CPD23 Thing 16

I was asked to write a Thing for the CPD23 project that I’m also taking part in. I’ve reproduced it below and it was originally posted here. It’d be great to get people talking about the topic of advocacy, speaking up for the profession and getting published, so even if you’re not doing CPD23, please do blog about this one

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Apologies in advance to international CPD23-ers; this is a fairly UK-centric post, but I hope that those from countries where advocacy has more of a history will be able to provide some useful thoughts and resources to the rest of us!

Advocacy and speaking up for the profession

Advocacy for libraries has probably been around for as long as libraries have, but recently it’s taken a big step-up in the UK. During These Economic Times it’s increasingly important for people working in library and information roles to be able to explain and express the value of their service – what it does that benefits users, how it can help non-users, how it can add value to the organisation it’s in, and so on, in order to serve as many people as possible, meet their needs as well as possible and crucially, to ensure that we’ve got enough of a budget to do all the things we need to do. Stakeholders need to understand exactly what it is we do and why what we do is important – they’re the ones holding the purse-strings.

Perhaps the highest profile advocacy taking place at the moment is public libraries campaigning; there’s a busy #savelibraries hashtag on twitter and organisations like Voices for the Library, CILIP, Campaign for the Book, Unison and the Women’s Institute are all fighting drastic cuts to public library services across the UK. Unfortunately it’s very hard for public library staff to campaign for their own sector without risking their jobs, so it’s very important for people outside of public libraries (and within, where possible) to shout about the role of public libraries and talk about why they’re more relevant than ever.

Annie Mauger's address to the WI by ijclark on Flickr

A lot of the advocacy for public libraries has involved activities that not all of us would be comfortable doing: banner-waving; shouting; marching on parliament; speaking to local and national politicians; giving interviews for tv, radio and newspapers; helping lawyers put together arguments for legal challenges…it’s certainly not part of any job description for a librarian I’ve come across! However, this kind of thing is far more along the lines of activism than advocacy, and shouldn’t put people off getting involved with advocacy. If promoting/advocating for your own service isn’t in job descriptions yet, it a) blinking well should be and b) probably will be soon…! CILIP have put together some advocacy resources for different sectors including special library and information services, schools and further education. There’s also a campaigning toolkit on their website. The American Library Association has absolutely tons of advocacy resources that I recommend having a scout around. Some fantastic advocacy came out of the LIS New Professionals Network Advocacy Challenge including jigaws, knitting patterns, and the That’s Not Online! Project. It’d be great to see more of that kind of thing. The Lib Code is an advocacy campaign from the Philippines I stumbled across on Tumblr when I was looking for images for this post – they’ve only very recently had a soft launch, and I think it’ll be worth keeping an eye on what they’re doing.

The Lib Code [2011] from UP LISSA on Vimeo.

Getting published

In addition to all the skills you pick up when engaging in advocacy (public speaking, constructing arguments, communicating with different stakeholders, using social media effectively, designing online and print materials etc.), there is the opportunity to write and get published. Keeping a blog about your work lets people know that you’re active and people will think of you if they need information, or someone to write an article. For example, the posts I’ve written for the Voices site and things I’ve published on my own blog have led to requests for articles from places such as False Economy, Living Streets and Public Library Journal. It’s also worth pitching article ideas to places like The Guardian’s Comment is Free – they’re keen to hear from people who specialise in particular subjects, and have commissioned pieces by me, Ian Clark and Simon Barron when we’ve approached them. Emma Cragg and Katie Birkwood approached Guardian Careers, who published their piece on what it takes to be a 21st century librarian. Publishing within library-related publications helps to keep library and information people up to date with what’s going on, and publishing outside of library publications helps to get your message out of the accursed echo-chamber. Both can be very useful, and help to boost your skills and experience.

Library Love by justgrimes on Flickr

Things to Do

There’s plenty you can do to incorporate advocacy into your day-to-day life; the hardest part is working out how. For this Thing:

• Consider why it’s important to advocate for the section of library and information sector that you work for or want to work in.
• Have a think about what advocacy you’ve been involved in. Give examples so we can pool resources and inspire others to do the same. Or, give an example of some advocacy that you think has been particularly effective – library-related or otherwise.
• If you haven’t been involved in advocacy, reflect on what your skills are (or which you want to develop), what you’re most passionate about and think about what you might be able to do.
• If you’re passionate about public libraries and want to help – let Voices for the Library know! We’re keen to get more people involved with things like asking organisations and well-known figures for supporting statements, securing sponsorship, liaising with other campaigning bodies and representing us at events.
• If you’ve got any potential content for That’s Not Online! let Jacqueline know.
• Think about where advocacy fits in with professionalism – maybe comment on Johanna’s blog post about Activism, Advocacy and Professional Identity or if you can get hold of any, look at some job descriptions and identify where you think the advocacy might fit within the requirements of the roles.
• Publication challenge! A prize for anyone who gets a piece of library advocacy published.

#CPD23

I don’t think I mentioned that I’m attempting #CPD23. I’m hoping to stick with it and do a decent job of it – keeping it separate from this blog because it’s got quite a different purpose to the content. I’m over here at Lauren’s 23 Things.

On Cliques

Caveat prima: LONG AND RANTY POST AHEAD.

Caveat secunda: I don’t consider myself to belong to a clique. Heck, I haven’t even read the LIS NPN forum post about all this.

As part of my CPD23 stuff, I mentioned the fact that I tend to lurk around blogs rather than commenting on them, a bad habit I’ve once again found myself guilty of. As I mentioned in my reasons for not tending to comment, it’s usually because I’m not interested enough, don’t have anything insightful to say or am Too Darned Angry to say anything sensible.

The reason I haven’t commented on blogs about this so far is definitely within the latter category, but I feel something of a duty to write about it because Rachel’s post on the topic is largely based on things I said, and the term I believe I coined (correct me if I’m wrong), much to my shame – #cliquegate – now seems to be the hashtag du jour. I have too much to say for it to be a comment on her blog – there’s nothing I like less than an essay-length comment – so I hope she’ll forgive me for putting it here instead.

Yes, yes, I do use old twitter. No, I am not sorry.

So. Here’s my two-penneth’s worth, for what it’s worth.

Over the last couple of days a few people have written about Rachel’s findings for her New Professionals Conference paper that one respondent to her survey (out of 35 respondents) said they do not “identify with the current clique”.

My first concern here is that the survey was about ‘non-new professionals’ and how they perceive ‘new professionals’. Not about the online librarian community, not about the twitter librarian community, not about the blogging librarian community, not even about the LIS New Professionals Network librarian community. However, it seems to have been automatically assumed that this one respondent meant the entire online community of new professional librarians. I find this in itself bothersome for a couple of reasons:

1) They never mentioned the internet (did they?) so I think worrying about an online community might be worrying our little heads over something that isn’t an issue, not even for one person in the entire profession.

2) (Even if they did specifically mean the online new professional community) There are literally, like, a gazillion new professional librarians on the internet. Seriously. The internet, I don’t know if you’ve heard, is kind of big. And librarians, I don’t know if you know, are down with that kind of thing, so they all kind of have a go on it, all over the shop. They’re everywhere. For my reasoning here I shall now refer to my usual recourse in all matters rhetorical, the Oxford English Dictionary:

clique, n.

1. A small and exclusive party or set, a narrow coterie or circle: a term of reproach or contempt, applied generally to such as are considered to associate for unworthy or selfish ends, or to small and select bodies who arrogate supreme authority in matters of social status, literature, etc.

 

“Small.” “Narrow coterie or circle.” Not huge great whopping number of people in the same profession who happen to use a wide range of social networking tools to keep in touch with fellow professionals around the world.

My second concern is a small but important one. Cliques are “exclusive”. New professionals aren’t. Except for that bit where someone labelled everyone who’s been in the profession for less than five years as a ‘new professional’. Which I hate. I didn’t make it up. Who did? Shoot them. Anyway, it’s not the fault of some poor LIS graduate that they’ve been termed a new professional and are thereby automatically part of some sort of ‘set’ that they might not even want to belong to or identify with.

My third concern is about the aforementioned identification. What Rachel’s respondent said was that they don’t “identify” with a group. That’s surely ok, right? Not everybody has everything in common with everyone. I’m aware of a lot of groups in my day to day life that I don’t identify with. It doesn’t mean I don’t accept them as valid and valuable groups. It just means that I, personally, don’t see a need and/or don’t have a desire to be involved. It doesn’t mean I want a cuddle and an invitation to become vegan/existentialist/join the LGBTQ community. I demand the right to not identify! Rather than the respondent complaining about a “clique that they cannot infiltrate” as Rachel interpreted this, I’d suggest that maybe they just don’t want to. And even if this person kind of does want to (I don’t know), it’s not to say that everyone who doesn’t consider themselves involved wants to.

Fourth, the term ‘clique’ is one of “reproach or contempt”, i.e. it’s something applied to a group by an external body in order to make out that there’s a degree of disapproval. To that I say: “I don’t need your approval!” I made a flippant comment on twitter about my imagined reaction to being accused of being in a clique. It involved 1) telling the person they’re an idiot 2) flicking them the bird and 3) bitching about my peers so how can I even be in a clique anyway. I guess this paragraph is 1) and 2). This entire blog post appears to be 3). Whoops.

Fifth, I feel one of my arguments has been misrepresented. Rachel said “The argument that there is no room in the profession for someone who lacks confidence and feels unable to get involved has been made”. If it wasn’t just me who said something along these lines, then hurray. If it was, then that wasn’t what I said. What I said was “Mostly I am of the “they need to man up” school of playground politics” (call me a cow, but know this: I certainly wasn’t ever one of the cool kids and it didn’t do me any harm to not belong) and “This profession no longer belongs to the meek and mild”. I stand by that. I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but the profession is kind of falling in around our ears in many ways. This ain’t no time for navel-gazing. It’s time to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dusty. Besides, we’ve got too many LIS graduates and not enough jobs. It’s a dog eat dog world, guys… (ooooh that one’s going to get me into trouble…)

Sixth is something that’s hit a nerve, I guess. This one’s about what the heck this clique/these cliques might be and who’s in them. I covered the fact that it’s spectacularly ridiculous to suggest that all librarians with any kind of internet presence are in a clique by virtue of sheer scale up in my first issue. All those hours ago… But also, Steve, Rachel’s boyfriend (that’s a clique in itself right? I think we should all demand to be invited in ) blogged about the topic too. I happen to know them both personally – I did my graduate traineeship alongside Rachel and did my MA with them both. If you’re screaming “CLIQUE!” right now, I’ve got something in my pocket for you. Aherm. So. Yes, I know Stevelin. He’s a lovely chap. And I was sad to see that he used #UKpling as an example of something that is in its nature “exclusive”. For those not in the know (there is irony dripping from my pores), #UKpling means ‘UK public libraries in need group’. I know, I know, it’s a bit lame. What can I say? It was a late night. I think we were all having a bad day. I suppose Steve’s right – at the beginning, it was exclusive. That was kind of the point – it was set up to discuss a specific topic – but that’s how twitter works. The hashtag grew – and before we’d had a chance to pick something slightly less lame and more obviously meaningful, it was incredibly popular and it was too late to change the account to something like VftL – believe me, we agonised over it. The hashtag grew, and then #savelibraries came along. Everybody pretty much went over there and used that instead, because #UKpling was a small thing for organising stuff between a small group of acquaintances. #savelibraries is the big, public-facing, outreaching hashtag. And although yes, Voices does have a core membership, we need to. We’re a campaigning body and have to have some sort of semblance of organised-ness. We’re not a professional network and involvement is absolutely not something people should be seeking as something to put on their CV to demonstrate that they’re professionally active. I mean, it does mean you are, but lawks, there are less stressful things to do if that’s all you’re after. I guess what I’m saying is that folksonomy doesn’t equal clique. I suppose it has to mean exclusive, because, well, you’re librarians, figure it out.

In conclusion, despite this giant rant, I still don’t think there’s much cause for concern. I think it’s a topic that nice people worry about because nobody wants to be a meanie pie. Librarians, on the whole, are nice people. Which is why the clique thing isn’t an issue. If people want to get involved, it’s ridiculously easy to get involved. If they refuse to engage, it’s their loss. I don’t know what exactly Rachel intends to do as part of her “contribution to library advocacy” – Hair stroking? Hand holding? Personally visiting each and every person in the library profession who expresses some kind of insecurity about their sense of belonging to make them feel better? Forgive my cynicism, I’m just really unconvinced that there’s much to be done.

In conclusion conclusion, what I said in my first tweet-response still holds true. I think it’s BS and I think it’s about how members of the new professional community conduct themselves that is important, and none that I know are exclusive in the slightest. I’m also acutely aware that my very…passionate?…response to this and my belief that it’s a fairly BS-filled topic make it fairly likely that I alienate some people. Probably new professionals. Thereby either 1) exacerbating the problem or more likely 2) excluding myself from any perceived clique that people might perceive me to belong to. Hey guys I exploded the clique! Problem solved! We can talk about something else now!

 

A Little Mover and Shaker Thank You Post

Way way less cool (and far shorter!) than Ned’s thank you post, and only with the video pinched from him because it has my whitened teeth in it too (see below!), a little thank you post. I’m so honoured and dead chuffed to have been named a Library Journal Mover & Shaker 2011. I feel like I’ve totally lucked out because I’m pretty new to everything, but this is an amazing recognition for what I’ve managed to do so far, and great encouragement to carry on! My profile piece is here.

(Ned’s video is GREAT.)

I owe huge thanks to Laura Woods for nominating me, to Ned Potter and Bethan Ruddock for saying nice things about me (and anyone else who might have put a good word in that I don’t know about). Ned really DID say some crazy-nice things, look! They’re absolute stars, constant sources of inspiration and encouragement and I can’t say enough about how totally ace they are.

Thank you too to Biddy Fisher, Annie Mauger and Phil Bradley for being so very supportive of not just me, but everyone involved in CILIP-related activities (and things that are beneficial to the LIS profession generally). It really does make all the difference to know that they think I’m doing ok! I hope they don’t mind me saying it, but I do think there’s a brilliant and welcoming community developing, with a mix of experienced folk, and new professionals with (hopefully) enough energy and enthusiasm to make up for where we’ve not got the experience yet.

A gazillion thank yous to everyone involved with the running of Voices for the Library (Bethan Ruddock again!, Ian Clark, Mick Fortune, Gary Green, Tom Roper, Ian Anstice, Alice Halsey, Simon Barron, and brand new recruit Thomas Connelly) and everybody who helps it grow – librarians, members of the public, friendly journalists all!

To Lynne Coppendale, fabulous (dare I say fierce? ) woman that she is, at Save Doncaster Libraries, and the ace team of kick-ass librarians and communities who are helping to tell DMBC to shove their closures and cuts where the sun don’t shine. Johanna Anderson is a whirlwind of brilliant and I’m proud to know her and consider her my campaign-BFF.

To everyone who got me so engaged with public libraries in the first place and continue to support what I’m doing, particularly Barbara Sen, Briony Birdi, Liz Brewster, Liz Chapman (all at Sheffield University’s Information School), and David McMenemy and Bob Usherwood, my total Library School heroes and people I’m honoured to have the support of with Voices stuff.

And finally, big soppy thank yous to my parents and grandparents for putting up with me rambling on about libraries, to my fiancé Christopher for putting up with the rambling too but also for not getting mad when I spend ages responding to emails and stuff when we’re supposed to be hanging out, and to my friends for not forgetting I exist when I drop off the social radar.

I think I’m all thanksed-out! So much for it not being a long post!

Echo Chamber Escapologist (!)

Ned Potter, aka thewikiman, asked me to write a guest blog post for him about the things I’ve been up to with Save Doncaster Libraries, Voices for the Library, and general echo-chamber-busting activities. So I did, and it went up today!

Thanks for the opportunity to try and stick everything together into something (hopefully) useful, Ned.

Sharing is Caring!

My previously mentioned fellow librarian-in-training friend Alice has written a lovely blog post about a chat we had the other day, about competitiveness and sharing resources. I’m very glad we both have the same thoughts on it! I don’t really consider myself competitive with other people, but I know that I try and find as many opportunities and interesting things as I can, and go for them as often as possible. I also share the things I find and post them on Twitter, this blog or the Facebook group for my MA course, because as Alice rightly points out, “collaboration and sharing knowledge is what binds our profession together”. Not only that, but I’d hate to feel like I was rubbing my hands in glee at having come across something really juicy, and then denying other people the usefulness of that information by failing to share it. I have to admit, I do feel as though I’m in the minority when it comes to sharing the wealth, but then maybe I’m just luckier when it comes to stumbling upon useful tidbits. Or perhaps I’m bombarding people with irrelevant things they don’t want or need. I don’t know. Nobody’s complained, so I’ll stick at it!

On that note, here’s a really good Library and Information Research article on ways of assessing the value and impact of library services, that was tweeted first by SINTOcarl. There’s also a great post about Bob Usherwood’s Take on ‘Empower, Inform, Enrich’ on the SINTOblog.

P.S. Blackwell’s have a brilliant sale on at the moment; I bought a lovely copy of Alice’s Adventures Underground yesterday for half price (and a big pile of cards and unnecessary notepads…)

Blog…

I decided that it was a good time to start up a blog, because I haven’t had one in ages and I’m faraway from most people and things, so if they want to know what I’m up to they can keep tabs on me here (as well as facebook and twitter…). I think a big blog could be quite interesting – I’m going to try and make it pretty and cover lots of different things.

First proper post coming soon!