaces for non-profit and start-up businesses. 
• The Studio Lab offers a working recording studio, rehearsal space for bands, a green screen, photography studio, interview and podcasting booths. 
• The Fab Lab is a maker-space with 3D printers, a 3D scanner, laser cutters, traditional tools and two makers in residence offering inspiration and programming. 

New for 2016 will be the ‘Memory Lab’, a project funded by the Library of Congress raising awareness of personal archiving and digitising. The Memory Lab will be a free DIY space where the public can transfer obsolete formats such as VHS and audio cassettes to digital files. 

In Chattanooga Director Corinne Hill has introduced a patron request system. The library purchasesstock that patrons ask for and the patron is the first person to borrow the book or DVD. Since 2012 there have been 11,000 items added by patron requests. Chattanooga Public Library are finding they are now purchasing a broader range of materials that are popular with patrons.

HOMAGO and Teens

I was particularly interested to see how many libraries are engaging with teens. Boston and Hartford Public Libraries have introduced HOMAGO spaces (Hang Out, Mess Around, Geek Out). These teen spaces have a relaxed urban feel, technology labs, gaming rooms and recording areas. Peer-to-peer mentoring is a key theme, both these libraries employ young people, for a few hours a week, to support peers with technology and digital skills. 

There is also a teen voice in many libraries. The Bronx Library Center has a teen council and Chattanooga has a teen focus group. In Boston teens were widely consulted on the design and content of their new Teen Central space and teenscontribute ideas on programming.

Chattanooga’s teen area has an interesting range of STEM based walk up program stations, the stations are not individually staffed as the focus is on self-directed learning.Chattanooga also provides extensive teen programming with multiple daily activities. 

Staffing and Volunteers

Staffing at the libraries I visited was minimal; there were very few staff on library floors, often only one per floor, two at peak times even in the largest libraries. I was told that patrons were fairly self-sufficient at using library spaces. 

Libraries often employ ‘pages’, entry level shelvers (usually young people),for a few hours a day. Additional shelving may be supplemented by volunteers rather than library assistants.

Generally, a greater amount of librarians’ and assistants’ time is spent on developing and delivering programmes, rather than working on the library floor.Staffing is stretched with shifts across the day and into the evenings, allowing for later opening hours, with evening and weekend adult programming at times more suited to customer needs. 

The use of volunteers varies from state to state, depending on state laws and unions. The most common role is shelving. In some states volunteers are sent from courts for community service hours. Many libraries have High School volunteers;students are required to undertake 20 hours of community work to graduate. Historic libraries often have volunteer guides. Other volunteer roles include skills sharing workshops and courses. 

At Chattanooga, the teen area’s work is supported by a small army of 180 teen volunteers. Chattanooga’s teen volunteer programme has no fixed roles or set times, it is entirely flexible for teens to turn up and help out with programme development, craft/art projects and engaging with patrons. Over 800 teen volunteer hours were donated last August alone.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the ESU and CILIP for giving me this fantastic development opportunity and funding my library adventure. I had an amazing time, visited some fabulous libraries and places and met some awesome librarians.  I hope to plan some international co-working in the future and have made some great contacts to share best practices with.

I have enjoyed sharing our own projects and developments with colleagues overseas. I hope that what I have discovered and learnt will help inform future developments both at North Somerset and in the wider library sector. I know that colleagues in the States will be looking at some of our processes and projects to adapt for their libraries. 

For anyone who is thinking of applying for the Travelling Librarian Award, I would say seize the opportunity and go for it!

Apply for the Travelling Librarians Award 2016

The Travelling Librarian Award is an opportunity for a CILIP member to build professional relationships between library and information professionals in the UK and their counterparts on a study tour in the United States or a Commonwealth country.

The closing date for 2016 applications is Monday 25 April 2016. To be eligible to apply, candidates must be:

a) UK library and information professionals and;

b) a personal member of CILIP at time of application.

How to apply

The Spring 2016 issue of the Library and Information History Group's newsletter is now online.

Formal visit.  Learn about one of Britain’s oldest learned societies.  View meeting rooms and library and view some of the artefacts  and historical portraits.

The Lambeth Palace Library and site of new library in Palace and Gardens. To include research guides, how collections are managed and organised including digital records, conservation issues, documents of interest and what type of queries they deal with. How they overcome any of the difficulties they have faced.

Call for Papers:  Sustainability and Relevance: the independent library in 2016

Independent libraries occupy a unique place in the world’s cultural life. Rather than seeing independent libraries as niche or elitist, the Financial Times described the UK’s independent libraries as ‘havens of books, conversation and cultural events with histories stretching back centuries.’ The role and function of the independent library is a little-explored area, but growing numbers of scholars and researchers are joining the public in working in and around these institutions. As a space, the independent library generates lively debate around literacy, the role of the state, local and national identity, and cultural value.

The Association of Independent Libraries is therefore delighted to announce the launch of an interdisciplinary conference that will mark developments in the emerging and dynamic field of independent library studies. This new conference will bring together librarians, archivists, researchers, students and academics in a new forum to discuss the independent library’s role in the fields of library and information studies, cultural studies, education, and the humanities. Held in the atmospheric surroundings of Nottingham’s Bromley House Library, this weekend is committed to hearing a variety of perspectives from the UK and beyond.

We welcome contributions that engage with any of the following areas: Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

-       Independent library movements across the world

-       The origins of the independent library

-       Equitable access to independent libraries

-       Collaborative working with Higher Ed: research councils, universities, vice-chancellors

-       The jewels in our crowns: collection case studies

-       The independent library in the community: literature, history, culture, heritage.

-       Innovative working practices and managing change

-       Research students: projects, research, and discoveries.

-       Lifelong learning: readers, interns and volunteers

-       The built environment: caring for our spaces

-       Evaluation of the digital library: social media, online spaces, digitisation.

-       Cataloguing challenges

-       Antiquarian collections

-       Sing out loud: collections that aren’t books

Proposals from anyone in the independent library movement – librarians, academics, volunteers, researchers, students – will be considered. Case studies are welcome. Papers should be limited to twenty minutes. Submissions to independent.libraries@gmail.com by Monday 21st March 2016.

The New York Society Library is excited to announce that City Readers: Digital Historic Collections at the New York Society Library is now available online at cityreaders.nysoclib.org.  City Readers is a database of historic records, books, and readers at the Society Library. Search, browse, and visualization tools support the discovery and analysis of over 100,000 biographic, bibliographic, and transaction records derived from digitized content from the Society Library’s archives, and enriched with detailed metadata. Circulation records from 1789 to 1805, when the Library shared Federal Hall with the first American Congress, have been fully digitized and transcribed, and the data is now available for free on our site. The database is updated daily with more bibliographical information to support complex searches and visualizations; we welcome user contributed information on unidentified books, individuals, and errors in transcribed data.

City Readers was created using Collective Access, an open-source software for managing and publishing museum and archival collections. Our custom configuration will be available soon through their Configuration Library. We hope that more individuals and institutions will use and improve upon our model to develop their own tools for research in the digital humanities, and to share these with the larger community.

Support for the digitization and transcription of the first two charging ledgers and the development of City Readers has been generously provided by an Anonymous Donor, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Newman’s Own Foundation, and The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation.

The Library and Information History Group are pleased to announce that Calista Williams is the winner of the 2015 James Ollé Award. Calista is a PhD student at the Open University and she will be using the award to carry out research at the National Archives at Kew into why Aberystywth was selected as the location for the National Library of Wales in 1907. 

This free event will provide an overview of Augmented Reality practices (Aurasma) and getting started with Coding. It is aimed at Librarians who are interested in learning about emerging technologies and how to start using them.

This free event considers the importance of continuous professional development, both in preparing for Certification, Chartership and Fellowship, and throughout your career. It is aimed at those who have embarked on the Certification, Chartership or Fellowship process, or who are thinking about it.

Those registered and wanting to know about changes to the Professional Registration process are particularly welcome.

There will also be the opportunity to view some successful portfolio submissions as well as some practical reflective practice exercises.

The title of Nick Poole's talk is

I'm an Internationalist and I hope to lead CILIP into a strong position  in the International Field

The Great Parchment Book blog was started in 2012 to record the progress of the major and ground-breaking partnership project to conserve, digitally reconstruct, transcribe and publish the iconic 17th century parchment document known as the Great Parchment Book of The Honourable The Irish Society, also referred to as the Domesday Book of the Plantation because of its significance to the history of Ulster.

The Great Parchment Book is a 1639 survey of the Londonderry estates managed by the City of London through the Irish Society and the London livery companies. It was damaged in a fire at the City of London Guildhall in 1786 which caused such dramatic shrivelling and fire damage to the manuscript and distortion to the text that it had been completely inaccessible to researchers for over 200 years. Owing to its appearance it has been affectionately referred to at LMA where it is held as the ‘poppadum book’.

The blog records the progress of the project led by LMA, firstly the conservation which aimed to gently flatten the parchment sheets as far as possible to facilitate the digital imaging which followed. LMA’s partners at the Department of Computer Science and the Centre for Digital Humanities at University College London then captured a set of images for each page, generating 3D models from these and developing ground-breaking software which enabled these models to be flattened and browsed virtually. Alongside this, a readable and exploitable version of the text was prepared, comprising a transcription of the manuscript with encoding of appropriate terms using the Textual Encoding Initiative (TEI) to enable comprehensive searching. This culminated in the launch of the dedicated Great Parchment Book website in June 2013 where the images (of the folios both in their original state and digitally flattened) and transcript were made available and which featured as the centrepiece of an exhibition in Derry 2013 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the building of city’s walls in 1613.

The blog, administered by LMA and now embedded in the website, continues to record the continuing legacy of the project focussing on ways to revolutionise access to archives and manuscripts through the use of new technology and innovation, and linking the Great Parchment Book to other sources for Irish history and thereby facilitating both personal and academic research and knowledge.

Our tips for writing a project blog

The importance of recording the progress of the Great Parchment Book project through a blog was identified right at the start of the discussions about the project. 

There are three main reasons why a blog was identified as important to the project:

• We knew from the very beginning that not many projects carried out in the archive and libraries field involved such a wide range of professions and skills so we thought that it was something new to share with the public and we wanted to share our excitement.
• As is common, many of the grant funders which supported the project required that we shared the outcomes of the project.
• One of the remits of LMA is to engage with the public and other stakeholders as widely as possible.

However, writing a project blog is not something you can do at a drop of a hat and without planning ahead.The structure of the blog needs to be thought out before starting the project you’d like to write about. You also have to think of what could be interesting to potential readers and decide on the most effective way to explain the details of the project.

Writing a project blog is extra work because whatever you are doing or have done in the project needs to be translated or re-processed in order to make it interesting and understandable to a wide audience and this needs to be factored into the project plan and individual work plans. It’s hard work writing a blog!

1.Have a blogger-in-chief

If more than one person is contributing to the blog, especially if elements of the project are being undertaken by partners outside your organisation, or contributions are being made by a number of people, you must have a blogger-in-chief, to take responsibility for the blog as a whole, ensure consistency and exercise editorial control.

2. Write in a simple and accessible way

Initially we were writing for an unknown and potentially wide audience, from professionals in a variety of disciplines to the general public. This meant that the way we explained things had to be interesting to, but understandable by everybody. The challenge is to be able to write without going too much into depth. If you decide to do so, then you have to explain the concept in the simplest, but most engaging way possible.Following on from this, it is important to be clear and not to use jargon or too many technical terms. Where technical terms are used, they need to be explained.

3.Keep it short

Try too not to write too lengthyposts.If the topic we wanted to cover describe was very long we split it into more than one post, especially when describing conservation processes.You can always link to more detailed content elsewhere and this was frequently done when we were referring to the cutting-edge digital techniques and technologies used to virtually reconstruct the Great Parchment Book.

Use titles for posts that areeye-catching, but describe the topic the post covers accurately.

4. Post regularly

Try to post regularly. This was difficult sometimes because the time scale and deadlines of the project did not fit with the regular blog timetable, but we were able to adapt if the events described were not tied to a particular date.

However, when we needed to be timely, we ensured that we kept our subscribers up to date with what was happening, for example events tied to the project, or announcements about awards (European Succeed Award 2014 (for digitisation focussing on textual content):  commendation of merit; The Pilgrim Trust Award for Conservation 2015: shortlisted).

5. Vary what you post

In some posts, we introduced the staff that had worked on the project. This seemed to interest the audience and “personalised” the project.

Particularly with the conservation and imaging aspects of the project, we found it useful to take or use imagesto help to tell the story or to show an interesting detail. Images are the fastest media to convey information to those who are not familiar with that which is being described.With conservation we often had to stage the picture so we could fit into one image all the different elements of the conservation process we were describing to make it more understandable.

6. Provide proper attribution

You must make sure that all content is properly attributed and acknowledged – this is especially the case with images and academic research - and that supporters and other funders are acknowledged too.

Lessons for the future

We have received lots of good feedback about the website and blog, but we have not had so many direct comments and conversations on the blog as we had hoped. We have also found that our number of core subscribers has remained static at just over 100 pretty much since launch in spite of efforts to increase it. This may be because after the first year of the blog, it became embedded into website and those interested in the project know they can just go straight there for information; people link to the website not to the blog now.

We have been able to keep tabs on the usage of the blog and the website (86,000 page views and counting), and look at where visitors are coming to the site from. We have seen from this that many others are linking to the website in their own blogs particularly those relating to conservation and the digital humanities. We also know from the links in and links clicked out, that lots of users are interacting positively with the blog and website and that its reach is much wider that the number of core subscribers or direct comments might suggest.

On the technical side, if we set a blog up again, we’d look at making it more smart phone friendly and link it more to social media (although we do use this to some extent).

The legacy

The blog has provided a detailed and accessible record of the project which is there for all to explore. Right from the start, we used a controlled list of categories to tag posts (eg conservation, digitisation, events). These now provide an invaluable tool for those trying to find out more about the project and many of the areas associated with it, and enabling the story of the distinct elements such as conservation or digitisation for example to be pulled out of the whole.

The risk in blogging about an ongoing project is that you don’t know whether there will be a “Happy Ending”. We were fortunate in that the project had a successful outcome and it has continuing impact and a legacy which we can post about.

Four years on from its beginnings then, the Great Parchment Book blog is still going strong, but has had to adapt.We still report directly on the project and the content of the Great Parchment Book, but we are now trying to explore the connections with other digital projects and technologies revolutionising access to archives and cultural artefacts, and identify synergies with other documents relevant to the story that the Great Parchment Book has to tell.

UK Blog Awards 2016

London Metropolitan Archives’ Great Parchment Book Blog has been nominated in the Arts and Culture category of the UK Blog Awards 2016.

The Public Vote is open until Monday, 25 January 2016 at 9pm and it would be really great if colleagues felt able to support the Great Parchment Book project and the blog by voting as this will enable the blog to progress to the final of the awards.

Vote for the Great Parchment Book blog

On behalf of CILIP Patent & Trade Mark Group (PATMG) - Presenters: Susan Bates, Shell International Ltd and Grayce Shomade, D Young & Co

Accessing the important information contained in patent documents, that was once the sole domain of the professional searcher, has now become increasingly mainstream with the introduction of a number of free patent sources, particularly from the patent offices.  The search engines and interfaces are generally very user-friendly to help the novices, and those who are occasional searchers, to retrieve useful information without too much effort.  Highlighting some key free sources, such as Espacenet (EPO), PatentScope (WIPO) and Google Patents, this webinar will help you better understand the structured nature of the information within a patent document and how it relates to the patent search process, as well as take you through the steps required to carry out different types of effective and efficient patent searches that will enable you to gain an insight into patents held by other parties and their legal status, support patentability opinions and technical assessments.

Please note:  This is a CIPA CPD webinar.  Price:  CIPA members £36, non-CIPA Members £54. To register please contact the CIPA Events Co-ordinator on telephone number: 020 7405 9450

The annual BIALL, CLSIG and SLA Europe Graduate Open Day will be taking place on Wednesday 6th April 2016 at CILIP for all library and information students, trainees and new professionals. 

Join the Patent & Trade Mark Group (PATMG) for an evening seminar looking at how you can get the best out of free patent information sources. 

Presenters: Margaret Rainey (Manager) and Maddy Marley (Senior Information Scientist), Global Patents Department, GSK

The City Business Library www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/cbl , based in the heart of the Square Mile, is a unique public library for business information. It offers free access to a comprehensive collection of business databases and publications, including general start up advice, market research, national and international coverage for statistics, company data and financial and business news.

Group visit to the Poetry Library - the most comprehensive and accessible collection of British modern and contemporary poetry. http://www.poetrylibrary.org.uk/about/ 

No need to book, but an indication of numbers would be helpful.  The event is free.

Youth Libraries Group (YLG) Scotland is hosting a Revalidation Workshop for Librarians. Friday 5th February, 1.45 to 4pm, Room w305, Hamish Wood Building, Glasgow Caledonian University.

UKeiG aims to publish four White Papers each year. The first in the series was published at the end of 2015 and another - on Internet Security - will be published next month. After the three months when UKeiG White Papers are available only to members, the first published - Open Science, Open Data, Open Access... - is now openly available to all on the web site. The abstract reads:

This White Paper gives an overview of developments in openness in Open Science, Open Data, Open Access and Open Monographs.
Open Science is shown to be moving centre-stage, with a rationale of improving efficiency in science; increasing transparency and quality in the research validation process; speeding the transfer of knowledge; increasing knowledge spill-overs to the economy ;addressing global challenges more effectively; and promoting citizens’ engagement in science and research.
Open Data is shown to have undergone a surge in practical development, mirroring the well established repositories for research outputs. The development and application of model policies and of principles is also discussed.
The current major developments in Open Access are discussed in detail, including the identification and mirroring of success factors in funders’ and institutions’ policies and mandates for driving Open Access deposits and the growth in Gold Open Access.
The appearance of publishers and supporting infrastructure for the publication of Open Access scholarly monographs and textbooks is outlined.

White Papers are available at: http://www.cilip.org.uk/uk-einformation-group/ukeig-notices-papers/ukeig-open-access-white-papers

Annual unconference - all welcome.  More details to follow - save the date! 

We are the Irish Genealogical Research Society (IGRS) and are celebrating our 80th year here in London.

Our library used to be housed in a central London church which is now under renovation and so our library has been put in storage. We currently share a space at the Society of Genealogists which is also undergoing a major renovation.

We want to find a new home. We have a strong membership and a healthy budget.

We will pay yearly rent for a lockable office/site for the library.

The IGRS has some 4,000 books & 3,000 manuscripts. We need about 1,000 feet of shelf space.

We had in our previous library 17 x 6 foot tall bookcases plus lower cupboards.

While there is no problem for people to have browsing access to the books during the week, we do need to be able to lock up the manuscripts.

We only need access on Saturdays and research room for say 8-10 people.

We also need access to loos, tea making facilities, wireless/internet access, and be close to public transport.

Please contact Jim Boulden at jiboulden@aol.com if you have a space or know of one. All ideas welcome!

The latest in the UKeiG series of statements, notices and papers is the full text of the CILIP submission to the Joint Committee Inquiry into the Investigatory Powers Bill. UKeiG felt that it was important to promote this to our members as it is concerned that - as has also been suggested in the Guardian article mentioned in the introductory note that precedes the CILIP response - libraries could find themselves targeted under the legislation and forced to hand over users’ confidential personal data tracking their web use. CILIP has highlighted this issue (point 8) and has also expressed concern about the adequacy of the proposed authorisation and overview provisions: a major area of concern is the need for judicial authorisation and oversight, which CILIP feels is essential and should include applications to look at communications data as well as requests for interception.

Click on this link to view the copy of the CILIP response.