Mark Taylor, of the CILIP external relations team, talked at
the May meeting of CILIP in the Thames Valley about the initiative that saw
everyone at the CILIP Ridgemount Street HQ work shadowing information
professionals of all varieties, in an effort to reach out to members and
potential members of our professional body.
This push to gain insight into what members do on a day-to-day basis and
how this may affect what they want from CILIP comes in an effort to better
represent all CILIP members after a major re-structure at CILIP HQ with
everyone’s role changed or re-evaluated in some way. As you may have noticed this was only a part
of the wider effort, with other measures including a survey of members and
non-members and CILIP staff getting attending many different events and using
it to inform their work.
From the CILIP HQ side of thing the work shadowing programme
was deemed a success in that (at the very least) valuable contacts were made
within the industry on which they can draw in the future, and vice versa. One
of the most important lessons Mark felt had been learnt was the failure thus
far to reach out to those information professional that have no physical ‘library’
space and tend to be loan working – really those that no longer see themselves
as ‘librarians’. This kind of exercise may be a good way to reach them. Going
forward, all new staff will be encouraged to go on a work shadowing placement.
As of yet there are no plans to repeat the exercise on a Ridgemount St wide
basis, at least not annually.
