The Yorkshire & Humberside Member Network are running a Portfolio Building Workshop aimed at existing candidates or those considering undertaking the qualifications of Certification (ACLIP) or Chartership (MCLIP).

During the workshop attendees will explore the elements required to successfully compile their portfolio. Information will be provided regarding the Professional Knowledge and Skills Base (PKSB) and CILIP’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).

The workshop will include a presentation from Kath Owen (Chair of PRAB until Dec 2015). This will enable candidates to understand the requirements of the process from an experienced assessor’s perspective. There will also be the opportunity for candidates to pose questions and network with others.

Tea, coffee and cold drinks will be provided.

The event is free, but booking in advance is essential as places are limited. To reserve a place on the course please contact Mark Naylor.

St Peter’s School is about a 15 minute walk from the national rail station. As an alternative to walking, taxis or a public bus service are available from outside the station concourse. For those considering driving to York free on-site parking will be available at the school. Please note that the library is inside a medieval building and access to the main floor is via a short flight of stairs.

Optional Visit

Those attending the Portfolio Building Workshop will have the option to tour the school in the afternoon. Once the workshop has finished those who wish to stay on will be able to purchase food, if required, from a nearby bakery shop. There will then be a tour of the
school. It is expected to finish around 2.15pm.

Formal visit with networking opportunities afterwards in a local café

Our Annual Member’s Day and AGM will take place on Thursday 11th February 2016 at The Hive, The Butts, Worcester. The event will start at 10.00 am with registration from 9.30am and will close at 16.00pm.

Lunch will be provided. The theme of the event will be on Marketing with a keynote speaker and some workshop discussions. After lunch which will provide some networking opportunities there will be a speaker from CILIP and the West Midlands Network AGM followed by the ARLG West Midlands AGM.

Places are free to CILIP members and all are welcome.

Our booking form will available online soon.

Is your New Year's resolution to get better at recording and demonstrating your continuing professional development? Is it time to revalidate your Certification, Chartership or Fellowship? Come along to our informal event to find out more about Revalidation, make progress with your portfolio/reflective statement, or simply have a chat with some like-minded CILIP members! Bring along a laptop or mobile device if you'd like to access the VLE (virtual learning environment) using the venue's free wi-fi.

Date: Weds 27th January 2016
Time: 6.00 - 8.00 p.m. (drop in any time)
Venue: The Old Joint Stock, 4 Temple Row West, Birmingham, B2 5NY 

The Royal College of Nursing Library is home to Europe’s largest collection of books, journals and e-resources on nursing. It also includes some of the most important archival collections dedicated to the history of the nursing profession in the UK, and a large number of rare books and pamphlets. The visit will consist of a tour of the library space, an overview of library and information services and collections, and an introduction to the current exhibitions and upcoming events programme. 

This event is free, but booking is required. Please email Erika Delbecque to reserve your place: erika.delbecque@st-hildas.ox.a...

Join the Library and Information History Group on a guided tour of the fascinating Museum at Oxford University Press, the second-oldest university press in the world. The museum, which has recently undergone a complete refurbishment, traces the history of printing and publishing for and by the University of Oxford from the 15th century to the present day. It includes displays on the 17th century Fell types, the Oxford Almanacks, Alice in Wonderland and the Oxford English Dictionary, as well as printing equipment and a 19th century printing press. Attendees will also visit the OUP library, which is made up of works collected by OUP's printers as noteworthy examples of fine printing, and a large collection of Oxford bibles and prayer books published from the 17th century onwards.

This event is free, but booking is required. Please email Erika Delbecque to reserve your place: erika.delbecque@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk

On the release of the annual CIPFA UK Public Library Statistics, CILIP has repeated warnings that the value to communities and the economy delivered by the public library network is being systematically destabilized, as five years of severe funding cuts have wrought deep and lasting damage to libraries, and the vital services they provide to the public across the country.

Published yesterday, the latest figures from the Chartered Institute for Public of Public Finance and Accountancy show that more than 100 libraries closed last year, bringing the total number of public libraries to 3,917 - down 2.6%, on last year and a reduction of 14% since 2010. Wales has seen the biggest impact, losing 11% of its libraries since last year. Visits to libraries across England, Wales and Scotland fell by 3.9%, last year, down from 276 million in 2013/141 to 265 million in 2014/15, equating to nearly 14% fewer visits over a five year period.

Nick Poole, CILIP Chief Executive said:

“These figures highlight the inevitable result of the Government’s lack of joined-up policy for maintaining and improving the nation’s public libraries.

As we have proven time and time again, libraries deliver. They help people build their skills and confidence, bring communities together and deliver real-terms savings across a wide range of Council and health services. Libraries support schools and education, build local economies and get people online in a safe, supported environment. If usage is in decline, it is because people are being denied access to a quality library service, not because the demand isn’t there.

If the current picture continues to go unchecked, the impact will be felt by millions of people who have fewer chances to read, to meet and to learn.”

Last month the Government’s Spending Review signalled £4.1 billion worth of cuts to funding for Councils in England between now and 2020, on top of nearly £10 billion of cost pressures over the same period, according to the Local Government Association (LGA). LGA Chair Lord Porter warned that

"Even if councils stopped filling in potholes, maintaining parks, closed all children's centres, libraries, museums, leisure centres and turned off every street light they will not have saved enough money to plug the financial black hole they face by 2020.”

-Ends-

Press contact

Cat Cooper
Communications and Campaigns Manager, CILIP
Email: cat.cooper@cilip.org.uk
Direct line: 02072550653
Mobile: 07867455070

Notes to editors

Council spending on library services across England, Scotland and Wales was cut by £50m in 2014/15, leading to the closure of 106 libraries across the UK in 2014/15.

Last year, Wales lost 11% of its Libraries - a decrease from 308 to 274.

Total visits to libraries fell by 3.9% in the year, down from 276 million in 2013/14 to 265 million in 2014/15.

Overall, spending on library services across Britain fell from £990m to £940m, with the number of libraries down by 2.6%, from 4,023 to 3,917.

Over the whole of the last parliament, funding for libraries was cut by more than £180m (16%), with visits down 13.6% in the same period.

Visits to UK libraries in the period 2013/14 amounted to 282 million, representing 276 million visits to libraries in England, Wales and Scotland.1

Thank you very much to Adrienne for your welcome. It was a privilege to hear Nelson McCausland’s address this morning – I have been impressed with the engagement of elected officials in Northern Ireland with the value of libraries to communities, to Northern Irish culture and to the economy. 

It is also a privilege to be here in Stormont today. 

In recent times this place has been a symbol of the political process, a place of dialogue, debate and diplomacy. 

Arriving here yesterday, it was wonderful to see the city of Belfast looking so beautiful. I spent part of yesterday afternoon meeting with Libraries Northern Ireland. As we grapple with the future of our own public library service in England, there is a great deal that I think we can learn from your experience here. 

I was also inspired by my meeting yesterday with the CILIP Ireland Committee. There is a real sense of ambition and optimism – the sense that the future is yours to shape and define. So I am really excited to be able to speak to you here today and to work with you in the months ahead. 

Adrienne and Gerardine and the committee invited me here to talk to you about Shape the Future  - the open, collaborative project we are currently running to develop CILIP’s strategy to 2020. If you haven’t yet shared your thoughts on it, I’d encourage you to do so on the CILIP website or via the hashtag #CILIP2020. In case you aren’t familiar with CILIP – we are the UK professional body for people working in libraries and information management. We have around 13,000 members across the UK and are governed under a royal charter. 

In developing our strategy, I have spend the past 3 months or so travelling around the UK meeting with people and getting their views and ideas on the priorities that lie ahead. 

So, I’d like to share with you some of the ideas and views that are emerging from the many conversations I’ve had with library and information professionals around the UK in the past 3 months. And these ideas and views tend to cluster around 3 main areas: 

• Optimism,
• Resilience,
• Relevance

Optimism

Whichever part of the community I engage with, whichever sector people work in, the overwhelming message I am getting is one of optimism and pride. I have been really struck, both in reading about your work here in Ireland before I came here, and in meeting with our colleagues yesterday, by the tremendous sense of optimism about the future and the pride people take in delivering value for their customers. 

Not that people are blinkered to what’s coming in terms of further cuts to public budgets, but that they are confident and optimistic that the community will respond, adapt, get creative and find new ways of delivering services to customers.

Parts of our community are suffering, and we must stand in solidarity with them, defend them where we can and offer them support. But other parts are flourishing. I have met a lot of library and information professionals who are ashamed to admit that they are finding opportunities, getting support, building their services.

I believe that we have to be optimistic, confident and articulate about what our community can do, what it does already, and the difference it makes, even while supporting one another when things aren’t going so well.

Resilience

The second idea that people have shared with me is that library and information professionals are tremendously resilient. Not resilient as in ‘resistant to change’, but resilient as in adaptable, agile, responsive to change in the external environment. 

Society is changing around us. People are living longer, learning in new ways, building new kinds of community and new kinds of enterprise. We can’t go backwards, nor can we stand still – we have to make a positive and proactive decision not only to be part of the future, but to stand up and play our role in shaping it. 

Relevance

The third idea that I have heard in my discussions with members and non-members is ‘relevance’ - the idea that never before have our skills been so relevant or so needed. 

We live in an Information Age, in an Information Society, in an Information Economy. Whether you work in a University or a college, a business or a school, for the Government or in a public library, library and information professionals have the skills and expertise to help people become information literate, to build digital skills, to unlock the value of their intellectual assets.

Some of the biggest decisions we face depend on accurate, useful information – whether to go to War, how to ensure historical justice, how to improve health and social care, how to allocate resources, how to balance civil safety and privacy, how to address homelessness. There is no aspect of modern life that doesn’t stand to benefit from the skills of library and information professionals.

As I was mentioning to some colleagues yesterday, we have two key Government strategies in Westminster – the National Data Strategy and the Information Economy Strategy. Both of them highlight an urgent need for people with the skills to organise information, structure it, make it discoverable. That’s us. Those are the transferable, customer-focused skills which you use everyday in your job. We are the future-facing workforce that society and the economy, businesses and communities are calling for. 

So those are the 3 things that people have told me they feel about the future of our profession – that they are optimistic, that we must be resilient by being open to change and that this is our time – that our skills are more relevant to the needs of society and the economy than they have ever been. 

So if we are looking ahead with optimism and creativity, the question I have to ask of CILIP, of our strategy – and indeed the question I would like to put to you - is this, “what is the role of a modern, forward-facing professional association in helping you to achieve your goals – both for yourselves, your customers and for the wider role of our profession?”

So far from my discussions with library and information professionals, there are 3 parts to this role: 

• Advocating for the profession
• Developing the workforce
• Supporting, connecting and celebrating our members

Advocacy

If we are going to seize the opportunities ahead, we need to get out there into the wider world – whether politics or the media, industry or 3rd sector – and not only shout about the immense value and impact of what we do, but also encourage other people to shout about it for us. 

In my experience of political and public advocacy, we need three things – a great story to tell, the influence to get our message heard and the evidence to back up what we’re saying we can do. I believe we have that story – the social, economic, cultural, personal, educational benefits that you bring to your customers. I believe that in Northern Ireland you have that influence – a network of policymakers and political stakeholders who believe in and support the work you do. We need to work harder on collecting the evidence in a systematic way – so that whatever the bottom-line is for the decision-makers who are in a position to help you, we have an argument tailored to them in a language they understand. 

But if we have learnt anything from the past decade of advocacy it’s that it isn’t a one-shot deal. For each new generation, we have to keep educating the public and policymakers about what libraries are today – the services you are delivering and the value you’re adding. 

Workforce development

The second priority after advocacy is workforce development. We have a duty to keep pace with the changing needs of society and industry – to plan ahead and ensure that we are delivering not only the skills they need, but the people with the right attitude, the determination to succeed and the ability to add value. 

In developing our ideas about the future strategy, in my view we need to look at 4 key areas:

1. how do we attract and retain talent to the library and information professions – and talent from as broad and diverse a pool as possible? Can we reach out through careers services and excite and enthuse the next generation about building their career in library and information management;
2. how do we ensure that in a time of limited resources, people are able to invest in their Continuing Professional Development, building their skills both through formal development and informal networking in a way that is accessible, timely and that fits around their working lives;
3. how do we reach out to employers and encourage them to invest in library and information skills as an investment in their competitiveness, efficiency and delivery for their users. How can we encourage them to create new, well-paid opportunities that make best use of our community’s skills, and;
4. can we begin to challenge and overcome some of the barriers to the profession, which restrict diversity and inequality, whether of pay or opportunity.

It is to address these points that we would like to call for a UK-wide Library and Information Skills Strategy. 

Value for members

And finally – how can we do more to support, connect and celebrate our members. We have 13,000 members actively developing their careers, building their skills and committing time and effort to their professional development.

Many of our members are the only library and information professional in their place of work. They often have to compete for attention and investment from people who have no idea what we do or the kinds of value we deliver. 

So how can we, as your professional body, stand shoulder-to-shoulder with every one of our members – offering support and encouragement, equipping you with facts, helping you get your messages across to your decision-makers and managers?

How do we ensure that you, as members and potential members living and working in Northern Ireland, have access to our thriving community of Member Networks and Special Interest Groups? Can we do more to support events like this which provide invaluable opportunities to meet your colleagues and develop networks?

We have heard the message loud and clear that there are many people who would like to be part of this community, but who simply cannot afford it, or don’t feel that it offers sufficient value to justify the cost. That is why Simon Edwards and his team are working hard on a comprehensive review of our membership offer, which we will be consulting on in 2016. 

Shape the Future 

So these are the main themes emerging from our consultation so far. That CILIP should be a confident, articulate and effective advocate – telling our story, building influence and developing the evidence base to promote our interests. 

That we should develop a future-facing workforce by matching talent and skills to industry needs, and that we should support and celebrate our members, amplifying your advocacy and delivering value which helps you build your career, develop your transferable skills or find new opportunities.

I would like to take this opportunity to talk briefly about the relationship between CILIP and CILIP Ireland. 

CILIP is a UK-wide body, and there is real strength in unity and defining a common purpose across the UK. At the same time, we need to be able to define an offer that is tailored to the specific needs and opportunities here in Northern Ireland. 

Our Strategic Plan aims to set a common cause and shared programme, but we would also like to use the year ahead to work with you to develop a Strategy for CILIP in Northern Ireland, including working with key partners such as Libraries NI. 

I look forward to working with you to develop this strategy, and in the meantime I look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas at today’s event. 

Thank you. 

Take the CILIP Shape the Future survey
 

Members may be interested in a workshop in the new year being provided the organisers of one of the conferences we sponsor: Intranet Now. Formulating Your Intranet Strategy: what's your Intranet Direction? will be held in London on 21 January  and will be led by by Steve Bynghall and Chris Tubb, guiding you through their practical approach to intranet strategy:

Discovery ➤ Diagnosis ➤ Guiding policy ➤ Direction ➤ Tactics

The workshop will give you a highly practical framework to derive and articulate your Intranet Direction, and formulate that strategy and roadmap which you never seem to get round to creating. The full-day practical workshop has the following aims:

• To give you an overview of developing an intranet strategy;
• To enable you to understand a methodology for creating the strategy and then putting it into action;
• To make sure you come away with next steps applicable for your organisation; and
• To ensure you have fun and network with peers

See http://intranetnow.co.uk/workshops/ for the full agenda and a range of early bird, team and standard price tickets deals

CILIP has launched a call for papers ahead of the CILIP Conference 2016.  Ferguson Municipal Library Director Scott Bonner is the first confirmed keynote speaker for the event, taking place at the Brighton Dome on July 12-13.

Entries are sought for conference papers as well as for nominations for individuals or groups who would fit in with the three core conference themes: Managing Information will explore the latest best practice and emerging ideas in Information Management; Everyday Innovation will focus on making a difference daily by delivering outstanding services with existing resource. Finally, Using Technology will look at the different ways technology is being used to enhance library and information services.

Scott Bonner’s presentation ‘What We Did in Ferguson: A Warts-and-all Telling of Stories’ will share what he and other staff did at Ferguson Municipal Public Library in Missouri, when their community was in turmoil following the killing of unarmed teenager Michael Brown by local police late last year.  Additional keynote speakers will be announced in early 2016.

Bonner was awarded the Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced with Adversity in June 2015.  “Under his leadership, a traumatic moment in our nation’s history was met with an outpouring of support,” said Jury Chair, Los Angeles Public Library’s Dora Ho. “Through it all,” she continued, “Bonner served as a quiet hero, directing all media and social media attention toward highlighting the role of libraries and librarians as community hubs of support. We feel that he has been the ultimate example of humility, integrity, and dignity in the face of adversity.”

CILIP’s 2015 conference hosted nearly 600 members of the UK and international library and knowledge workforce at St. Georges Hall in Liverpool. Delegates were addressed by human rights campaigner Shami Chakrabarti, Guardian columnist Erwin James, US-based Library professor R.D. Lankes and journalist and activist Cory Doctorow, as well as representatives from Bibliothèques Sans Frontières, Full Fact, IFLA and others.

Speaker proposals and nominations should be submitted via the conference website by 12 February. Booking is also open, with early bird booking discounts of up to 25% on selected packages until Friday 29 April and a new group rate for 2016.

Covering a broad range of issues from across the library, information and knowledge professions, the conference is designed to inspire, share knowledge, raise debate and provide networking opportunities for the UK and international workforce.

-Ends-

Press contact

Cat Cooper
Communications and Campaigns Manager, CILIP
Email: cat.cooper@cilip.org.uk
Direct line: 02072550653
Mobile: 07867455070

Notes to Editors

The CILIP Conference is the UK’s largest gathering of library and information professionals, attracting delegates from across a wide range of sectors. In 2016 you can join us in Brighton for two days of discussion, debate, knowledge sharing and inspiration. Our impressive line up of keynote speakers and topical conference themes make up an exciting and thought provoking programme, led by experts from a diverse range of organisations and sectors. Together with careers clinics, networking opportunities and a refreshing social programme the 2016 conference is not to be missed. Visit http://cilipconference.org.uk/

About CILIP

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. www.cilip.org.uk 

When I first got involved with prison education I was surprised and puzzled by the lack of hard information about prisoners’ skills. Every report I picked up, every article I read and headline glanced had different views on prisoners and their skills. Mostly reference was made to children, such as 2/3 of prisoners have reading age of less than 11 years or 87% of prisoners can’t do simple primary school maths. These references are not useful to someone who works in adult literacy and numeracy since I am not clear what level “primary school maths” might be and we do not assign reading ages to adults.

I eventually discovered that the basis of these figures was a House of Commons written answer drawn from a 2002 report from the Social Exclusion Unit which in turn quoted a survey done in prisons in 2001. Further research shows that while that survey was valid, the interpretation in the Social Inclusion Unit report was flawed owing to a lack of understanding of different levels used by two different skills surveys. 

Nearly everyone agrees that education is a vital aspect of helping prisoners rehabilitate, and yet we do not know how good or bad their basic literacy and numeracy skills are. It became my ambition to answer this question and come up with some reliable and useful figures about the prison population. Then I discovered that it had just become mandatory for education providers in prisons to conduct initial assessments in English and maths for all new prisoners. Here was my opportunity.  Despite having no funding I was able to persuade the four prison providers – Novus, Milton Keynes College, Weston College and PeoplePlus - to share their data with me. Thanks to their generous cooperation I was provided with the assessment results for 104 prisons, just over 124,000 assessments. 

The assessments were conducted using a standard tool common in adult literacy and numeracy education which provides a reliable guide as to a person’s educational level. These range from Level 2, generally considered equivalent to GCSE grades A*-C, through Level 1, Entry level 3, Entry level 2 to the lowest Entry level 1. 

As I wanted to equate these levels to those of the general population I needed a benchmark, and that was the 2012 Skills for Life survey, which sampled the entire population of England and Wales using very similar tools and identical adult skills levels. Despite the limitations in this approach, I was now equipped to compare the skills levels of the 2014-15 prison intake with the skills of the population as a whole. The result is our report An assessment of the English and maths skills levels of prisoners in England.

Findings

So what was found? Firstly that literacy levels in prison are very poor compared with outside prison. Using the old Skills for Life definition of ‘functional literacy’, those with Level 1 or level 2 literacy skills, in prison just 50% have these skills compared to 85% of the general population. 

We might expect Level 2 skills to be poorer in prison, but the pattern is continued across all levels with prisoners having far lower literacy skills than the general population. Based on these results we can say that for at least half of last year’s prisoners, literacy will prove a significant barrier to gaining employment. 

In general the public has far lower skills in numeracy than literacy, possibly why the Skills for Life programme defined ‘functional numeracy’ as being Entry level 3 and upwards. Using that definition the general population has76% with functional numeracy skills, but 80% of the prison population are at that level. This is entirely unexpected, and a rather positive result. It is difficult to know the reason for this but it may be caused by prisoners having more opportunity to use their numeracy skills than their literacy ones and, therefore, less 'skills fade' from not using these skills.

In one sense, comparing prisoners’ English and maths levels and those of the general population is not reasonable. The general population has a fairly even gender mix, but the prison population is strongly biased towards males. We can strip out the adult males from the female estate and the Young Offenders Institutions (YOI) to see what impact gender has on skills. 

Prisoners’ literacy levels by gender

Prisoners’ numeracy levels by gender

Our figures suggest that in general female prisoners have marginally better English skills than males, and that YOI inmates, males between 18-21, have similar levels to females in prison. This is reversed with maths skills. Here males show better skills than females, though again YOI inmates score as highly as males. 

Implications

I think the implications of the exceptionally low level of literacy skills is profound. My impression is that provision in prisons is, like that in general FE provision, largely geared towardsLevel 1 lessons and Level 2 if there are opportunities to progress this far. Again, much of this provision is likely to be quite ‘classroom-ish’, consisting of talk and exercises from the teacher. The cohort who are operating at Entry level is not likely to respond well to this approach or to being placed in classes above their capabilities. What is really needed for the 20% of prisoners with Entry level 1 and Entry level 2 skills is teachers with the knowledge and understanding of tackling this level, time and space for very personalised provision based on an in-depth assessment, ideally carried out in a one-to-one interview. The reasons for these low level assessments need to be unpicked, in particular to what extent the difficulties are caused by language rather than literacy difficulties and whether the reading and writing areas are equally poor. And continuity is important, so that prisoners are not having to go through this rigorous assessment process again and again. 

It seems to me that there is plenty of room in this more individualised approach for schemes like The Shannon Trust Reading Plan, The Six Book Challenge and prison reading groups, provided that these are entered into with some consultation with the education staff; prison libraries could hold a central role in joining up the various schemes and approaches, an important link between agencies. My worry is that at present too many of these learners are receiving the wrong level of provision in education classes and that other help and support is uncoordinated and untargeted.

For too long prison education has been planned and funded without real knowledge of where the challenges really are. These figures ae just a start on being able to provide an accurate picture of the skills across the entire prison estate, and given the average sentence of 8 months most of this cohort have already been released and their places filled by others, who may have different characteristics. Nonetheless, even if more a snapshot than a compressive picture of the prisons profile, this is at least robust, concrete and real data on the actual basic skills of prisoners today. 

Pepys was unusually careful when it came to controlling the fate of his collections after his death. This paper examines his behaviour in preserving his books and papers, as well as the provisions made by others in his social circle for their collections. The steps that Pepys took (or failed to take) are revealing about the uses he foresaw for his books and, in particular, for his diary of the 1660s which survived as part of his library.

Work to build the present Palladian house at Shardeloes, for William Drake, began in 1758 to the plans of Stiff Leadbetter, Surveyor of St Pauls, and was completed in 1766 by Robert Adam. The library was dramatically altered again nine years later, to the design of James Wyatt, introducing continuous bookcases and a trompe l’oeil frieze by Biaggio Rebecca. Since then, no further alterations have been made.

The book collections predate the house significantly. The reading habits of William Drake of Shardeloes in the 1630s have been described by Kevin Sharpe (Reading Revolutions: The Politics of Reading in Early Modern England), while a search on ESTC for Tyrwhitt Drake provenance brings up over 300 records, mostly now at the Huntington Library. These include books from the library of Humphrey Dyson. The University of Leeds holds a manuscript catalogue of the library at Shardeloes as it was in 1730, a few years before the old Tudor pile was demolished.

By the 1880s the household inventory shows the room furnished as a sitting library and in 1913 the photographers of Country Life captured the library with two images so well focused that, with modern digital scans, several shelves of spine labels can be deciphered. In the Second World War the house served as an emergency maternity hospital and the library, with bookcases boarded up, as the doctor’s sitting room. As the family fortunes declined, there was a library sale at Sotheby’s on 20-21 Nov. 1923 and the last of the books were removed in 1957, when the house was cleared preparatory to its planned demolition. Today the library is full again with a surprising collection of 18th and 19th century board games and associated books. As well as touring four of the five fine rooms in the house, visitors will be able to inspect copies of inventories, catalogues, photographs and architectural plans.

We've collected together some of the interesting, contentious and important library and information stories that were discussed around the world last month. There were lots of interesting discussions in November, including: 

1. Global information infrastructures 
2. Mind the gap 
3. Ethics and values 
4. Campaigning and advocacy
5. Did Amazon just replace the public library?
6. Open access research

Let us know what you think or if you have any other important issues that we missed in the comments section below.

1. Global information infrastructures 

Via Museums Association, a new report by the World Cities Forum asserts that cities ‘must reinvent the way that they support culture’ and plan more inclusive policies that reflect society and move away from gentrification. 

Meanwhile the Slate in conjunction with Arizona State University ponders what libraries will be like in the year 2100, and predicts a duality of one universal, global library at the same time as 3 million physical libraries, to match a rapidly growing world population.

Thanks to this infographic on What’s the Big Data?, we learn that a 65% growth in mobile data traffic over the past year is mainly driven by video, as global mobile data traffic is forecast to grow ten-fold by 2021, with video forecast to account for 70% of that total mobile traffic.

2. Mind the gap 

A landmark national study of workers in the library, archives, records, information and knowledge management domains in the UK, commissioned by CILIP and The Archives and Records Association reveals an ongoing gender pay gap and low levels of ethnic, gender and age diversity. 

On LISnews, word that US newspaper archives carry major gaps, with incomplete archiving of web-only and multimedia content. 

News from Free Beacon that one front page of The New York Times international edition ran with widespread blanks last week, after the edition’s Thai printer removed a front page story on the Thai government’s fledgling economy: 

3. Ethics and values 

On the EIFL blog, you can read about the recent legal decision that Google Books Project does not infringe US copyright law and why this is a win for sensible copyright law and fair use. 

Stephen’s Lighthouse alerts us to the new statement on Intellectual Freedom and Libraries issued by The Canadian Library Association, replacing the previous 30 year old Position Statement. 

From the National Coalition Against Censorship, details of a sensitive matter in Minnesota due to a bid by parents of a sixth-grader to remove the Young Adult book title, Just One Day, from libraries in the school district, and a counter call on the part of advocates of intellectual freedom urging the district to retain the book, citing constitutional principles and the district's own policies: 

4. Campaigning and advocacy

In November, CILIP Chief Executive Nick Poole called on David Cameron to develop publicly-funded libraries to avoid the legacy of his government being "a network of hollowed-out services, delivering only the most basic of library functions and failing to meet the reasonable expectations of the public."

In another speech, at the Speak up for Libraries conference, Nick stressed the incredible value of work done by all library and information professionals and announced the launch of a new campaign to “raise national awareness of the value and impact of library and information professionals and to lobby for policy to protect and promote their interests.”

It was announced in a month when there have been many projects launched across the globe to campaign for the library and information professions, including:

• ALA Launches "Libraries Transform" Campaign
• The second round of the Carnegie Library Lab programme
• The launch of the Code Green, the digital making kit for libraries
• EIFL championing libraries as gateways to the internet at the Internet Governance Forum

5. Did Amazon just replace the public library?

A controversial, perhaps slightly click-baity, title on Megan Garber's article in The Atlantic a couple of weeks ago, asks: "Did Amazon Just Replace the Public Library?"

There isn't much in the article to substantiate the boldness of the title other than an argument at the end that, though it's a commercial store, it aims to provide a community space too. However, if you need more reassurance that the answer to that question is "no", Alex Gallo-Brown refutes it fairly thoroughly on Motherboard, pointing out one major difference is that public libraries are here "to serve everyone equally regardless of one’s purchasing power."

He also reminds us that similar claims were made about Kindle Unlimited. Helen Leech wrote a great blog in response to this last year.

Both articles raise interesting questions though and it’s an interesting subject as evidenced by the large number of other articles the opening of this one bookshop generated:

• Why the Amazon Bookstore Helps Legitimize their Imprints
• What Does Amazon's First Brick-And-Mortar Bookstore Tell Us About The Future?
• Amazon Books is All About the Data

6. Open access research

There have been lots of interesting articles on Open Access research over the past few weeks too, we’ve listed some of them below:

• Entire editorial staff of Elsevier journal Lingua resigns over high price, lack of open access
• Library support for open access journal publishing: a needs analysis
• New Open Access Project in Zimbabwe
• Why it’s getting harder to access free, quality academic research
• What Open-Access Publishing Actually Costs

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