Tom Roper's Weblog

First parallel session

I went to hear Sally Hernando and Scott Gibbens on the NHS Core Content collection. Good presentations, and we divided into sectoral group for the last part to do a SWOT analysis of the transition from print to electronic content.

First plenary

The first plenary yesterday after noon was on the future of the profession.
There were three short presentations:
Debby Shorley: above all we must do our jobs properly, and not get bogged down in acronyms, initiatives and pay and status. She stressed the power and value of information and laid some myths about the death of the book and of subject librarians.
Bob Usherwood: compared two dystopias, Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's 1984. The former, in which people submit willingly to their oppression, is, he thought, the more likely. The role of libraries is to change people, not merely to amuse them.
Margaret Watson said an odd thing: "we don't have control over the future of the profession'. I'm not sure what she meant, for while we can't control the social, political and economic circumstances in which we find ourselves, and we of course must determine our future in consolation with those who use our services, and with other professions, if we can't take charge of the future of the profession, who can?
There wasn't time for much discussion, and I wanted to say something about the usefulness of looking at other professions, specifically medicine. Someone gave a rather partial definition of a profession, and I wanted to expand on that too.

CILIP Council's Open Forum: l'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace

Yesterday morning was CILIP Council's Open Forum. The presentation and debate are going up on the web, so I shan't attempt a full account but will make a few points.
Maggie Haines presented the Health Executive Advisory Report Implementation Group's report which went to Council the day before.
HLG's will be a model of a new type of Special Interest Group in CILIP, with more of a policy role. I'll report back to HLG Committee on this in detail.
There was some discussion about  the level of change management skills among librarians. I think we're too negative about things like this; it reminds me of the assertion,  made without supporting evidence, that health librarians lack numeracy and research skills; yet its these very people who are training their clients in research skills, in critical appraisal and so on. It may have once been the case, but I don't think it is now.
Framework of qualifications: Margaret Watson reported on this, and the first new ACLIPs are to receive their awards.
Also Freedom of Information, led by Eric Davies, and the review of Special Interest Groups, introduced by Pat Beech. An intriguing idea came up in the latter discussion, that SIGs and their membership charges might be left to the mercy of market forces. I'm not sure about this; I think HLG would probably do quite well out of such an arrangement, but others might not.
Sandra Ward, who had chaired the morning, concluded by calling on us to remember three words: relevance, risk and audacity.

Found one!

Chris Armstrong joins the roll of Umbrella bloggers, with an account of the Strix award given to Jack Mills at the awards dinner last night (which I think he presented).
I remember the Bliss clasification well from my days at North London Polytechnic library school with Derek Langridsge.

Wireless at Umbrella

Two cheers for this. It's not free, it seems, but supplied by Canova, and unclear whether I've just paid them £5 for the duration of the conference or just for 24 hours. this is odd because a sign proclaims that its sponsored by 7Side: I wonder what form their sponsorship took? Clearly it didn't include paying for the service.

Umbrella: the first post

I'm in Manchester for the 2005 CILIP Umbrella conference. I've set up a Technorati watch list to see if anyone else is blogging from the conference. So far, no one else, though I see the bog standard blog will attending
There's also some photos in Flickr.
Last night Debby Shorley, the President and the Lord Mayor welcomed us at a reception in the gorgeous Manchester Art Gallery, the Lord Mayor reminded us of Manchester's place at the forefront of the public library movement in the nineteenth century, and Debby replied as gracefully and wittily as ever.
This morning, CILIP Council hold an open forum, with Maggie Haines leading a discussion on health.
The CILIP web site says over 700 registrations, but I'm not sure when that was posted. I hope we'll break the 1000 barrier.
I had my first conference run this morning.