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.

Downgrading library posts

Three long serving librarians at the University of Leeds are to have their salaries cut as part of a university wide review of gradings according to Information World Review. The subject librarians have filed an appeal and CILIP advisers have been advising them.

This is an example of "red-circling" where posts are identified for downgrading following a job evaluation exercise. An article in Library and Information Gazette (23 February - 8 March) takes a close look at this process. Many organisations use a scheme for job evaluation - the Higher Education Role Analysis scheme (HERA), Hay Group and Gauge are examples. They are "black boxes" - you input details of the job and it produces a recommended grade. In theory this is not a cost-saving exercise, it is just meant to ensure that people in different jobs are on a fair grade for that job - but there are issues. How has the "black box" been constructed? What values have been put on different skills and responsibilities? Are information skills rated as highly as say teaching or IT skills?

Librarians are probably right to distrust this process in which misconceptions about what an information professional does might have become embedded into the black box. But there is also a challenge for the profession. We must always ask ourselves two questions - are we "doing things right" and are we "doing the right thing"?

The first is simpler. It is about basic professional competence- ensuring that we have the skills and knowledge to do the job, that we keep ourselves up-to-date with developments and we have a professional attitude. The second is more tricky. We have to constantly check that what we are doing is what needs doing. Have things changed? This could be the technology, or the requirements of our users, or the expectations of our employers.

I sometimes hear people defending their expertise on the grounds that they have so many years of experience. But the pace of change in librarianship is such that what you did and knew five years ago is largely irrelevant today. If you are still doing the same things and still have the same knowledge and skills that you had five years ago them you are probably no longer competent to practice. Your years of experience are only valid if you can demonstrate continuing professional development over that period and you have re-examined your basic role in the organisation. The paradox is that your awareness of the changing role of your job may be in advance of that of your manager or organisation. One day you are pushing against a barrier of organisational inertia, the next the organisation is telling you that you have not kept up with changes in your role.

This relates to my postings on the new Occupational Standards. While we are defining the skills that librarians need we must not preserve an outdated view of what the role of the librarian is. That role will and must change and we must change with it.

Skills for the workforce

Yesterday I attended a meeting held by Lifelong Learning UK (LLUK) at the Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds on the strategic direction and development of the libraries, archives and information service workforce. The meeting looked at the development of a Sector Skills Agreement (SSA) for the Libraries, Archives and Information Services (LAIS) workforce and the project to develop National Occupational Standards and a framework of vocational qualifications for this sector.

It's a topic that most of us would regard as important - it deals with fundamental questions for both individuals and organisations such as what skills do people need? How do we get those skills? How are those skills recognised?

At the same time it is a complex issue and we are faced with organisations, projects and qualifications that seem to change constantly. It's no wonder that we get confused!

Here is my stab at an idiots guide.

What is Lifelong Learning UK?
LLUK is one of 25 Sector Skills Councils under the Skills for Business programme. The aim of LLUK is to ensure that lifelong learning employers can recruit, retain and develop highly skilled and effective staff.

Sorry - what do you mean by "lifelong learning employers"?
This term covers all organisations working in community learning & development, further education, higher education, work-based learning and libraries, archives & information services. Its a broad and diverse group which you could say has just lumped together several different sectors but there is a common purpose that links them together. LLUK replaces the old Information Services National Training Organisation (isNTO)

So what does LLUK do?
Well the first thing it is doing is to develop a Sector Skills Agreement (SSA)

A what?
An SSA is an agreement between employers and government that will ensure that the workforce has the right skills in the right places at the right time. It identifies current and future skills gaps and works with partners to fill these gaps. Our SSA will ensure that the UK's lifelong learning sector has the skilled workforce it needs to increase productivity and improve service delivery.

And what does that mean for libraries, archives and information services?
The research and consultation with the LAIS sector is underway but certain skills issues have been identified for the sector. These include:
The identification of specific LAIS technical skills such as cataloguing, collections management, information retrieval, conservation & preservation.
The identification of specific ICT skills such as digitisation, management of metadata, ICT systems development.
The need for customer engagement skills in order to establish user needs and provide support and guidance.
The need to develop a new generation of library leaders through management skills, strategic leadership, advocacy and project management.

In the discussions yesterday a number of themes emerged. It was felt that the existing structure for delivering LAIS technical skills (i.e. through library school trained staff) worked well but there was a need for consistent updating. ICT developments impacted on almost all areas and there was a pressing need for more people with the appropriate skills in the workforce. There was a pressing need for inter-personal skills/customer engagement skills and also for leadership skills at all levels e.g. all staff should be able to promote the library service to users and management. One feature of the LAIS workforce is the age profile which means that a high proportion of experienced staff will be retiring in the next 10 years. It may also mean that staff are not keen on training and CPD as they are approaching retirement. It was argued that all staff in the lifelong learning sector should have a personal commitment to lifelong learning. One way of helping to achieve this is to make sure that all learning and skills development is recognised by the gaining of vocational qualifications. This would help all staff gain promotion or a new job and would ensure that they are still qualified to continue in their current post.

In my next post on this meeting I will look at the development of a new framework of vocational qualifications.