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.

Sheffield Central Library

A picture of the Sheffield Central Library in Surrey Street. It is impressive, monumental even. When you walk through a door of this scale you know that you have arrived somewhere special! It gives a clear message about the status of the institution that you are entering.

At the same time it can be off putting. Access of course is a problem (there is an alternative entrance for wheel chair & push chair users which is clearly signed) but also the very formality of the entrance must put some people off. Today, shops and public buildings tend to have large glass windows so you can see what is inside and to entice the passer-by into the building.

The building is due (long overdue) for internal restructuring and there have been proposals in the past for a new central library, none of which have come to anything. For a city that has created a new image for itself on the back of public building projects (Millennium Gallery, Winter Gardens, Peace Gardens) it seems a shame that the public library has been neglected.

SINTO wiki

I have to confess that I can't claim that this image is relevant to librarianship in South Yorkshire! It is a piece of sculpture in a quarry on the coast of Jersey.

We ran a repeat of the Social Computing course yesterday and I was inspired to try including some pictures on my blog. Sheila Webber in her Information Literacy blog always includes photos of flowers so I thought I would try the same.

The SINTO wiki continues to be developed. I have updated the page for Social Computing and added a page about library blogs. I have also created a page for School Librarians. With these and the other wiki pages I hope that people will add their own material.

Since the wiki was set up in March there has been an average of 28 visitors every week. Anyone can post a comment on the wiki (as with this blog) but users are also invited to register with the site. You can then become a Registered User or a Writer which gives you the ability to add new pages and edit existing pages. This of course is the whol point of a wiki - it is a community web site to which any member of the community can contribute.

This may be a difficult concept for librarians to accept! It's not just that the technology is new. A role of librarians is to preserve documents, whether they are books or websites. We don't like it when users add comments or make changes in library books and we are suspicious of Wikipedia where there is no permanence or authority for entries. The idea that a website can be changed and rewritten by anyone ( at least anyone in a defined community) goes against our instincts.

The benefits I hope are obvious. Expertise is spread throughout the SINTO community and it should be shared. I would like you all to see yourselves as part of a community that extends outside your own library. I hope you will contribute and will encourage your colleagues to do the same.

Gulbenkian Prize

Weston Park Museum, Sheffield is one of four museums shortlisted for the Gulbenkian prize which will be announced tomorrow. The prize of £100,000 is awarded to a museum that has demonstrated "imagination, innovation and excellence".
A piece in the Education Guardian yesterday describes the hands-on, multi-sensory education programme that is run in the museum by Anne Clayton (no relation) head of learning programmes. She says "A lot of the less academically able children don't necessarily learn by reading. The museum is all about objects, so is far more open to them for getting information,".
I wish Weston Park Museum the best of luck tomorrow and even if they don't walk off with the prize, being short listed is recognition for what they have achieved. I was a bit critical of the museum in my 16th April posting when I lamented the lack of detailed contextual information. I totally agree with Anne's sentiments about less academically able children not learning by reading but there are also more academically able adults who need to be catered for as well.
In the Times Joanna Moorhead, one of the Gulbenkian judges, also looks at the issue of "dumbing down" i.e. is it OK to give visitors pointers as to what they might think and feel about a picture or an exhibit – or should they simply be presented with objects and paintings and left to make up their own minds about what they feel about them?
She concludes
"The commonsense truth is that, if you know little about a subject, you need some basic information: if you’re an aficionado, you need less. But the aficionados can’t expect to hold back appreciation of their art by denying the rest of us mere mortals a bit of a peep into their world: that’s elitism, and the arts world could do with a lot less of it."
However, my point was that if you are interested in or inspired by an object in a museum you may want to learn more about it and that museums are not always very good at providing the signposting that would lead you to other resources. If you are lucky there will be a good bookshop but can you get a reading list? I fully support the education programme for children but I would like to think that adults can be engaged too in an appropriate way.

Social Computing

Today, SINTO is running a repeat of the course Social Computing - wikis, blogs and RSS feeds. If you have logged on to this blog as part of that course then hello!
Remember that we would like your comments on the SINTO wiki http://sinto.wetpaint.com/page/Social+computing

Future of Public Libraries

Nice to see some comments to my recent postings and please do join in if you want to. Tim Coates is not the only person with views on the future of public libraries.

Ruth Rikowski gives a report on the talk given by Tony Benn at the CILIP Members' Day last October in Managing Information May 2007. Mr Benn talked about freedom of information in general and answered questions about charging for library use and the World Trade Organisation General Agreement on Trade in Services which poses a threat to state-funded libraries. A fuller report of this talk is available at the Flow of Ideas web site

The Library Campaign was set up in 1984 to support public libraries through the activities of friends and users groups. The Campaign User Handbook is a valuable resource.

Information for Social Change is "an activist organisation that examines issues of censorship, freedom and ethics amongst library and information workers. It is committed to promoting alternatives to the dominant paradigms of library and information work and publishes its own journal, Information for Social Change."

Here is a challenge. If you wanted a hard-hitting, authoritative statement about the value of public libraries today where would you find it? Can anyone direct me to such a document?

Forthcoming events

On the 12 June SINTO is running a seminar on Supervisory skills. When we were planning this course it was pointed out that librarians sometimes find that they are in a supervisory role not because they have applied for a more senior job but because internal reorganisation has thrust them into this role. Whatever the reason, having to lead and motivate a team is a big challenge. Supervisory skills are transferable but this event is designed for library and information staff. It will give you a thorough grounding in the skills you need and confidence to put them into practice. The course is delivered by Stephanie Taylor of Critical Eye Communications. Attendees will receive a course handbook containing a summary and checklist for each section of the course, a follow-up session and useful online and offline resources.

On the 27th June Ronnie Young delivers a course on assertiveness. This event is about understanding and developing assertive behaviour in the workplace: how to be, not passive..., not agressive..., but assertive.

We all have to deal with other people - our customers, colleagues and bosses. Yet sometimes we may feel we are being ignored, manipulated or intimidated. Do we back-away from confrontation or let the anger bubble up - or is there a better way?

Led by Ronnie Young, this course will help you understand assertive behaviour and apply it in everyday situations. It will teach you to become more confident in yourself and in dealing with other people. This course is aimed at staff at all levels from libraries, archives and museums who have to deal with other people. It will be of value to front-line staff dealing with users, and to supervisors and managers dealing with other staff.

Go to the SINTO web site for further details and booking forms.