Library of the Future Debate

The Library of the Future debate organised by JISC and Oxford University Library Service took place on 2nd April. Video clips of sessions from the debate are available.

I have just watched the presentations by Chris Batt on public libraries and Sarah Thomas, Bodley's Librarian and Director of Oxford University Library Service. Chris makes the point that librarians should be more reflective and do more practical scenario planning. Both these presentations are a good starting point for this and the debate as a whole is a valuable masterclass on environmental scanning for librarians from all sectors.

Green SINTO

The 2008-9 edition of the SINTO Members' Directories are now being distributed to all SINTO member organisations. The Directories are distributed in electronic format which of course means that an area the size of Wales in the Amazon rain forest will not now have to be chopped down to produce paper, while the saving in CO2 emissions from the fleet of lorries that would otherwise be needed to deliver them will preserve the polar ice caps and save thousands of polar bears and penguins - not to mention those gorgeous baby seal pups.

However, the Green benefits of the SINTO Directories don't just stop there, oh no! Using the directories opens up a whole world of resource sharing which is essential to a sustainable lifestyle.

The General Networking directory lists all SINTO members, including many separate site libraries, and provides all the contact details you need. Exactly how you make use of this is up to you but the possibilities are endless. The green mantra is "think globally, act locally" and the directory helps you to do this. There are many ways in which you can improve your library services and save resources by working in partnership. A small example is the list of Library Management Systems used by SINTO libraries. If you want to see how a particular system works you can visit a local library - and use public transport as well!

The Inter Library Loan Scheme directory takes this even further. Here is all the information you need to contact those libraries that take part in the SINTO ILL scheme. Again, sourcing things locally should be a central theme of your environmental policy (you do have one, don't you!).

And don't forget that SINTO training events are all run locally - and we serve Fairtrade coffee!

All this Green stuff does get confusing but just remember that using SINTO will save all those polar bears in the Amazon rain forest.

Dancing with wolves

This is a bit of self-plagiarism. The following piece was published in the City Business Magazine Dec/Jan 2005/6 issue. This magazine is circulated free to SMEs in South Yorkshire.

This is a tale from North America. A young Native American boy wants to put his courage to the test so he asks his grandfather to take him into the wild forest. They enter the forest and the old man leads his grandson deep into its heart. They come to the edge of a clearing and peering through the leaves the boy sees that resting in the clearing is a pack of wolves. These creatures are notorious for their size, fierceness and cunning. His courage seeps away and the boy trembles in fear, but when he turns to his grandfather he sees that the old man is calm and relaxed.

Then something disturbs the pack. They get to their feet and slink off into the undergrowth without a sound. The clearing is now empty and peaceful. The boy regains his courage and turns to his grandfather with a smile on his face - only to see his grandfather shivering with fear...

The moral of this story is that in life - or business - the real dangers that threaten us are not the things we know about but the things we don't know about. More information can help reduce these "unknowns" but we inevitably concentrate on the "known unknowns" and forget about the "unknown unknowns" - the wolves that we don't know are there.

One solution is to conduct an environmental review - to examine the environment in which your business operates in and look out for the wolves. A memory aid for this used to be PEST = Political, Economic, Social and Technological, but this has now been inflated to SEPTEMBER - Social, Economic, Political, Technological, Environmental, Marketing, Buying groups, Equilibrium of power and Regulatory.

Whatever acronym we use we should sit back every so often and scan the environment. And if we don't see any wolves we should ask ourselves "where are they hiding?"