Twitter elections

Is this the first Twitter CILIP election?
The campaign to elect the next Vice-president of CILIP (who will automatically become President the following year) is underway with two candidates - Phil Bradley and Edwina Smart. 5 candidates are also competing for 4 places on CILIP Council.
To my knowledge this is the first time that social media has played an important part in the hustings. Social media - in particular CILIP Communities but also independent blogs and Twitter - have emerged as a forum for members to question the candidates and for candidates to explain their views and plans for CILIP. But there is more to it than that. Social media has become a hot topic of debate in itself. The view has been expressed that CILIP is too London-centric and inward looking. Social media is seen as a way of overcoming this, of taking CILIP out to the wider membership. There is even a suggestion that users of social media are a new generation of library professionals in contrast to the traditional old guard and that the adoption of social media by CILIP will change the way in which the professional body operates.
One of the presidential candidates Phil Bradley, has criticised the fact that the CILIP AGM was not live streamed and that it was not in a venue where people could send tweets. Another blogger has started a lively debate about CILIP being a London clique with an anti-technology bias.

But is this a new wave of connected librarians or simply a different clique. Is it a small gang of techies in an echo chamber talking to themselves and to no one else? How large and representative is this library social media community? One proxy measure is the number of Twitter followers for library organisations and leading librarians. CILIPinfo has 1700 followers. The CILIP Chief Executive Annie Mauger has 333 followers. CILIP President Biddy Fisher has 447. Many of the librarians I follow have around 300-400 followers. I would put the number of library Tweeters at no more than 1000 maximum. Other librarians may use social networking tools other than Twitter but clearly this is a very small percentage of library professionals. Those who argue that CILIP should use these tools to communicate with members and to deliver training are ignoring the fact the vast majority of the profession does not use these tools. Overreliance on social networking at this point in time would not make CILIP more responsive to its membership.

That is not to say that CILIP should turn its back on social networking- far from it. Use of these tools is growing and in particular is popular with new professionals. If CILIP were to make more use of these tools for communicating with members then more members would use them and discover the wider benefits. CILIP has to lead by example and out new Chief Executive and soon to be elected president in waiting are in a strong position to do that.

Where the debate is

In my last blog I looked at how social networking had the potential of changing the relationship between librarians and their professional body. I will now look at how social networking is affecting the relationship between the public at large and the library profession.

Debates about libraries on social networking sites are quite common and I have mentioned some in the past. Two recent examples are of interest.

The Government launched their Spending Challenge website asking people to post suggestions on "how we can re-think government to deliver more for less" The site was unmoderated and soon attracted some very offensive comments but it also had a number of posts relating to libraries. Many of these suggested getting rid of libraries:

• Using the Library as a source of knowledge is outdated. The internet has taken over. They are outdated institutions. Why should the state fund peoples reading habits. The usually occupy prime city/town locations and must cost a fortune to run and staff just so that a small minority of die hards can borrow books at the states expense.

Others suggested introducing charges, using volunteers and other cost-saving suggestions. A few argued for expanding the role of libraries.

On 13th July the Guardian published a piece in its Comment is Free column by Ian Clark, a university librarian. "We still need libraries in the digital age" argued that Public libraries have a vital role bridging the digital divide and teaching people how to get reliable information from the internet. The online version of this article had attracted over 100 comments by this morning. These responses were from "typical Guardian readers" and included several from librarians. They too ranged from getting rid of libraries because the Internet has made them obsolete to passionate support.

• Libraries are a bit like the Gurkhas - the public goes a bit mushy and woolly headed over them. So doubtless we'll continue to see councils blowing our taxes on large buildings full of books that no one reads....
  
• Libraries, like post offices, served a valuable function in the past. That past valuable function is fast expiring and the vested interests in both are casting around for new reasons to justify their existence. We should be looking for the most economical ways to phase both out.
  
• Free access to information whether it be the net or good old fashioned books is a mark of a civilized nation. Long may libraries continue.
  
• Libraries have never been perfect, but there is proportionately more 'wisdom' that can be sourced from within them. Sadly few people ever trouble to seek out 'wisdom' nor even 'knowledge'. However, via the media they are fed a lot of 'information' that contributes to their confusion.
  
• So for me, I still use my various laptops, iPad, BB etc to find information and for general reading. Maybe it's time to focus libraries on the young and leave the rest of us to our own devices
  
• Perhaps those scoffing at libraries, in their well paid jobs from the comfort of their homes, should consider this. Even if they do not use libraries there are many of us who see them as lifelines and this should be protected.

We shouldn't go overboard in our response to these views, especially the anti-libraries ones, but at the same time we need to be aware that some people hold these views and the profession should be responding. I was alerted to both discussions by posts on Twitter but there is a digital divide in the profession and I wonder how many senior librarians have picked up on these discussions while they are going on. Several librarians did respond in the Guardian thread but from what I saw the only response from a head of service was from Canada. I know many might say that it is not worth getting involved in this type of debate, and it often does descend to the level of trading insults, but I think it is dangerous to turn our back on a discussion like this. A final comment from the Guardian thread shows that even friends of libraries sometimes despair of our response.

• Fact is, you are doing a very bad job of explaining yourself here. If libraries are set up by people like you as glorified 'information'-harvesting points they will close, pretty swiftly. My advice, for what it is worth, is that you might try focusing on the glories of a free public space - a physical space as opposed to the privatised non-space offered by the web - offering free access to pretty much any book ever published, and a bit of other good stuff on the side - DVDs, CDs, information technology. Hell, you could even try promoting the experience of reading books to a generation increasingly unfamiliar with them. All this, free at the point of use in a public space which is also often a community hub. Sounds pretty good to me. You could also try speaking about this with passion, like a person, rather than a consultant who uses dead and depressing phrases like 'facilitating access to information technology' and 'delivers on aspects of its core services.' It might not work, but I reckon it would be worth a try.
  

Leicester University Library Toilets

This picture is taken from the Facebook group Leicester University Library Toilets Appreciation Society ( here but you have to be registered with Facebook).

The Group was set up to celebrate the toilets in the new David Wilson university library. It probably only confirms suspicions that Facebook (and Social Computing in general) is about trivia - but the library itself does have a Facebook page. As far as I know the University of Sheffield Information Commons isn't on Facebook. Are they missing out on a marketing opportunity or just being sensible?

Picanswers

I used the above picture in a posting some time ago. It's a piece of sculpture I spotted when walking around Barcelona last summer and I suppose it just tickled my fancy. Later I began to wonder what the piece is called and who the artist is, but a search on Google images failed to find it. Then I heard (through Phil Bradley's excellent blog) about a service called Picanswers. You post photographs to this site with a question and see if anyone replies. I posted my Cheeky Sculpture picture and a few days later I received a detailed reply giving full information. Here is part of the reply:

"The sculpture in your picture is located in the Park of Carles I along the Avenida Icaria, in the district of Sant Martí in Barcelona. It was made by Eduardo Úrculo in 1999 and is a homage to Santiago Roldán, president of the Olympic Holding from 1989 to 1993 (so it says at the base of the sculpture)."

There were also links to other photographs and a Youtube video clip. It just goes to show the power of social computing.

I'm still not sure if this blog has much power or influence but I checked recently and it is getting an average of 12 hits a day. If we ignore the weekends, when my intended audience should have better things to do, that's almost 17 per day. It peaked on the 5th February this year when it had 33 hits. Thanks for reading.

Social Networking for librarians

Librarians have on the whole been slow to adopt social networks as a means of professional development but it seems to be taking off. The CILIP Communities website provides a number of forums where members can have lively discussions on a range of issues. Critical Eye Communications have recently launched The Skills Exchange, described as a place for librarians and information workers to meet and exchange ideas. It also has a number of forums on topics such as the role of the modern library, web 2.0 tools & applications, copyright and repositories. CILIP Yorkshire & Humber Branch has been very innovative in setting up a Facebook page and its own wiki. And of course SINTO has a wiki.

The idea behind all these is similar. Sharing ideas and discussing professional issues with librarians from other organisations is an important tool for professional development. Opportunities to do this have traditionally been limited. We read the professional press and attend the occasional meeting or conference but most of the time we are working on our own. Social networking provides the opportunity to keep in touch with a community of interest from your workplace or home. As with many new developments the critical thing is not mastering the technology but changing our behaviour to take advantage of the new opportunities. Many people would take a half -or full-day, or more, off work to attend a meeting or training event but would find it difficult to spend a few hours a week to sit down in front of a computer and take part in on-line professional discussions. I wonder how many heads of service or training officers encourage their staff to do this during work time as part of their CPD activities.

It is perhaps dissapointing that there are now so many different social networking sites on offer - but there has always been a number of different professional journals available, each with its own remit and coverage. These things grow organically and we can not expect them to conform to a central plan. What is important is that individual professionals and LIS organisations seize the opportunity that is being offered and join in with these networks.

Facebook Group for CILIP Y&H

At the recent SINTO course on social computing we covered the popular social networking site Facebook. As a result I signed up and created my own Facebook page to see what value it might have for librarians.

Most of what happens on Facebook is about personal networking which is great fun for those involved but not really relevant to the work environment. It is easy to see why many employers ban staff from using it at work.

A search of facebook groups with the keyword "librarians" produces over 500 hits. Many of these are trivial but there are a number of serious groups aimed at librarians e.g.:

• Library 2.0 Interest group
• Librarians and Facebook
• Libraries and Librarians

Looking at these I found them of some interest but not focused enough to be a useful CPD tool. Most of the members are from the US - nothing wrong with that in itself but their experiences are not always relevant to the UK.

There is a CILIP group that has been set up by members rather than Ridgmount Street. And recently Andrew Walsh has set up a Group for the Yorkshire and Humberside Branch of CILIP.

I'm not sure if the library profession is quite ready to make use of social computing tools. Many librarians lack easy access to a PC at work and lack the time to devote to networkingat work. (And the inclination to devote time to it at home). We also lack the culture of using such tools for networking and professional development. We are not very 'clubable' and many of us expect CPD to be done to us in a formal setting rather than seeking out learning opportunities.

However, things change. I wish the CILIP Y&H Facebook Group well and hope that it is successful.

Social Computing Two

We ran our Social Computing Two course yesterday with Stephanie Taylor. In my introduction I mentioned a headline in CILIP Update to the effect that anyone who does not engage with Web/Library 2.0 should resign from the profession. I said that was a bit OTT, but any library service that does not get involved with this is in danger of falling by the wayside.

Stephanie introduced the small but keen audience to social networks, social bookmarking and tagging. She presented examples of these and explored how they could be used by libraries and librarians. There was plenty of opportunity to explore these applications at first hand. Staephanie also set four case studies as exercises. These looked at supporting a public library book group, supporting a group of psychiatric nurses, supporting a library enquiry desk and some problems that might arise from use of social computing. A fuller write up of the course will be provided on the SINTO wiki and everyone interested in this topic is welcome to use this page as a community of interest.

Battle lines 2

In my previous posting on this I drew attention to the debate that has been going on between the Webbed and the Web-sceptics(to use Sheila Webber's terms) . I based this on articles published in CILIP journals because I wanted to provide a link between print-based forums and on-line forums and (as a blog with a regional focus) I wanted to keep things as local as possible. My hope is that this will help to make my comments relevant to the majority of library workers in the SINTO region.

However a feature of the Webbed community is that it is not restricted geographically - it is as easy to debate with someone on the other side of the globe as it is with someone in the same town or even the same building. Also what happens in the blog sphere tends to stay in the blog sphere, so if you are not part of that you can miss out on the debate.

These observations were triggered by my reading of the Encyclopedia Britannica blog. This describes itself as a place for smart, lively conversations about a broad range of topics but its significance is that Britannica represents the scholarly, authoritative and traditional source of information which is often seen as being in opposition to the Internet, Google, Wikipedia and Web 2.0. At one level Britannica Blog represents the "establishment" adopting Web 2.0 tools in order to remain relevant but it is also a platform for the Web-sceptics to hit back.

Britannica Blog recently invited Michael Gorman, past president of the American Library Association, to explore the state of knowledge, learning, and authority in a series of essays. These provide a primer for anyone interested in this topic. To take some quotes at random (and out of context - please read the originals):

"The true challenge for businesses, search engines, schools, and publishers is discovering how to tap into and exploit this source of reputable and reliable information. Until that occurs, we may well be raising a generation of screen potatoes who, blinded by speed and made lazy by convenience, are ignorant of the knowledge they will never acquire and the rich world of learning that search engines cannot currently deliver to them."

"Print does not necessarily bestow authenticity, and an increasing number of digital resources do not, by themselves, reflect an increase in expertise. The task before us is to extend into the digital world the virtues of authenticity, expertise, and scholarly apparatus that have evolved over the 500 years of print, virtues often absent in the manuscript age that preceded print."

"An encyclopedia (literally, the “circle of learning”) is the product of many minds. It is not the product of a collective mind. It is an assemblage of texts that have been written by people with credentials and expertise and that have been edited, verified, and supplied with a scholarly apparatus enabling the user to locate desired knowledge. It differs in almost all relevant particulars from one of the current manifestations of the flight from expertise—Wikipedia, which bills itself as “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit” and to which everyone can contribute irrespective of whether they possess, or simply pretend to possess, credentials and expertise. "

The blog also carries posts responding to these essays. I suspect that Britannica has weeded out the more extreme postings but what remains provide a lively and passionate debate from both sides. Some posters have claimed that it is ironic that a critic of Web 2.0 should be contributing to a blog but that misses the point. It is not the technology that is the problem but how it is used. It would be ironic however if the web-sceptics were to miss out on this important debate because they do not read blogs. Perhaps you, dear reader, could ask yourself the question - what do you do to ensure that your colleagues in your workplace are kept in touch with these forum? What policy does your workplace have to ensure that all staff are kept up-to-date with the latest professional debates? Is there an issue of professional ethics involved here? Comments please!

Battle lines

Is there a battle raging for the hearts and minds of the library profession? I have just been reading the June issue of CILIP Update and the 1 June issue of Library & Information Gazette and was struck by number of items that suggest there is a conflict.

The battle ground is defined by the problems facing libraries of all sorts. Update reported on the Laser Foundation report that claims that England has a failing public library service, and on a conference with the title Do researchers still need libraries?

On one side of the field are the Webbed featuring General Phil Bradley and Karen Blakeman under the slogan "Just do it". They argue that libraries must embrace the new technologies. The Update feature on the Library 2.0 forum has the headline Use the new tool - or be overtaken. This was the theme of my post yesterday.

On the other side are the web sceptics gathered around Field Marshall Tim Coates. Their battle cry is "Libraries are synonymous with books and reading. They always have been and they always will be". Among his supporters in Gazette & Update are John Pateman ("Tim Coates is right"), James Christie ("I have spent 15 years feeling discriminated against for liking books"), C John Hughes ("We don't blog, we lead") and Tom Featherstone ("We were united in the belief of the life-enhancing power of the printed word").

On reflection however, I feel that this image of a direct conflict is misleading. On the whole the webbed are not anti-book. They are driven by two concerns. First libraries need to occupy new territory, the land of the digital natives. Second, libraries can use new technologies to promote their core functions which include the promotion of books and reading.

Similarly the web sceptics are not all anti-computer. Tim Coates is concerned with the wider issue of the efficient management of public libraries and the dilution of their role in promoting books and reading rather than objecting to ICT per se. Similarly John Pateman's support for Tim is based on the need to "... take a long, hard look at ourselves and fundamentally change many of our arcane practices if we are ever to get back to our previous level of use ".
The web sceptics don't always make it clear what they mean by phrases such as "books and reading" or "the printed word". It is trite to say that you need to read to be able to use computers. Reading in this context is not just decoding symbols. It is an involvement with text which expresses ideas in a sophisticated way and can be extended to other media such as film.
"Book" should not just refer to the physical format of the codex i.e. pages gathered together in a binding, although this format still has many advantages over current electronic alternatives. Web sceptics tend to be thinking of a wider concept which embraces "great books" i.e. authoratitive works of fiction and non-fiction. A classic that has been digitalized and downloaded onto a computer is still a book while a compilation of a blog that has been published in print form is probably not a book. This is often attacked as "elitist" but as Tom Featherstone points out about an older generation of librarians "... my recollection of most of my colleagues was of a hard-drinking and argumentative lot, who were nearly all from working-class background. Our bible, if we had one, was Richard Hoggarts's Uses of literacy, in which he foresaw the dangers of education without values".
One of the problems with Wikipedia is that it is education without values in that the contribution of an expert can be afforded the same treatment as the contribution of a non-expert (or practical joker). Before it was signposted as a hoax what was the difference between the Wiki entry for the Upper Peninsula War and that for the Chaco War? To be fair, the same point applies to books such as The Da Vinci Code.

At times the debate is less like a battle between two opposing forces and more like a bar-room brawl with everyone hitting out at whoever is closest. But the outcome is critical for the future of libraries and we should all take part.

Wallflower at the party?

How social are librarians? Are we the life and soul of the party or do we hide in the corner? I am really thinking about our role in social media initiatives. SINTO has recently run events on Social Computing covering wikis and blogs and we will be running a follow up seminar on tagging, social bookmarking and social networking. There is a great deal of interest in these subjects but are there any role models out there?
Information World Review recently featured two bloggers who asked the same question and provide a model. Stephen Dale, a knowledge and information expert at the Improvement & development Agency writes a blog called Dissident. The aim of this is "Introducing Social media tools and 3rd generation knowledge management techniques into local government. Tackling the silo working practices and resistance to change that contribute to inefficiencies in the public sector" In a recent post he asked why librarians weren't taking a higher profile in promoting tagging and social bookmarking?
The Business of Knowing is a blog from Helen Nicol who lives in Sheffield and works in Leeds. Her main area of interest is Enterprise 2.0 - how social computing can help businesses. She recently drew attention to the impact of blogging on offline relationships. "I've noticed recently that my involvement in blogging, particularly internally, is having a real, positive impact on my face to face work relationships... We've connected on a level that has increased the degree to which we share knowledge and experience, the degree to which we collaborate. This isn't necessarily on a blog, it's because of a blog."
Clearly the situation is different in the different sectors. Many academic librarians have embraced blogs and other social network tools and are promoting tagging etc as part of information literacy training. I expect that they are also developing offline relationships with academics in their organisations.
In public libraries the situation is more difficult. Librarians are only just beginning to embrace web 2.0 technologies and local authorities are less eager to embrace or encourage these technologies as Stephen Dale points out. Also there is a different relationship between the librarian and their users and the librarian and their colleagues in the authority. I suspect that there are few local authorities where the library service and library staff are seen as being central to the operation and success of the authority. It is a valuable service to the public and part of cultural services but not always a resource for the organisation. In this context it is hard to think of examples of librarians & information professionals using internal blogs to develop better face to face relationships in the way described by Helen Nicol.
Librarians often complain that their role is not recognised and that they don't have a dynamic image but like the wallflower at the party the answer is to get up and circulate. And perhaps one day local government will have the Enterprise 2.0 tools that businesses are adopting.