On Saturday 13th October, I attended Library Camp 2012
in Birmingham. This is the second year a UK-wide Library Camp has been held,
and there have also been smaller regional spin-off events. Library Camp is
described as an “unconference”,
which their website defines as an event where “participants decide on the
programme at the beginning of the event, working on the principle that the sum
of the knowledge, experience and expertise of the people in the room is likely
to be greater than that of those on the stage at traditional conferences.”
This democratic, participatory approach was also evident
during the planning stages, as a wiki was set up where participants could
suggest ideas for sessions they would either like to present or to attend. Oh,
and suggestions for cake too! Apparently, library camps are renowned for their
cakes. Unfortunately, I didn’t have to time to bake anything but many people
were more organised than me and turned up with an astonishing amount of whoopee
pies, tiffin, brownies, cupcakes etc etc ...
The day began with people pitching ideas for sessions they’d
like to lead. These were placed on post-it notes and a rough-and-ready
programme was quickly assembled on a flipchart.
The first session I attended was on mental health in
libraries, led by Penny Bronchia. This
examined the language and attitudes we use in libraries to deal with mental
illness in library users and colleagues. We discussed the way that mental
health is still a taboo topic that unsettles many people, in a way that other
issues (e.g. sexuality and race) largely do not. Should people with a mental
health condition be “out” at work? While this may initially cause awkwardness,
it can help raise awareness and tolerance among colleagues. Also, by not
disclosing a mental health condition, it can be harder to access any support or
assistance that the organisation can provide. We discussed how managers can
best support employees with mental health conditions and we heard about schemes
and reading groups some public library services run for their users.
For my second session, I chose to hear about free and
open-source software from Liz Jolly
and Andrew Preater. Andrew has
already written a comprehensive blog
post about this session, so I won’t write at length about it. We talked
specifically about what OS software is and what roles it can play. But we also
placed it in context by discussing why organisations may be resistant to OS
software, how the collaborative mindset present in OS development can trickle
in to other areas of work and what skills are necessary in the OS
workplace. I was struck in this session,
as in many of the others, at the incredible depth of knowledge and expertise
possessed and shared by those who weren’t leading the sessions. If this were a
“normal” conference rather than an unconference, then these views would largely
remain unheard.
Next, I went to a talk about classification. This session
wasn’t as lively as the first two ... perhaps we’d all gone too long without a
trip to the cake tables. We shared experiences of classification successes and
failures, the pros and cons of in-house versus standard (e.g. LC or Dewey)
systems, and the tendency for classification decisions to reflect the need of
library staff rather than the need of the user. We wondered how libraries could
go about systematically measuring the success of different classification
schemes, in terms of how quickly users could find what they needed. We mused on
how relevant traditional concepts of classification are for e-resources,
especially since there isn’t the “I can only put this book in one place, even
if it addresses two topics equally” mindset. E-resources can be “located” in as
many locations as the user needs them to be (I recommend the book Everything is Miscellaneous for a good discussion of
categorisation in the digital world).
Some participants felt there was a lack of sessions focused
on academic libraries, so Christina
Harbour squeezed a general academic libraries forum on to the flipchart. I
feared that this was too big a topic to generate any meaningful dialogue, but
we all had a very good attempt! I’ll just list some of the questions that were
thrown in to the mix:
- What impact will the rise in tuition fees have?
- (How) should libraries ‘brand’ their e-resources, to demonstrate the link to the physical library?
- How can we involve academics in the work of the library?
- How do we demonstrate or quantify the value that libraries have?
- Are converged library and IT services a good idea?
- Does outsourcing work? If so, what services can be outsourced?
- Should members of the public be allowed to use academic libraries?
- How do libraries contribute to the employability agenda of universities?
Whew! I feel like we covered as much ground as I did in a
whole term of the Academic Libraries module of my MSc, mainly because of the
wide range of experiences and backgrounds that were shared.
I then went to a session about the logistics of lending out
iPads to library users. Personally, I’d be concerned about the chances of loss
or damage, but those sharing their experiences said that this was minimal. We
discussed whether users should be allowed to use the iPads outside the library
or off the premises, and what state they should be returned in (i.e. delete all
photos and log out of Facebook and Twitter). The range of educational apps (for
students, medical professionals, scientists etc) is growing all the time, but
it can be hard to evaluate the quality of these, and whether they represent
value for money. It seemed to me that any library wishing to start lending
iPads or other tablets to their users could learn an awful lot from other
libraries who’ve already taken the same step.
For the final session of the day, I intended to go to a session on open access. Due to my muddling up
the rooms, I ended up in a session on Roaming Libraries. By the time I’d
realised my mistake, I’d already got into conversation with the people sat next
to me, so thought it would be easier to stay put. A fortuitous mistake! The speaker, whose name I didn’t catch,
runs The Itinerant Poetry Library. The name
is fairly self-explanatory - she travels all around the world with a poetry
library, which opens up for a time (this time can vary) in bars, cafes etc.
Depending on how long the library is in a city, readers may be able to take
books away with them. They can then check on Twitter to see where the library
will be over the next few days so that they know where to return the book.
I learnt about Radical Reference, who are a group of
professional volunteers working with political activists in the USA. Any
questions that can’t be answered on the ground can be relayed back to a back-up
team who will use their resources to find the answer. And then there’s the Mile High Reference Desk, who
provide an information service to passengers on planes! Unlike in many other
sessions, this was an area that very few of us had experience in. But it was
the last session of the day, and I liked how everyone shared related experiences
and anecdotes from earlier sessions they had intended. For instance, there was
an earlier session about living
libraries, so someone fed back their experiences from this and wondered
whether a roaming library of people would be feasible. Once again, if this were
a “normal” conference, this opportunity to share and synthesise ideas from
other sessions may not have been possible. So, while I don’t know what I missed
in the open access session, I do now know some of the amazing ways that
librarians are challenging our ideas of what and where a “library” is.
