NE LINKS the journal of the CILIP North East Member Network Volume 11, July 2019 In this issue… Note from the editor .............................................................................................. page 1 CILIP North East AGM and Committee for 2019 ........................................................ page 2 Viki Lagus Prize Winner report 2018 ........................................................................ page 3 Picture Books in the Pub......................................................................................... page 6 HLN Study Day 2019 .............................................................................................. page 8 Beyond the Horizon: CILIP NE Conference 2019 ....................................................... page 9 NAG Public Library Project of the Year Grant ........................................................... page 10
Note from the editor Welcome to the July 2019 issue of NE Links. The first half of 2019 has seen a variety of CILIP events throughout the north east and we have been privileged to have no less than three visits from the CILIP president. In this issue there are reports on the AGM, our conference, the HLN study day and the now annual “Picture Books in the Pub” event. Thank you to Claire Delahunty, the Viki Lagus prize winner for 2018, for a report on her research. Finally, a reminder to keep an eye on social media and our monthly newsletter for news of events in the region.
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Please get in touch if you have any ideas for features or articles to contribute. kstclairgibson@hotmail.co.uk
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CILIP North East AGM and Committee for 2019 On the evening of 25th February the committee and CILIP members met at the Northumbria University Library for the CILIP North East AGM. The speaker was the new CILIP President, David Stewart, and as an introduction he challenged our knowledge of CILIP by posing three questions about the organisation that proved rather difficult to answer. The aim of the exercise was to encourage members to get to know the organisation better. David outlined his goals for the year and his intention to champion evidence-based research. The business of the AGM was covered and the evening was concluded with a tour of the new library.
Our committee for 2019 is as follows: Role
Name
Chair
Elaine Andrew
Vice-Chair
Holly Spoors
Secretary
Jacqui DaCosta
Treasurer
Keith Wilson
Candidate Support Officer (CSO)
Patricia Crosier
Mentor Support Officer (MSO)
VACANT
Website editor
Holly Spoors
Social media officer
Leanne Young
Journal editor
Kate St Clair Gibson
Ordinary members
Louise Masson Jennie Hillyard Amina Marix Evans Nichola Davey
Library School Representative
VACANT
Student Representative
Rachel Branson
Youth Libraries Group NE representative
Paula Wride
Academic and Research Libraries Group NE representative
Mike Dann
We are always happy to welcome new members to the committee so if you are interested in joining us – either as an ordinary member or to take on one of our vacant roles – please do get in touch: Chair.NE@cilip.org.uk
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Viki Lagus prize winner 2018 – Claire Delahunty I am incredibly surprised, honoured and proud to be the recipient of the Viki Lagus prize for 2018. I am grateful to my tutors, colleagues, friends and family for all their help and support during the last two years. Thank you all for putting up with my whinging! I am an “accidental” Librarian who stumbled into the profession after a previous career in archaeology. After several years of para-professional roles in academic libraries, I decided to take the plunge and obtain a professional qualification to deepen my knowledge of the sector and enhance my career prospects. After scouting about I settled on the newly re-vamped MSc Information
Science
(Library
Management)
at
Northumbria University. I needed to work full-time during my studies so distance learning was a key requirement. With the nature of librarianship changing due to emerging technologies and systems, I was keen to undertake a qualification that focused on technical skills and would challenge me and take me out of my comfort zone. The Northumbria University course stood out
with
modules
on
information
organisation,
information systems, user behaviour and digital literacy. My dissertation was entitled Investigating the electronic information seeking behaviour
of taught postgraduate students: a case study at the London School of Economics. In my day job at LSE Library, I work with subscription electronic resources and I am interested in the discovery and access of electronic information and the tools, services and authentication systems that libraries put in place to facilitate access. As librarians we make a lot of assumptions about how our users behave and we design systems and services that we think meet their needs. I wanted to investigate LSE Library users’ actual behaviour to understand how they seek and access electronic information and interact with systems, in the hope of identifying ways to improve service provision. As the discovery of electronic information is inextricably linked to the ability to access (you can’t access what you can’t find!), I decided to approach the study through the lens of information seeking behaviour models to provide frameworks and context for the motivations and behaviours of users which allowed me to take a holistic view of the discovery and access processes. I used the resources I had available and set my study in the context of LSE Library, focusing on the behaviour of LSE’s taught postgraduate students.
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A literature review revealed a vast and complex discovery and access landscape and an array of tools and systems that users must successfully navigate and utilise to facilitate access to electronic information. It also identified a range of influences, motivators and barriers that affected the information seeking behaviour of users and their ability to access material. I designed a mixed methods study to explore the behaviours of LSE taught postgraduates, beginning with a document analysis of previous work by LSE Librarians on use of discovery tools to provide context and background information. This informed the creation of a user testing protocol to allow direct observation of the electronic information seeking actions and behaviours of my user group and identification of issues that impede access. The protocol consisted of a pre-test questionnaire, known-item search tasks utilising the “think aloud” technique, and a post-test semi-structured interview. The results of the study highlighted the importance postgraduate students place on accessing electronic resources for their research. They are generally adept at information seeking and rely primarily on LSE Library’s discovery tool, turning to commercial search engines if they are unable to find or access resources through Library systems. Their choice of discovery tool is key and tends to be heavily influenced by its ability to facilitate easy access. Users frequently access from home and therefore rely on the Library’s authentication systems and follow the Library’s preferred authentication pathways to access licensed electronic resources. The key behaviours of the user group were identified and mapped against Ellis’ model of information seeking behaviour 1 and expanded with the addition of important “Accessing” behaviours. A number of key influences on behaviour and ability to discover and access resources were uncovered; including users’ emotions and perceptions of the process (both negative and positive) and the impact of the various access barriers that they encountered (including systemand user-centred barriers). These results highlighted specific problem areas that can hopefully be addressed to improve service provision for electronic resource access. If anybody is interested or would like more details then please get in touch: c.delahunty@lse.ac.uk. Completing the dissertation was a challenging but rewarding experience that has enriched my understanding of Library users’ experiences, behaviours and interactions with electronic resources. This knowledge feeds through into my day job and has increased my awareness of new technologies and approaches to resource and access management. I’ve also learned research methods, data collection and analysis practices that I hope to be able to use throughout my professional career. Finally, for anyone interested in doing the MSc but worried about taking the plunge, here are some tips for getting through (most of which I didn’t follow myself at the time but hindsight is a wonderful thing…): 1
Ellis, D. (1989) ‘A behavioural model for information retrieval system design’, Journal of Information Science, 15(4–5), pp. 237–247. doi: 10.1177/016555158901500406.
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1. Take advantage of the resources you have available. If you work at a library and have a readily available participant pool, use them. Take advantage of work place schemes. If your research is directly relevant to your job or the objectives of your department then your employer may be willing to help out in some way. 2. Rein it in. I tried to do far too much for my dissertation. I collected too much data which took forever to transcribe and analyse and ended up only using a portion of it. Be realistic and only do what you can in the time available. 3. If you’re stuck, ask for help. That’s what the tutors are there for, don’t be scared about bothering them. 4. Look after yourself. It’s difficult to balance study with work and family commitments. It may sound obvious but it’s important to make time for yourself, to do the things you love and not to beat yourself up for taking time off. 5. It’ll all be worth it in the end.
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Picture Books in the Pub (Report by Elaine Andrew, Academic Liaison Librarian, University of Sunderland)
In May it was time for the now annual CILIP North East & YLG North East shadowing group for the Kate Greenaway Medal; an event we have dubbed ‘Picture Books in the Pub’. As this suggests the meetings are informal, social occasions taking place in a pub - usually the aptly named 'Library Room' in The Town Wall in Newcastle. However, it is also a great opportunity for some really good CPD, which for many of us contributes to the tricky 'wider professional context' criteria for CILIP Professional Registration/Revalidation. Expertly hosted by Paula Wride from Seven Stories (outgoing Chair of YLG North East) we discussed the
eight
books
shortlisted
for
the
Kate
Greenaway Medal over three meetings - and selected our own choice for the winner at the final meeting. By focussing on the illustrated books award it is possible to read some of the shorter titles on the evening, and for Paula to demonstrate how the target audience may experience these titles with a quick 'storytime'. Though of course this is not possible for the non-fiction and graphic novels that have made the shortlist in recent years. This year's shortlist was:
The day war came illustrated by Rebecca Cobb (written by Nicola Davies) Ocean meets sky written and illustrated by Eric Fan and Terry Fan Beyond the fence written and illustrated by Maria Gulemetova The wolf, the duck and the mouse illustrated by Jon Klassen (written by Mac Barnett)
Julian is a mermaid written and illustrated by Jessica Love You're safe with me illustrated by Poonam Mistry (written by Chitra Soundar) The lost words illustrated by Jackie Morris (written by Robert Macfarlane) Suffragette: The battle for equality written and illustrated by David Roberts
This was predominantly made up of 'standard' 32-page fiction picture books. Though all are very different in style of illustration. The challenge is to judge the books against the judging criteria rather than simply deciding which illustrations are the best, or which is the better story. This led to some really interesting discussions with the group who came along this year about the consistency of illustration (are the colours
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consistent from page to page? how many pennants are on the bunting?), the effectiveness of the illustrations in telling the story and conveying or adding to the text (much discussion was had about the choice of illustrations in the non-fiction title), and about the quality of the production of the book (have the end papers been used?). I often had my views swayed by the discussions. The overwhelming winner for our group this year was Julian is a Mermaid. The winner of the award was The Lost Words, which came a close second with our group.
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HLN Study Day 2019 – making communication a success (Report by Naomi Hay-Gibson, Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS FT)
Health Libraries North, the group for health librarians and those working within libraries in the health and wellbeing sector, had their study day on May 20th, but at a new venue for the group – the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne, known fondly as the Lit and Phil. The theme of the day was 'communication', and focusing on how we interact with our borrowers and library users was the aim of the day. Sign Language may seem a difficult medium to learn, but Margaret Robertson had HLN members signing within minutes, introducing themselves and learning to greet each other. The impact of being able to give a simple 'hello' shouldn't ever be underestimated! As part of an initiative to help welcome people to the library, and perhaps seen as an extension of the “Hello, my name is...” scheme, it would be fantastic to see others also being able to sign in the library. The group went from the basics of signing a name to the relative complexity of signing and singing “the Rainbow song”. With some laughter, the occasional mistake and a lot of success, we all managed the verses and realised both how complex and how positive it was to be able to communicate in BSL. Our other speaker, Lisa Baker, helped the group focus on the difficulties of dyslexia for library users. Whilst dyslexia is a relatively well-known problem in healthcare, the importance of making small changes to help users was really made clear. Many conversations were had, mostly involving the ideas of how we could change our current environments to make sure that communication with all library users was clearer, and more relevant in the face of disability. It was poignant that nearly all our group members had something that they wanted to take back to their colleagues and libraries – and that really was a major success in communication. Our other focus was Health Literacy. At a time when the north-east of England has one of the lowest understandings of health literacy, library staff were challenged to see what we could do to bring awareness of how to become health literate, how to address the social issues around health literacy, and how to ensure appropriate information in the right format was available to those groups and individuals who needed it. Joanne Naughton, Claire Masterman, Samantha Gavaghan and others working within HLN were keen to pass on the message to the group. Health Libraries North is always looking to connect with new members who may be employed or involved with healthcare libraries, or charities involved in care whose library and information service staff would like to join. If you feel that you could benefit from connecting with colleagues, please contact HLN and ask about membership for yourself or your library service.
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Beyond the Horizon: CILIP North East Conference 2019 The Beyond the Horizon conference was held at the Lit and Phil on 20th May. The afternoon programme followed the HLN study day in the morning. After a bite of lunch and a chance to mingle, the conference began with an address from CILIP president, David Stewart. David highlighted the key areas CILIP will be addressing in 2019, confirming CILIP’s commitment to focus on diversity and inclusion, support training and develop young readers. He spoke about the partnership CILIP has made with the EveryLibrary Institute in the US to bring a new datadriven approach to public library advocacy. Support for the sector-specific campaigns such as Great School Libraries and A Million Decisions will continue in 2019. The keynote address was followed by a full programme of interesting talks. Lee Blyth of Northumbria University Library hinted at the possible future use of AI in library services; Kathryn Oxborrow from New Zealand discussed her PhD about Māori culture in a library environment; Emily Dott from Newcastle University Library spoke of their success with effectively upcycling library guides; Harriet Davidson from the University of Sunderland Library discussed the role of librarians in curriculum design; Keith Wilson spoke in his capacity as a part of the BSI committee developing a new standard; Natalie Gudgeon from the Valuation Office Agency gave a talk on managing information risk and how placing a knowledge management expert in an operations team proved invaluable. There were several shorter lightning talks which were all enlightening and informative. The afternoon most certainly fulfilled the aim of the conference: bringing the information world together. Many significant gatherings seem to end with a ceremonial cutting of the cake, and this year’s conference proved no different. A delicious “Dewey Decimal” cake supplied by Amina Marix Evans of the Kittiwake Trust Multilingual Library was expertly cut by David Stewart and enjoyed by all.
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NAG Public Library Project of the Year Grant The NAG Public Library Project of the Year Grant aims to support and enable work in public libraries, particularly around books, reading and reader development. Up to £5000 is available, depending upon the strength of your application. The grant may be used to either fund a pilot phase of a new idea or to support the roll out of a project following an earlier pilot phase (which may have been funded via another source). Criteria: The project should use library collections to connect with the public – either physical or digital. Reaching new audiences could be one goal; consolidating strong user links with an existing community would be equally valid. The impact should be measurable in some way, either through statistics or through participant feedback. How to apply: Please send a description of your proposed project (up to 1000 words) and an indicative budget (Excel or Google Sheets) by email to nag.office@nag.org.uk Please include a project title and contact details for a named Project Leader. Terms and conditions: 1. All applicants must work with the public either as a public library authority or as a specialist library offering free access to members of the public. You may partner with external organisations to provide your project. 2. All applicants must be a current NAG member. Please contact the office to check if your Institution/local authority is a current NAG member. Membership starts at £75 p.a. 3. The deadline for applications is 30th September 2019. 4. The winner will be notified by 10th October 2019.
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5. A formal offer will be made to the winner, stating the amount of the award and any conditions attached to it. The applicant will also need to sign to accept the terms and conditions of the grant and provide details of an organisational bank account for payment. 6. The winner will be announced at the NAG Forum event in Manchester on 21st November. The winner will be entitled to attend the Forum at no cost and travel expenses will be paid and will be expected to give a five minute presentation introducing your winning project. NAG will also use the project details and photographs to promote the grant online and via social media. 7. The winning project must produce a written report for Taking Stock during 2020. 8. The winner will also be expected to speak at a NAG Forum event in 2020 to present their winning project and the impacts and outcomes it has achieved. (Travel expenses provided by NAG). 9. Copies of receipts/invoices must be submitted against the original budget headings to show that no major changes have been made (without prior authorisation from NAG). Some variation against indicative budget lines is expected within total amount. No match funding is required to apply for NAG award. 10. The grant will be paid 90% up front with 10% retained until all t&c are met.
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