Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year?

Photo. Sheffield Botanic Gardens in the snow by Jean Morton. I would like to wish all SINTO members and other friends of SINTO a Merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year. The first part of this objective is achievable. It's the holiday season and I hope that most of you have a good time. The second part is more problematic and I suspect that few librarians are anticipating a prosperous or particularly happy time in 2011 especially in the public library sector.

As it is Xmas, let's open some presents. This Dickensian pastiche A Library Christmas Carol from the Wikiman is amusing with an optimistic message - "The only way to predict the future is to make it happen, Scrooge".

A less welcome present is the Public Library News blog - a survey of public libraries under threat in the UK compiled by Ian Anstice. It may not be what you want to find in your stocking but we have to have the big picture and stay connected.

My third present is newly elected CILIP Vice President Phil Bradley. Again, he may not be what you want to find under the tree on Christmas morning but read his blog Librarians: a thought experiment. This gives a vision of a professional body that fights for libraries and librarians but (like the Wikimans's story) warns against adopting a "victim mentality". It is all about librarians doing something positive for themselves.

And my final gift is SINTO itself. Let's make it clear, I am not suggesting that SINTO can solve your problems. The only person who can do that is you, together with your colleagues. What SINTO can do is to bring you all together and give you the skills and knowledge to deal with the challenges we will all face.

To welcome you into the New Year the SINTO gift pack contains the following events:

• Sources of health information. Key information skills to enable your library service meet the information needs of your community
• Display techniques for libraries. Selling your services with eye-catching displays
• Delivering a proactive library service. Get staff out from behind the desk to interact with users.
• Library Campaigns. An executive briefing taking a realistic look at our relationship with campaigners.
• Next Generation 12. A year long management development course for only £500.

I don't know if 2011 will be a happy year for SINTO. We will have to share the pain experienced by our membership but while we survive we will fight.

With warmest regards

Carl Clayton
Director SINTO

SINTO Members' Day 2

Here is a brief description of the other presentations at members' day on the theme of New Ways of Working.

Alison Little, Librarian for the NHS, University of Sheffield
New ways of working - Clinical outreach services to the NHS
A key role for health libraries is to support clinical decision making. Knowledge is core to the business of the NHS. Medicine increasingly uses Evidence Based Practice i.e it requires clear evidence that drugs or procedures work in terms of supporting patient care. The outreach service at UoS has developed by raising awareness of resources and the role of EBP. The service provides support for individuals and teams, integrates local and national resources and provides handouts, guides and a strong web presence. The message is that a library service does not equal books or visits to a physical library but a service delivered to you when and where you need it.

David Fay, City Library Manager, Newcastle-upon-Tyne
David gave a presentation on Newcastle's new central library. Not only did he wow us with the high tech features of the library building (including a book vending machine) but he also described the marketing of the new library including a TV advert.

Angella Parker and Askander Akram, Rotherhan Library,Museums & Arts. The Social Library
Angella and Askander described how Rotherham libraries are using Web 2.0 to promote their library service. They have a Facebook page, a blog and a Wiki for staff communication. Facebook is used to promote the library service to people who do not use the library. The presentation can be seen here.

Peter Field, Senior Library Assistant at the School of Pharmacy Library, University of London. Adult literacy in prison libraries
Finally Peter , winner of the SINTO Bob Usherwood prize, gave a presentation on his dissertation on adult literacy provision in prison libraries Not only did he remind us of the importance of this sector but he showed some of the problems that face researchers.

As I said in my summing up - there are some interesting contrasts here. To some extent the importance of the library as a physical place is declining and yet the impact of a new building on library use is important and people want to have an accessible place to go to. Public libraries are clearly moving into the hybrid library stage of development where the real and the virtual library are equally important.

SINTO Foundation Agreement

From left to right. Ann Betterton (Sheffield Hallam University), Janice Maskort (Sheffield Libraries, Archives and Information) and Martin Lewis (University of Sheffield).

This photograph shows the signing of the SINTO Foundation agreement last week. This might strike you as odd as SINTO has existed since 1932!

In fact, SINTO in its present form, as a forum for strategic planning and partnership (rather than an inter-library loan organisation), was established in 1993 by Sheffield Public Libraries, the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University. The three partners agreed on how the new organisation would operate but for various reasons a formal foundation agreement was not signed. Over the next few years several attempts were made to draft an agreement but these all fell through.

A few years ago this caused a particular problem for SINTO when Sheffield City Council announced that it would be absorbing the funds held for SINTO by the City Council in order to cover a deficit in the city's finances. The lack of an agreed foundation document meant that the status of SINTO was uncertain. When this particular problem was resolved it was decided that a foundation agreement was essential and this was signed at the SINTO Executive meeting on the 15th April 2008.

The signing of the agreement should have little impact on SINTO members. We will continue to operate as we have been doing in the past. But it is worth asking, if SINTO did not exist would we want to invent it? The principles that SINTO stands for - partnership, co-operation, information planning - are important and as valid today as they were in 1993 or 1932. As it says in the agreement, SINTO was established "as a means of achieving more effective and efficient library services and thus contribute to the economic, educational and social infrastructure of Sheffield, South Yorkshire and the surrounding area."

SINTO Members' Day

Today's picture is of the Learning Centre at Sheffield Hallam University Collegiate campus.

On the 19th June we are holding the third SINTO members' day and AGM. We are obliged to hold an annual general meeting and they are inevitably rather dry affairs - although it does mean that SINTO is accountable to its member organisations. The idea of holding a members' day as well is to involve all library staff in SINTO libraries and to develop the concept of a community of librarians in our area.

The theme of this year's event is "Skills for the Future". How will the practice of librarianship change in the next few years? What new skills will we need in order to cope with this change? How can we ensure that we gain these new skills?

The day will start with refreshments from 12 noon and the opportunity to network with colleagues from the region. At 12.45 we have the AGM and just after 1pm we will introduce our keynote speaker Professor John Tarrant. John was vice-chancellor of Huddersfield University and is Chair of Museums, Libraries and Archives (MLA) Yorkshire. In his presentation on skills for the future John will refer to the Demos report Knowledge & Inspiration: the democratic face of culture produced in August 2006 for the MLA.

This will be followed by four short presentations by practitioners. Biddy Fisher, Head of Information Services at Sheffield Hallam University will talk on research on the future of library and information services. Sally Gibbs of Lifelong Learning UK will outline the work of LLUK in workforce development for the sector. Stephanie Taylor who has run courses for SINTO will look at mentoring and networking as essential soft skills and finally I will give a brief account of the new social computing tools provided by SINTO - including this blog. At the end of these sessions there will be a discussion forum led by Bob Usherwood.

Librarians on the whole are very good at doing things right - we take great pride in our professionalism - but we do not always pay enough attention to whether we are doing the right things. The world changes and what we need to do to meet the demands of our users has to change with it. This event gives us the opportunity to sit back and think about what is changing.

The picture today is of Chateau Sinto - the headquarters of the Sinto empire. To be exact, the Sinto staff - Gilly Pearce and myself, occupy two rooms on the first floor of this building which is part of the Sheffield Hallam University Collegiate Campus. The rest of the building is used for classrooms. Sinto is a truely co-operative venture. We are employed by Sheffield City Council and administered as part of Libraries, Archives and Information but our accommodation is provided by SHU. The University of Sheffield provides other services such as the SULOS (Sheffield Union List of periodicals) database.

If you have a photo of your own place of work please e-mail it to me and I can feature it in the blog.

To update a previous posting, Weston Park Museum did not win the Gulbenkian prize - it went to Pallant House Gallery instead. A shame but well done for getting on the short list.

SINTO Objectives

As I have said before, this is not a personal blog, but I don't want it to be a blog "about" SINTO either. I don't think that you want to know how I run SINTO - you want to know about the benefits you or your library can get from SINTO.

Last week we had meetings of the SINTO Executive Board and the Members' Forum. The Executive Board manages SINTO and so is very important in directing exactly what we do but I don't think that most people want to know the details. However, in the spirit of freedom of information, I will be putting up notes on the SINTO wiki.

The Members' Forum exists so that the views of SINTO members can be heard and matters of general professional interest can be debated. This ensures that SINTO is responding to the needs of its members (assuming that they articulate their needs). All SINTO member organisations can send a representative along to the meetings. At the last meeting we discussed a marketing strategy for SINTO. The results of this discussion are on the wiki. One outcome was to come up with a revised statement of the objectives of SINTO:

SINTO exists to develop library and information services in our
region through co-operation, workforce development and planning; and to promote
information fluency and investment in information.

We wanted to mention information literacy as a goal because of Sheila Corrall's presentation at the Library and Information Show. Someone suggested that "information fluency" was a better term for what we had in mind (e.g. see the leaflet from St Martin's College).

This statement may need some more work but I think it does indicate what we are all about and the benefits that you can expect from joining in.

Purpose of Sintoblog

Dear diary
A bit misty this morning so I made myself a bowl of porridge for breakfast.......

Well that's the problem with blogs. They are on-line diaries which are of interest to the writer but possibly of limited interest to everyone else. The Social Computing course has inspired me to set up Sintoblog - but what exactly would its value be to SINTO members?
I assume that people are not interested in what I had for breakfast and even an account of what I do at work is of very limited interest (except to my boss). You are all busy people with limited time to read my postings so what would be of interest and relevance to you?
I can think of two things. First it could be a source of information about SINTO events and activities - but we already have ways of keeping people informed of these (e.g. e-mails and the web site). On the whole I think that people want focused information about things of interest to them and not a general diary. On the other hand it might alert people to things they did not know about - the famous "unknown unknowns".

The second area is a forum for alerting people about general professional issues and developments and discussing their implications. This would be a CPD service and might be of interest to Chartership candidates and new professionals. In my role as SINTO director I possibly have a bit more time than most front-line librarians to read professional journals and news sources and to comment on them. Would that be of interest to SINTO members I wonder? The only way to find out is to try it.

Then there is my Wiki. That differs from the blog in that it can be organised by subject rather than a chronological diary. I don't just want to duplicate the web site so the issue is how to use the Web 2.0 aspects of a Wiki to give added value. My initial idea is that I will use it for the SINTO Groups and for follow-up to training events to provide a forum for discussion and exchange of information when people can not meet face-to-face.

The key is will people be bothered to read these new services on a regular basis and will they respond? Is there a SINTO community out there that is interested in sharing information?

Let me know what you think or I'll go back to describing my breakfasts.

Carl