News and events

This is a quick round-up post of some recent reading, announcements and events. I've shared much if not all of this on Twitter, and it seems worth sharing here too.


Special Collections

NEW PROFESSIONALS DAY
CILIP is holding its annual New Professionals Day this year on 11 May. It's already fully booked, but there is a waiting list.  I was delighted to be invited to give one of the nine workshops on the day.  Under the unimaginative title 'Special collections librarianship: What's it all about?' I'll be taking a look at what special collections librarians do, what skills they need, and ways of getting into special collections work. Do let me know (in the comments here, or at maedchenimmond at gmail dot com or @girlinthe) if there's anything in particular you'd like me to cover. I'll be making the workshop materials available online after the day, so do get in touch even if you can't be there in person.

SPEC COLLS IN THE STATES
Continuing the careers theme, Brianna Marshall has written a great post on getting special collections librarianship in the USA over on the Hack Library School blog.  Do read the comments, too, for some further useful thoughts.

SPEC COLLS OUTREACH IN CAMBRIDGE
Polly Harper, current graduate trainee at Newnham College Library, Cambridge, has written an engaging post about her recent experiences taking part in special collections outreach in Cambridge on the always excellent Rarely Sited blog.  She ends by wondering which library sector will afford her the most opportunities to engage in this work later in her career.

SPEC COLLS IN THE LITERATURE
Geoffrey Little (Concordia University, Montreal) has an article in the forthcoming issue of The Journal of Academic Librarianship reviewing some of the ways in which special collections departments are harnessing technology.  I'd say that the article itself doesn't break much new ground, but the references are quite handy.

MAKING USE OF BOOKSELLERS' DESCRIPTIONS
Anyone who has looked through a high-end antiquarian bookseller's catalogue will have noticed that they can and do include far more information about the books (contents, significance, history, condition, details of binding, etc.) than most of even the most detailed rare books cataloguing can manager.  Mike Widener has written a very interesting post on the Yale Law Library Rare Books Blog about how his library is including booksellers' descriptions in the catalogue by making use of the OPAC's 'add a review' function.  Two immediate concerns: booksellers' copyright and disclosing sensitive information are dealt with by asking permission first, and by not including price information. I'd love to hear if any other rare books libraries are doing similarly and whether they have had any problems with it.  Sarah Werner has written a great post about this - do go and join in the conversation there (it's sad that the original post doesn't allow comments).

ARCHIVES ON DISPLAY IN A MUSEUM
A display of material from the museum's archives has just been opened in the Segwick Museum of Geology in Cambridge.  It's great to see that museum recognising its documentary holdings and heritage like this.


Library History

WALKING TOUR
The Library & Information History Group has organised a walking tour of 'some of London’s forgotten book collections', led by Dr Alice Ford-Smith of Dr Williams's Library.  Booking is essential, and I hear that tickets (£10) are going fast!

CONFERENCE
The Leeds Library is holding a one-day conference on 'Books of every variety of taste' - The advance of the library in the long-eighteenth century on 12 May.  The programme looks very  interesting, and it's a chance to visit the oldest surviving subscription library in the British Isles. Booking closes on 1 May.


General

CILIP PRESIDENT COMING TO TOWN
The East of England Branch have organised an audience with Phil Bradley on the afternoon of 12 May, taking place in central Cambridge.  The theme is ''Making CILIP work for you', and it's open to members and non-members alike.

MASH CAT IS COMING
Mashed Library events are unconference-style gatherings aimed at sharing ideas to do with using and reusing library data.  MashCat is a Mashed Library event focussing on catalogue data, and open to cataloguers, techies, and anyone else who's keen and interested.  It's happening on 5 July, in Cambridge, and booking is now open.

Quickly, quickly...

A quick and dirty news round-up of things I'm never going to get round to blogging in full.

Me, me, me

• Having finished the Hoyle Project last weekend, I've just started a new job as a 'Rare Books Specialist' at the University Library. It seems to be fun, and hard work, and I'm definitely going to learn a lot, which is very exciting.
• As part of the Hoyle festivities, I was interviewed for March's Naked Astronomy podcast (my bit starts about 16 minutes in).
• I've unveiled my LISNPN competition entry, and yes, it really is a knitting pattern.

Things that are happening

• This year's CILIP CDG New Professionals Conference will be on Monday 20th June in Manchester, and the call for papers is now open (deadline Friday 15 April).  The theme is 'Professionalism and Activism in a Time of Downturn'.
• Cataloguers are doing a lot of talking, via #catbkchat discussions of the book Conversations with cataloguers in the 21st century on Twitter (time and section info here) and the new CIG e-forum.
• The second Cambridge Librarians TeachMeet is happening on Tuesday, and there are lots of other library TeachMeets popping up all over the place.  If you want have a TeachMeet, Niamh's written a beginner's guide.

Things that have happened

• On Friday 4 February I went to the first Museums TeachMeet, held at the British Museum. It was really interesting to hear about some of the techie things that museum educators are using - it rather puts libraries in the shade. I particularly liked the speaker who had made a 5-minute screencast of things he wanted to talk about - a really good way of sticking to the time slot! I really wanted to write this up in full, but it's starting to look like that won't happen, so I'll just put up the list I made of things to investigate futher:
  
  • Learn how to make and edit videos
  • Animoto
  • Edusim 
  • Google Warehouse
  • QRator project at UCL
  • Qik
  • Streetmuseum
  • Today's front pages at Newseum
  • 50+ web 2.0 ways to tell a story
• The Personalised Library Symposium (#pls11) happened last Monday. I didn't manage to follow much of it on Twitter, but the idea that students like to 'womb' in libraries did come up. I think that's a rather unpleasant way of saying they like to make themselves nests

Cool stuff

Two delightful ways of increasing engagement with reading:

• Reading out loud groups (I heard about this in an interview with Frank Cottrell on 'The Verb' on Radio 3 back on Friday 12 November 2010): a way for people with low reading ability to take part in discussions about texts and to enjoy literature. They sound like good fun even for those who are confident solo readers.
• Dogs who visit a school so that the children can read to a non-judgemental audience.

And finally...

Long-standing readers may remember that last year I posted about how I don't like the format of Update Digital. Update Digital now has a new, slightly re-jigged format, and I don't honestly think it's much better, but I'm not going to write a full-blown post on that unless you rise up in the comments and demand it.

Eye spy...

I've just worked my way through my CILIP publications backlog, and the following articles particularly caught my eye:

'Toucan bird' by doug88888 on Flickr

• Like, the London Information and Knowledge Exchange, is organising a masterclass aimed at library and information professionals 'seeking to improve the effective sharing of knowledge and good practice within their organisations'. I thought of the Post That Wouldn't End. (From Gazette 22 July-11 Aug., p. 3.)
• CILIP is having a Member's Day on 14 October. I've no idea what a Member's Day is, but feel I ought to find out as part of trying to cultivate a less cynical attitude towards CILIP. (Gazette 22 July-11 Aug., p. 7)
• Sheila Thomas, who works at TWI and came to the Conversation about CILIP organised by Niamh in June, writes about her week in the regular slot at the end of Gazette.  I really enjoyed reading about what she gets up to, which seems to be the real nitty-gritty of abstracting and indexing relevant publications and conference proceedings - having had no idea before I met her what the 'information professional' bit of CILIP might really mean. (Gazette 22 July-11 Aug, p. 15)
• There's a whole page about and a plug on the cover of the latest issue of Gazette for the recently-launched New Professionals Network, of which I'm already a member. It was nice to feel ahead of the news, although I really must get on and make more use of the network! (Gazette 12 Aug.-1 Sep., p. 11)
• Also in networking news, apparently CILIP group on LinkedIn now has 1,000 members. I was quite sniffy about LinkedIn during 23 Things - maybe I ought to reconsider? (Update Aug. 2010, p.7)
• According to Update, Universities are going to 'talk tough' over big journal deals when they next come up for review. Journals pricing deals just make me grumpy when I think about them - I'm quite pleased that I don't currently have to manage them for work. (Update Aug. 2010, p. 4)
• Funding cuts and community engagement were the most heavily revisted themes, being the cover stories for both issues of Gazette. A Big Lottery report has found that 'community engagement takes time', which isn't a great surprise, but may well be good message to hear as libraries are looking towards the communities for increased support. A report from the Libraries Change Lives conference encourages libraries to create a clear message of what they offer and to make the library a valued place. (Update Aug. 2010, pp. 9 and 16)
• School libraries featured heavily in my reading. Given the work I (try to) do with schools, school libraries are of increasing interest.  I note with alarm that the Cambridge schools library service has been closed, and read with interest tips from former School Librarian of the Year Anne-Marie Tarter on how to convince children that citation is important, and how to market the library and the librarians within a school. (Update Aug. 2010, pp. 6 and 28-30).
• Practical tips were also found in two articles about services for blind and partially sighted people.  This is an area in which I have no experience, but the model of fining out users' needs and then meeting them as best as you can is one that any librarian can learn from. (Update Aug. 2010, p. 49, Sunrise 2010:2, p.5)
• Lastly, there's an article by yours truly in the latest issue of Sunrise, the CILIP East of England regional branch's magazine. Under the title 'The Way to the Stars' I give a brief run-down of the history of astronomy event I ran for the Cambridge Science Festival in March this year and a few tips for those thinking of organising events of their own. It should be available online in due course on the CILIP website.

Not sure if this is of interest to anyone reading, but it's useful for me to record what I've read.