Open Access - May 2009 - Vol. 52 No. 2

May 2009Vol. 52 No.2

A newsletter from the West Midlands branch of CILIP

We aim to create the best public library in the world. For such an investment the people of Birmingham deserve nothing less. The weight of responsibility rests heavily upon us – but what an opportunity!

Integrated with Birmingham Repertory Theatre, the Library of Birmingham will be a unique centre for learning, information and culture. An enduring beacon for Birmingham, it will raise the city’s international profile and deliver excellence to local communities. Accessible and welcoming to all, it will reach out to the most disadvantaged

citizens. It will be a universal meeting place, a hub for the region, an engine for the knowledge economy. Through written, printed, audio, visual and interactive resources and technologies, the Library of Birmingham will link the people of Birmingham to the world. It will bring the world to Birmingham.

Dutch architects Mecanoo have been appointed to lead the Design Team, with Wolverhampton-based Carillion awarded the contract for construction, which begins in 2010.

In this issue...In Focus: Jill Lambert.............3

International Relations.........4

Juice up your OPAC..............4

Summer Reading Challenge:Success across the West Midlands...................................6

CILIP WM at CareersUnlimited..................................7

We did it our way..................8

Warwickshire people are inspired.....................................9

CILIP WM Members’ Day & AGM....................................10

Inspire at sub-regional level.........................................11

Marketing Push....................11

Committee News................12 2009 Committee

Public Libraries Group

Library Photo Competition

Website

Continued on page 2

Aiming High The Library of Birmingham 2013

A supplement to CILIP Update

ISSN 0048-1904

www.cilip.org.uk/wm 1

penaccess

Open AccessPublication of the West Midlands Branch of CILIP.Views expressed are not necessarily those of CILIP-WM or of the Editor.

Editor: David VinerSolihull Central LibrarySolihull B91 3RGTel: 0121 704 8534Fax: 0121 704 6907Email: [email protected]

Copy date for next issue:Friday 2 October 2009

2009 CommitteeChair: Margaret RowleyWorcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust

Vice-Chair & Newsletter Editor: David VinerSolihull MBC

Hon. Secretary: Margaret FullerFire Services College

Hon. Treasurer: Patricia Fouracres University of Wolverhampton

Roger Fairman University of WorcesterWebmaster

Mike Freeman Freelance International Relations Officer

Christine Hughes Birmingham City Council Affiliate Member

Hettie Jones Freelance

Paula Keogh Talis

Wendy Parry Worcester College of TechnologyMembership Secretary

Sarah Tongue Solihull MBC

Katharine Widdows University of WarwickMarketing Officer

12 www.cilip.org.uk/wm

Committee News

WebsiteCILIP West Midlands are currently looking into how we can raise our online profile. Please could all members of the branch remember to get registered and keep their details up to date on the CILIP website. It will allow us to get in touch with you more easily and help to keep you updated on what’s happening in your region.

You can now ‘follow’ our updates on Twitter www.twitter.com/cilipwm

Roger FairmanWebmaster

Birmingham City Council has approved an investment of £193 million in a new Central Library: The Library of Birmingham. Such an exceptional corporate commitment to the value of culture in delivering physical, social and economic regeneration demands an ambition of the highest order.

Birmingham Central Library.

Library Photo CompetitionThe quest to find the region’s best-photographed library continues.

In the January issue of Open Access I asked members to get creative with their cameras to show off their library. I am pleased to report that we have had a great response so far, with well over a hundred images being added to our Flickr group. http://www.flickr.com/groups/cilipwmlibphotocomp/

Remember the most creative and imaginative shot from our Group Pool will be reproduced in Gazette later in the year, so it is well worth dusting off the camera and having a go at composing the perfect shot.

Due to interest from non CILIP members, the group is now open to the public and organisations in the region are welcome to utilise this project to market their own service. Why not encourage users to capture your library from their perspective? Libraries appear to be a popular focus for the amateur photographer and following some targeted promotion, we have received some great images from members of the Flickr community - but we still need more. So get snapping!

The competition closes on Friday 5 June. If you have got a favourite make sure you join the discussion and have your say.

David VinerVice-Chair

Open AccessDue to the costs involved in producing Open Access, the branch committee have decided to reduce the number of issues from four to three per year for the foreseeable future. We therefore plan to publish our third issue this year in October instead of July. In the meantime, we would encourage members to visit our website at www.cilip.org.uk/wm or to check out our Facebook and Twitter pages on a regular basis for current news.

Public Libraries GroupCILIP WM would like to congratulate Kate Millin who has taken over as Chair of the Public Libraries Group. Kate who is Assistant Director for Libraries, Archives and Adult Learning with Dudley MBC is also former Chair of the branch committee.

Kate Millin with past Chair Pamela Tulloch at a PLG reception in Birmingham.


There are four key drivers behind the decision:

The inadequacy of the present Central Library to deliver a library and archive service suited to the twenty-first century.

Its poor physical condition, with a huge repair bill to refurbish and extend accommodation for archival storage and display.

The desire to release the Paradise Circus site, of which the library forms the largest single element, for development.

The opportunity to complete the regeneration of the west end of the city centre.

The budget is formed of three elements: -

£134m prudential borrowing against an accumulating revenue budget stream, also the source for project management.

£20m Capital receipts.

£39m as yet unspecified but which, should external funding not be secured, the City Council will underwrite through further prudential borrowing.

The total new development will be 31,000 sqm, the largest public library in Europe. We will open in June 2013.

The Library of Birmingham is one of the major projects which will reposition the city over the next 5-10 years as a serious player in the global league table for quality of life and economic success. The library sits alongside the £600 million development of New Street Station, a runway extension at Birmingham International Airport, skyscraper developments and a new city park.

We have reflected the aspirations of the City in relation to the Knowledge Economy and the development of its heritage assets, but we have retained a clear focus on people: our library will achieve results for people, and will offer something for everyone, a truly universal service.

“The best public library in the world” is a deliberately challenging and ambitious statement. But we should be bold. In striving for excellence we aim to be creative, radical and innovative, and seek to impact on the international scene. I set three yardsticks by which we should measure success in future years: -

The Library is universal, accessible and inclusive. It will offer something to everyone in the community. This cannot be said of traditional city-centre reference libraries, even the great ones. This will be a library both for the learned, and for the learner.

The Library will be an active, results-focussed organisation. We will deliver outcomes. This library will not be a passive storehouse of information but an active powerhouse of learning.

Continued from page 1


The Library will endure. It will be a demonstrator for sustainable design, and respond flexibly to changing technological, social and economic development.

We have anchored our strategic agenda in three distinct themes, which resonate with the corporate strategic vision: -

1. Building the Knowledge Economy;2. Investing in Children, Young People and Families; and3. Promoting Community Culture and Heritage.

Our project is structured around a number of major workstreams: - Funding and Finance, Transformation, ICT, Human Resources, Design and Construction, Transition, Communications and Legal and Property. Each requires capacity to deliver, clear deliverables and a strategy for achieving objectives.

The change is fundamentally away from a transactional model of service, based upon the notion of the book (as surrogate for any physical media) and information as products...to an enabling infrastructure for social interaction, knowledge acquisition, and personal and community development. A participative model of service delivery...we aim to free people from the constraints of democratised information, and to enable people to convert information, through a process of learning and exploration, into knowledge.

Of course, transformation has already started, and will be a continuous process up to and beyond the opening of the new Library in 2013.

This is a unique opportunity to change the cultural, social and physical face of Birmingham – forever.

Firstly, as a landmark building which comes to define the city and its citizens. The Library of Birmingham must be a design to inspire the soul.

Secondly, the Library of Birmingham must genuinely meet the needs of the city, and its many diverse communities. The key to future success lies in being inclusive, open and accessible.

Thirdly, the Library of Birmingham will only succeed if it reaches beyond the city centre, through the network of Community Libraries, into all parts of the city.

The library must rise to the challenge posed by too many in society who are too busy for the library, or perceive no value to themselves in the services it presents: the response

should be robust, imaginative and constantly surprising.

With the launch of the Design plans for the Library we now invite your response, I’d be very grateful for any comments!

Brian Gambles is Assistant Director Culture with Birmingham City Council.

[email protected]

Before we all returned to our own libraries, we had a super lunch and the opportunity to talk to colleagues and look at some of the resources on display.

Kate Gardner is Head of Library & Study Centres at Worcester College of Technology.

[email protected]

Kate Gardner introduces Nick Baker, Hereford Cathedral Librarian.

Inspire at sub-regional level

In the last issue of Open Access, David Parkes described the development and operation of inspire in the West Midlands. In that article, he talked of Inspire as relying on a framework at the sub-regional level and describes it as “very much a grassroots initiative”.

Hereford & Worcester (H&W) Inspire is very much an example of such a grassroots initiative – launched on 15 November 2006 with a poet on a motorbike touring all of the H&W libraries that had signed up to Inspire. The poem that was written following the launch has since been adopted by Inspire nationally. The group has since gone from strength to strength and meets regularly to discuss issues and share ideas.

Since our launch we have focused on awareness raising about each other’s collections and have had open days, tours and even job exchange programmes. Our latest event was a half-day conference for staff of the H&W Inspire libraries, held at the University of Worcester.

It was attended by over 40 members of staff from the different libraries. Attendees heard about some of the special collections held in our libraries. The first speaker was Andrew Green, Co Director of INSPIRE England and a member of the INSPIRE Management Board. Andrew talked about the bigger picture and helped to put H&W Inspire into context. We were very lucky to catch Andrew before he leaves the region to take up a post in Wandsworth as Head of Library & Heritage Services. Rachel Johnson of the University of Worcester told us about the superb collections of children’s literature held at the University, including a collection of works by and about Henty, the prolific 19th Century author, which makes up the strongest research collection about this author anywhere in the UK. In addition, we heard about The Elkin Collection, a more recent collection of multicultural children’s literature. There were some truly fascinating books on display, which we all enjoyed looking at and which gave rise to some interesting discussions about political correctness and colonialism.

Reminding us that we don’t just benefit from our shared printed resources, Lesley O’Connell Edwards from Worcestershire County Libraries talked about the very useful range of e-resources provided by the County Council, which are available to library members from their computer at home or wherever it might be.

The two cathedral librarians (Hereford & Worcester), David Morrison and Nick Baker enthralled us with lively presentations about their amazing collections. As an academic librarian, I was particularly intrigued to see examples of the graffiti that the bored monks wrote on their textbooks. It is nice to know students don’t change.

We finished the morning with small group discussions about ideas for future co-operation between the H&W Inspire librarians. Debbie Boden of the University of Worcester talked about Lollipop & Sir Learn a Lot, two staff development packages, which she has helped to develop and which will be on offer to the staff in local libraries.

Marketing Push

As the newly appointed Marketing Officer for CILIP WM (starting in January this year), I have been very impressed already by the dedication and commitment the committee has shown towards CILIP work. All Branch committees are made up of volunteers who give their time freely to support the work of CILIP.

I am not the only person on the committee working on our new Marketing Strategy, David Viner (Vice Chair) and Roger Fairman (Webmaster) make up the rest of the Marketing Group, and we have already started to look seriously at our web presence, which includes the setting up of a CILIP WM Twitter, development of a Facebook Group and investigation into a NetVibes page to bring our web output together into one place. We are also looking into increasing our attendance at university careers events, running more of our own events, and getting in contact with Special Interest Groups in the West Midlands, such as CDG and UC&R, to see how we can help publicise their work and support them further.

I have also met with Mark Taylor the head of CILIP Marketing at Ridgmount Street, and he has been very supportive in offering advice on everything from branding, to how to run a successful exhibition stand. He has also provided marketing materials for events, and introduced us to the services we can access through the Membership Support Unit. I’m sure there is more assistance to come!

We are all aware of the need to increase CILIP membership and spread the word - and this is one of the things the West Midlands Branch is working towards. Please feel free to contact me if you have any suggestions or questions relating to Branch Marketing.

Katharine WiddowsMarketing [email protected]

10 www.cilip.org.uk/wm www.cilip.org.uk/wm 3

CILIP WM Members’ Day & AGMWednesday 28 January 2009Lanchester Library, Coventry University

Margaret Rowley, Chair of CILIP WM welcomed everyone and gave thanks to our host Caroline Rock, Coventry University Librarian.

The 2009 CILIP president, Peter Griffiths, then addressed the group. As the former Head of Information at the Home Office, he is ideally placed to speak about the government’s “Information Matters” strategy. He outlined what he sees as CILIP’s priorities in response to this, i.e. accreditation, activism, advocacy and affordability. His presidential themes for the coming year are professionalism and professional development, new ground activism, leadership, collaboration and opportunity. He believes we as librarians need to expand our skill set to include information audits and security, something anyone who has taken a management course will be very familiar with. He suggests that librarians can lead in the management of information and collaboration with IT departments as they work together for the public benefit. We should also be working towards collaborative operations with archivists and records managers.

He also touched on the APPG public libraries group set up to review the leadership in Public libraries.

Mr Griffiths summed up the “insurmountable opportunity” for information professionals in the coming years, and recommended new partnerships and continuing relationships with current partners. He recommended working with other professional bodies and accreditation bodies and stressed how valuable the CILIP groups and branches are for sharing experience and bringing their knowledge back to CILIP.

CILIP WM members who have recently chartered or revalidated received special certificates from Mr Griffiths.

Caroline Rock’s team then gave us a tour of their fabulous library building, which has won awards not only for its eco design, but for its functionality as a library – something we can all appreciate. I was particularly interested in the “Learning Lounge” in the basement, where learners have PCs and vending machines, so users who want to munch

whilst they work can be directed there, rather than soiling the workspaces upstairs. Eating and drinking in the libraries is a growing issue for all of us and something we all need to address in some way or another - or spend more and more of our daily lives as “eating police”!

WM branch, CDG and CoFHE WM all gave their AGM reports.

Finally, Ayub Kahn, Head of Warwickshire Libraries (Strategy), gave a very interesting and thought provoking talk on social inclusion. He began by explaining that “inclusion” and “diversity” is not, as many people believe, restricted to those people who are not mainstream. Policies for inclusion are just that, to include everybody and actually most people fall into at least one of the “minority” groups.

Mr Khan referred to the legal requirements for libraries to meet the needs of diverse groups and also highlighted how poor literacy leads to poor work opportunities and poverty, which in turn leads to poor housing and poor health.

He spoke about what Warwickshire is doing to satisfy the requirement of various groups, e.g. Polish Nights and conversation clubs, and the issues that they face with having to meet the needs of a rapidly changing and mobile population. He spoke of the barriers to the “Libraries for All” ideal which include the rules and regulations (see eating and drinking above!), opening hours, lack of literary skills, accessibility – particularly for rural folk, and non-users’ perceptions of libraries as being not for them.

I had first hand experience of this recently when talking to a parent whose son had been invoiced for a lost book. When I suggested that if he had lost a book from his public library he would also be expected to pay, I was met with “I wouldn’t know love, I’ve never set foot in the place!”

In all, a very interesting talk which gave me some ideas for things we could do in college to help our own inclusion.

Finally, there was time for a quick panel Q&A session with Mr Griffiths, Mr Khan and Ms Rowley.

Members’ Day resources can now be downloaded from the CILIP West Midlands website at: www.cilip.org.uk/wm

Wendy Parry is Deputy Head of Library & Study Centres at Worcester College of Technology.

[email protected]

Margaret Rowley and Peter Griffiths with those receiving certificates.

Panel Discussion with Ayub Khan and Caroline Rock.

in the Library. We happened to mention the idea to the Polytechnic’s Systems Analyst, who came back a few days later with a plan to produce it for us.

After several years in London, I moved to Newcastle Polytechnic, as Faculty Librarian for Science & Technology. The Polytechnic (now the University of Northumbria), was awaiting a new library building. In the meantime the science and engineering collection was housed in the old gym, with the changing room acting as the Library back office, and a wooden platform on scaffolding as a mezzanine study area.

I left Newcastle Polytechnic on the birth of my first child, and for many years worked on a part time basis on short-term contracts. Although this does not sound directional in career terms, it was actually very useful in widening my experience of the profession. It included several years as a Visiting Lecturer in the Library and Information Studies Department at Birmingham Polytechnic, now Birmingham City University, plus a short spell as a research assistant at OCLC Europe. OCLC was launching some of the first bibliographical CD-ROM databases in the UK. Although the technology has now been overtaken, at the time it was a huge step forward in information searching. I then returned to the “real” library world; first as an Assistant Librarian at Birmingham City University, moved to Staffordshire University as Engineering Librarian, and then to Aston University.

Along the way I have been involved with the former Institute of Information Scientists (IIS) Midlands Branch, and as Treasurer for the JIBS User Group (for electronic resources in higher and further education). Acting as Treasurer for the User Group also drew me into membership issues. I would often be contacted to ask why it was worth an organisation continuing to pay the fee to belong to the Group. I would like to put my point of view here on membership of CILIP. In strained times, it is inevitable that people will question the value of subscriptions. An active organisational structure though, is necessary, if the message that libraries and information benefit society and the workplace is to get through. The more people that belong, the more effective this message will be.

Being new to the Council, I am still finding my way through the structure and the way it works. It is clear though that there is now a strong emphasis on advocacy. In practical terms, advocacy can seem a bit nebulous, but there are several recent initiatives, which hopefully bode well for the future:

The review of the public library service launched last October by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) http://www.culture.gov.uk/reference_ library/media_releases/5532.aspx

An Enquiry by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG)

In Focus: Jill Lambert Last November I stood – with some trepidation – for election to the CILIP Council. I knew that the governance of CILIP had been modernised recently and wanted to make a contribution to what I believe is a great service and profession. Having been elected, I joined the group of 12 trustees until 2011.

My background is predominantly academiclibraries, interspersed with spells in other areas of the profession. I worked at Aston University Library & Information Service (LIS) for 10 years, until retiring as an Assistant Director in Autumn 2007. At Aston I had a dual role of head of academic liaison for science and engineering, and public services. The role of academic liaison in university libraries is widely understood, public services less so but are basically “front-of-house” activities. Public librarians would be very familiar with most of these activities – circulation, shelving, printing, photocopying, comments, complaints and the security of users and the building. I am sure my old colleagues reading this will smile, when I say that this was both satisfying and problematic. It is very rewarding to introduce new services - laptop loans for instance - but it also involves continual striving to meet the increasing expectations of students. Our efforts were recognised though in 2007, when LIS achieved Charter Mark status (now replaced by the Government’s new Customer Service Excellence standard).

I began my career as a Saturday assistant in Ilkeston Public Library in Derbyshire. I still have much affection for this Carnegie Library, where I was trained in the basics of issuing, discharging, reservations and shelving. After graduating with a science degree from Bristol University, I worked in the Paint Research Association’s Library in Middlesex, before taking a post-graduate diploma in Librarianship, at what is now John Moores University, but was then Liverpool Polytechnic. The highlight of the year was always the Library School’s annual boat trip on the Mersey. The trip took three hours; to fill up the time the boat would go down river towards Runcorn, then up to the mouth of the estuary, afterwards hovering somewhere in the middle until the three hours had passed.

My first professional post was in the Engineering & Science Library at the Polytechnic of Central London, now the

University of Westminster. It was a good time to be working in

the polytechnics. They had only recently been

established, and there was a lot of scope to make changes, even if you were on the bottom rung of the

ladder. It sounds trivial now, but my colleagues and I managed to implement the first computerised subject index

‘ ’My first professional post was in the Engineering and

Science Library

Continued on page 4


Kathy Gee and Geoff Warren with Tony Jones of Shakespeares at the opening of MLA West Midlands’ offices in Grosvenor House, Bennetts Hill, Birmingham. This is now MLA Council’s main operating base.

many years. He is now overseeing the next stage of the BBC Learning/Public Libraries partnership as national co-ordinator. Like the Big Lottery work this has been challenging - organisations like the BBC or BLF are driven in a variety of ways internally and externally. To collaborate with them is never straightforward but can be enriching.

Cross-sectoral library work (from which the other two examples are drawn) is that much more demanding again. Inspire West Midlands (to which reference has already been made) has taught us that even the simplest concept of access to different kinds of libraries for all is not as easy as it seems. The flip side of bringing people to a wide range of resources is bringing digital content directly to people. This is what the Advantage West Midlands Libraries Challenge was all about. The project was bid for by TLP-WM and then taken over by MLA West Midlands. Led by Steve Fuller and Vicki Watkin and their teams it involved a total spend of £1 million (50% each from AWM and library partners). Its great strength was the wide involvement of different geographical and sectoral partnerships and a correspondingly diverse range of content from across the West Midlands.

University and public libraries both played key roles and the programme showed that libraries are powerful stimulants to Broadband take-up - a key advocacy argument as well as being the required output. The Bits for All project in the Black Country was particularly successful and award-winning. Chrysalis was the portal that held it all together.

Throughout the noughties, the Libraries Forum has been something of an anchor for the libraries domain regionally (as have its Chairs Liz Hart, Andrew Green and now Kate Gardner, respectively from the university, public and FE library sectors). Amongst those who have most faithfully supported it, Pat Noon (also a Libraries domain MLA-WM Board member) contributed much of the philosophical underpinning for cross-sectoral collaboration. The Forum’s set-piece annual events (as with so many of our conferences held at the excellent Austin Court) were memorable occasions. Now that MLA West Midlands is being wound up, the libraries domain must decide how to interact with the new MLA. Will a Libraries Forum in the present form still be needed? It would be ironic if our thinking and working

together lost momentum at a time when the concept of service integration (for instance in the proposed Library of Birmingham and the Worcester Library and History Centre projects) is attracting so much attention and major investment (and making many of us very excited about the future).

“We did it our way” has been the theme of these three short pieces. After almost 80 years of unbroken regional library agency work, it seems that our pathway is merging into a much broader cultural highway with an English Regions rather than a West Midlands Region direction and focus. Time will tell where the road leads us to. However, nothing can be taken away from the value, pride and pleasure of improving library services in the region together. In the end, it is people who are the essential ingredient of co-operation because it’s one thing you can’t do on your own. And as Dubya might have said, never misunderestimate people...

Geoff Warren took early retirement from MLA West Midlands in March 2009.

[email protected]

Warwickshire people are inspired

Warwickshire ended its activities for the National Year of Reading with a celebration at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Courtyard Theatre in Stratford on 14 January. Warwickshire’s new mobile library with ‘Romeo and Juliet’ livery was a backdrop to actors from the RSC’s concurrent production of the play.

Library staff who had played a key role in the Year in Warwickshire were on hand and local author and illustrator Steve Smallman came in his capacity as judge of the county’s Be Inspired writing competition. Winners across the three age groups for this competition came to receive their goody bags of books and book tokens. Some books were kindly provided by New Books manager Guy Pringle, along with 12-month subscriptions to newbooksmag and the teen version tbkmag.

Winning entries are on the library service’s website at: www.warwickshire.gov.uk/libraries.

Left to right: Paul MacDermott, Ayub Khan, Alison McKellar (all from Warwickshire Libraries), Niamh McCann and Owain Arthur (actors from RSC), Stella Thebridge (Warwickshire’s National Year of Reading Co-ordinator) and Melanie Whitehead (RSC education department).

(APPG) on Libraries, Literacy and Information Management into the leadership and governance of public libraries in England http://www.cilip.org.uk/aboutcilip/ newsandpressreleases/news081010.htm

Information Matters, building government’s capability in managing knowledge and information, the strategy developed by the Knowledge Council, and published by the Government in November 2008 http://www. nationalarchives.gov. uk/services/publications/information- matters-strategy.pdf

Taking stock: the future of our public library service, a report commissioned by Unison http://www.unison.org. uk/acrobat/17301.pdf

JISC’s ”Libraries of the Future” debate, http://www.jisc. ac.uk/librariesofthefuture

I think we should welcome these initiatives, and see them positively as pointers of the interest and support that exists for libraries, and recognition of the importance of information management.

I would like to finish by thanking people for supporting my nomination as a trustee, and to say that I would welcome contact from anyone with views on CILIP and its future direction.

Jill Lambert is a trustee of CILIP.

[email protected]

Continued from page 3 Juice up your OPACAs Technology Evangelist for Solihull based Library and Semantic Web Technology company Talis, my concerns are much broader than just promoting, explaining, and influencing the developments of the leading edge library applications that Talis provide to many UK Academic and Public libraries. My goal is to promote and celebrate innovation in the world of libraries and the web, regardless of the vendor of the system behind that innovation. One of the best ways to ensure that innovation is beneficial to all, is to release shared software under an Open Source licence making it clear from the outset that it is for the whole community to share. It is this principle that is behind my release, under such a licence, of a set of simple tools that can enhance the experience for users of all library discovery systems.

The development of the library discovery interface has evolved dramatically over the last couple of years. Early web OPACs first emerged in the mid 1990s, but did not change much over the following decade. The web evolved significantly over that time, though, leaving many OPAC interfaces looking old, tired and confusing for those that have grown up with Google, FaceBook, and YouTube. Back in 2006/7 we started to see a movement, started mostly by the Open Source community, towards delivering a next generation of OPACs.

These developments started behind the scenes at the data storage and indexing level. The faster and more flexible indexing that came from software tools, with names like Lucene and Solr, soon lead to the realisation that you could build a better system by pulling data out of the core library system, to search it independently. It was not long before other benefits of these tools became apparent to users - the two most obvious ones being relevance ranked results sets and faceted browsing.

Early examples of these new interfaces started to appear at some North American Universities, the National Library of Australia, and other forward looking institutions. There is now a wave of next generation OPACs being introduced by every library system vendor and many open source groups, that the people behind these examples can be credited with starting. Commercial products such as Ex Libris’ Primo, Encore from Innovative Interfaces, SirsiDynix’s Enterprise, WorldCat Local, Aquabrowser, and of course Talis Prism, are being supplemented by VuFind, Blacklight, Scriblio, and Bibliocommons, all of which are from the Open Source world. There are many to choose from, although currently, there are a relatively small number of libraries who have implemented one.

The designers of these systems were also able to take advantage of developments and techniques, now prevalent across the wider web, to deliver a ‘better looking, easier to use’ interface that can compete in the usability stakes with commercial sites such as Google, Amazon, the BBC, and

International RelationsThere can be few Public Libraries which have such a splendid and imposing “Portal to Knowledge” as this one. This is the Main Entrance to Brooklyn Central Library in New York City. A splendid late Art Deco structure the Library comes complete with elevating words for all who love libraries – it warms the cockles of a librarian’s heart! The quotations are believed to have been written by Roscoe E Brown, President of the Library’s Board of Trustees in 1942, back in the days when a politician could be cultured and visionary.

“Here are enshrined the longing of great hearts and noble things that tower above the tide, the magic word that winged wonder starts, the garnered wisdom that has never died.”

Mike FreemanInternational Relations Officer


We Did It Our Way(Almost) 80 years of libraries working together in the West Midlands region

Part 3 – “The noughties” – other journeys

In Part 2 we saw how momentum was built through the nineties with the help of externally funded projects. What was now needed was focus and prioritisation, and in order to move from transition to delivery, The Libraries Partnership – West Midlands (TLP-WM) was designed to consolidate work already in progress and position libraries regionally. The RDA (Advantage West Midlands) and the RCC (West Midlands Life later to become Culture West Midlands) were the main targets. The new millennium began with a successful high profile launch.

At its inception TLP-WM created two Development Manager posts to which Claire Bell and Liane Kordan were recruited.

Claire took charge of INTER-ALL, a regional business information project funded by the European Regional Development Fund and involving 12 public library services. Bringing in almost £1 million, this was a very tangible result of David Potts’ work over the previous two years with Brian Gambles, Ian Everall and Graham Beaumont, all having major input. It took library services into the challenging realm of delivering outputs for Government Office (“numbers of businesses supported”). INTER-ALL forged new collaborations in the provision of business information across the region including web-based services. Together the partners were able to meet all their targets on time and within budget.

Liane picked up the content and training strands. Approaches to cross-sectoral digital content development were pursued with project funds secured from NOF Digi. An on-line learning resource – Revolutionary Players – was created on the theme of the Industrial Revolution, drawing from the

Liz Charlton (Government Office), Baroness Christine Crawley (WM Life) and Mary Heaney (Convenor) at the launch of TLP-WM

region’s museums, libraries and archives collections. Work was led by Malcolm Dick and his team.

In parallel, the DCMS/Wolfson funded project Multi-Net aimed to link public and university library content via broadband networking. Sadly TLP-WM’s partnership with Synetrix Ltd did not achieve the functioning regional inter-connect between the regional Higher Education network MidMAN and the 14 Local Authorities that would have under-pinned this (although it got very close). Nevertheless, a much higher profile for libraries was achieved and the existence and value of our offer was highlighted in the emerging regional ICT strategy of Advantage West Midlands. As a result of INTER-ALL and MultiNet, we got to the table ready to exploit future opportunities.

DCMS/Wolfson funding was also obtained to run the Caring with Books project. It focused on children in care and was led by Linda Saunders who was to become Acting Director of TLP-WM in 2002-3. This work provided many helpful pointers for individual library services, profiled joint working via a number of events and showed that TLP-WM could add value for the contributions of member organisations. If reading is crucial in the 21st century, then so is metadata (information about information). This was especially true before Google reigned supreme. Heather Williamson’s work on Crossroads (funded by Resource) was unashamedly museums-libraries-and-archives-wide, part of the preparations for a Single Regional Agency to be launched as MLA West Midlands in 2003, and merging TLP-WM with the Museums and Archives Councils. Her work helped the development of Cornucopia which in turn underpinned Find It (nationally) and Inspire West Midlands (regionally).

So what (since 2003) has MLA West Midlands done for libraries? Both its Chairs of Board (Judith Elkin and Glen Lawes) and both its CEOs (Kathy Gee and Jon Finch) have been committed to the libraries agenda.

Much has been achieved together but four achievements stand out. Two were public-library focused and involved a partnership with the Society of Chief Librarians. SCL-WM had invited WMRLS to its meetings from the mid 1990s onwards and successive Chairs (Karen Lees, Kushal Birla, Linda Saunders and now Janene Cox) have encouraged positive relationships with MLA West Midlands. When the Big Lottery’s Community Libraries programme arrived, it was supported at regional level by some fascinating discussions about library spaces and community engagement, in which Big Lottery and public library staff along with MLA West Midlands all got involved. It won’t be long now until we see the first fruits of £8 million of investment across six West Midlands authorities and ten service points.

The other example of MLA West Midlands and SCL-WM working well together – on the partnership with BBC Learning – is regarded as good practice nationally. Much of the credit for this has to go to Keith Benton, a champion of, and friend to, libraries across the West Midlands over

others. Book jacket images and item descriptions are now the norm for such interfaces. These products are a massive step forward from their predecessors, although many of them are still based upon a distribution model where the software needs to be installed and maintained on the library site.

Talis Prism, in addition to delivering these new features, is built upon a whole new architecture based upon the Talis Platform. As it is provided as a Software as a Service (SaaS) hosted solution, it relieves system managers from concerns about hardware and software installation, maintenance and upgrades. Effectively they are subscribing to a service which delivers OPAC functionality to their users, in the same way that broadcasters get the Sky TV platform to deliver their programs to viewers.

Whether these so-called Next-Gen interfaces are just add-ons to current systems, or delivered as software services, they are still just OPACs. They are only a window into a library catalogue, providing information from that single data source. Some systems employ federated search techniques (with varying degrees of success) to widen the sources of information for a user, but inevitably, they are still only providing a view in to one or more library silos.

Again spurred on by the Open Source community, we have recently seen examples of ways to extend the reach of the OPAC beyond its local catalogue. Links out to Amazon (to offer purchasing options) or to Google Book Search (to provide a scanned preview of a book) or to Delicious (for personal bookmarking) are just three common examples of this trend. Whilst working with the Talis Prism interface, its design makes it particularly easy to add such extensions, and it became clear that there is no simple way to share and reuse the individual examples of such innovation. Although using the same service, and delivering the same functionality, the work to add Google Book Search to the National Library of Australia’s interface would be very different to do the same for Talis Prism. Multiply that by the number of possible extensions, and again by the number of OPACs and you have potential for a massive duplication of effort, and missed opportunity for reuse, on a global scale.

Talking to libraries it was clear that there is a desire for such extensions, but it is equally clear that they would want to select ones to match their own local needs and requirements. It is unlikely that any single developer or system supplier could provide the large array of possible extensions to satisfy such requirements. That is a niche ideally filled by an open source community.

Those who have attended one of the many Talis Prism introductory days will know that much work has been undertaken to build such extensions to add value to the Talis Prism user experience. To make this a simple process, a JavaScript based framework was developed. The Javascript framework ensures that anyone capable of copying a few lines of code into a web page, can create, enhance and share new extensions. The framework, which is suitable for use on many interfaces, is called Juice - JavaScript User Interface Componentised Extensions.

To widen this community as far as possible (and hence increase the opportunity for the creation of as many extensions as possible) we have launched an Open Source Project, to which Talis has contributed the source code of the Juice framework and several example extensions. The Juice Project is hosted at Google’s Open Source code repository Google Code. It can be found, along with a wiki containing documentation and discussion mailing list at: http://juice-project.googlecode.com. The project was launched in February at the Code4lib 2009 conference in Providence Rhode Island, when it was demonstrated by enhancing the VuFind Open Source OPAC along with Talis Prism and Talis Aspire. Links to the slides from the presentation by Richard Wallis, and a video of the event can be found on the Talis Web site and the Juice Project site.

Whilst encouraging everyone interested in extending OPAC interfaces in this way to join and wherever possible contribute, Talis will remain active contributing members of the community, enhancing the project for the benefit of all. We expect there to be three types of people engaging with the Juice community. Firstly, there will be a group of expert JavaScript developers, who will help improve and expand the framework itself. Secondly, a group who will create the new extensions, often by copying similar ones. Then finally, but probably by far the largest group, will be those that want to simply extend their OPAC’s by copying examples and using the extensions developed and contributed by others.

Launching and contributing to The Juice Project is a win-win situation for Talis and our customers. The whole library community can benefit from the framework and the extensions already developed. As the community grows and develops new and innovative extensions, it can only benefit users of Talis applications enhanced by them.

Extensions already available at the launch of the project include Amazon.co.uk, Google Book Search, Waterstones, Del.icio.us, OpenLibrary, LibraryThing, LibraryThing Common Knowledge, WorldCat, and Copac. If you are interested in Juicing up your OPAC, regardless of supplier, check out and join The Juice Project and its discussion group.

Visit: http://juice-project.googlecode.comOr join the discussion at: http://groups.google.com/group/juice-project-discuss]

The article was previously published in Issue 12 (Spring 2009) of Panlibus Magazine http://www.talis.com/panlibus

Richard Wallis is Technology Evangelist with Talis

[email protected]


Summer Reading Challenge:Success across the West Midlands

Library authorities across the West Midlands have been celebrating the success of Summer Reading Challenge 2008.

Across the region:

38,771 children started the Challenge

22,939 children completed

16,752 boys participated

22,019 girls participated

1,127 activities were held in libraries, community centres and other venues to promote the Challenge

Four key areas have helped to make the Challenge a success in the region:

1. Partnerships

Every year the Challenge provides opportunities to build new and develop existing partnerships.

The sporting theme enabled links to be developed with local Playing for Success Teams, local businesses, local sporting groups and organisations.

Many of these partnerships lead to funding opportunities, for example, new links were made with Sport across Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent leading to the sponsorship of bookmarks given out to children completing the Challenge in Staffordshire Libraries, together with their medals and certificates.

2. Funding

Additional external funding has allowed library authorities to buy extra materials for the Challenge and to fund promotional events to encourage participation.

Some libraries in Birmingham received extra funding from their constituencies, one from a local sports college, and in Staffordshire and Walsall, funding from local Community and Learning and Neighbourhood Partnerships. This funded a range of activities for children during the summer holidays.

Sandwell received funding from the Extended Schools clusters, enabling the service to buy special book collections to support the Challenge and also incentives.

Dudley’s close work with Literacy Consultants resulted in funding to support a programme of events to support the Challenge. These included poets, a storyteller and shape poetry workshops, as well as the launch and celebration events.

3. Work with Schools

There is no doubt that close work with schools has helped to generate high numbers of participation in the Challenge and libraries across the region engaged with 703 schools. Authorities have been keen to stress the Summer Reading Challenge as a pleasurable activity, rather than a ‘school based learning activity’, although the Challenge is clearly supporting young people in ‘enjoying and achieving’ in their reading.

Herefordshire, Solihull and Staffordshire library authorities sent letters, or flyers to their primary, first and middle schools informing them about the 2008 Challenge and inviting them to ‘get in touch’ for a visit by a member of library staff to an assembly, or for a class visit to the library.

Most library authorities encouraged assembly visits to tell children about the Challenge and what is happening in libraries over the summer. They were quick and easy sessions that targeted the whole school in most cases. At St. Michael’s First School in Staffordshire, a member of library staff challenged the Head Teacher to read six books over the Summer holidays during an assembly visit. When the member of library staff returned to the school in September to present medals and certificates, the Head reported back on her reading and was presented with a medal and certificate. The children loved this!

Dudley participated in two National Year of Reading conferences for schools, where they had stands advertising library reading initiatives such as the Summer Reading Challenge and reading groups. The first was in May and resulted in teachers booking library staff to go into school assemblies to publicise Team Read. Library staff were also invited to talk at meetings of Literacy co-ordinators, mainly from Primary schools in June /July, where they were able to explain all about the Challenge and its value in helping children enjoy reading.

In Staffordshire on going focused work with local communities and schools has also generated greater participation in the Challenge. For example, in Tamworth library, staff have been working with the National Literacy Trust and carriers UPS on a literacy project targeting local schools. This work has resulted

in an increase in both starters and completers in the District in comparison with the 2007 statistics:

4. Promotional Activity

Promotional events throughout the duration of the Challenge helped to encourage children to participate and encouraged completion. Many authorities had a big launch to encourage starters whilst others concentrated on encouraging finishers. For example, Staffordshire held completers parties at libraries throughout the county. Along the way there were all sorts of activities.

Telford and Wrekin’s “Don’t be Board” activity encouraged children to make their own board games based around their favourite story book, and many chose sporty themes to tie in with the Challenge.

Solihull produced flyers advertising the Challenge which were given to children in school assemblies, at outreach events and activities on the run up to the Challenge. Using this method of promotion has seen numbers of children participating increase across the borough.

What did Families say about the Challenge?

“I thought Team Read is brilliant. I can read much better now.” Young person from Telford and Wrekin.

“I thought Team Read was a great idea and it really inspired me to read more. I found myself reading non stop for hours.” Young person from Dudley.

“Wonderful. Nice because it is the first year Alfie could read by himself. He read so well!” Parent from Telford and Wrekin.

“It’s been great – my daughter has really challenged herself and has chosen ‘chapter books’ as she calls them. It’s meant that she‘s got into The Secret Seven now and there’s plenty of those!” Parent from Telford and Wrekin.

“Both my children enjoy using the library and love the activities that take place. The Team Read is very encouraging. It keeps children occupied and stimulated and they reap the benefits and the rewards. It’s great! We shall look forward to next year’s.” Staffordshire Parent.

2009 Challenge

Authorities are now looking towards the future and how they can continue to build and develop on the successes of the 2008 Challenge.

If you would like more information about the Summer Reading Challenge please visit The Reading Agency website at www.readingagency.org.uk, or contact your local public library service.

Sue Ball is Service Development Officer Children and Young People with Staffordshire County Council.

[email protected]

Football author Tom Palmer entertains the crowd at Harborne Library.

Year Number of Starters Number of Completers

2007 593 353

2008 717 460

CILIP West Midlands at Careers Unlimited, University of WarwickI was thrilled to find out that CILIP West Midlands was going to have a stand at the University of Warwick’s Careers Unlimited on 27 January. Having studied at the University, and now working in its library, I know how successful its careers fair is at introducing students to the hidden market of arts, government and public sector jobs. It is a chance for them to meet industry representatives in order to learn more about their chosen careers and to make valuable contacts. As a recent affiliated member, I thought it would be a marvellous opportunity to meet other members of the CILIP West Midlands’ branch.

When I arrived, I saw that the CILIP stand was abuzz with eager students asking about the various roles available in library and information services. Undergraduates and postgraduates from a variety of disciplines crowded around the table to talk to the Vice Chair of CILIP West Midlands David Viner and, from the University’s Arts and Sciences subject teams, Jessica Duffield and Katharine Widdows. Many of the students were already aware of CILIP (except for one or two bewildered would-be accountants who had made a beeline for the word ‘Chartered’!). Some, like me, had come especially to find out about LIS careers and I overheard that they too had begun to apply for graduate traineeships.

With David, Jessica and Katharine busy answering questions, I decided to bide my time by looking through all the promotional material on display. Chomping on a complementary piece of ‘Warwick University Library Rocks’ rock, I took in the information greedily. Everything a prospective librarian could need was there: lists of graduate trainee posts for 2009/10, lists of CILIP accredited postgraduate courses and lists of LIS job websites. I snapped up a copy of everything I could get my hands on, including a copy of the previous edition of Open Access.

Replete and triumphant, I seized my chance to introduce myself to David when the crowd had cleared. He had heard I was a new member and he invited me to the branch’s Annual General Meeting at Coventry University the next day. I left the stand with a greater sense of belonging to CILIP, and hugely encouraged that there were lots of other graduates, just like me, at the start of their careers in librarianship. I also left with a DVD tour of the British Library (a definite stop on my next trip to London with my automatic Reader Pass) and a fabulously pink CILIP mousemat. The latter now sits proudly on my desk, encouraging every whir and click of my mouse as I send off trainee applications.

Adrienne Cooper was formerly a Digitisation Assistant at the University of Warwick Library

[email protected]

Ed. Since this event Adrienne has been accepted as a Trainee Librarian at the Oxford Union Library, so congratulations!


Summer Reading Challenge:Success across the West Midlands

Library authorities across the West Midlands have been celebrating the success of Summer Reading Challenge 2008.

Across the region:

38,771 children started the Challenge

22,939 children completed

16,752 boys participated

22,019 girls participated

1,127 activities were held in libraries, community centres and other venues to promote the Challenge

Four key areas have helped to make the Challenge a success in the region:

1. Partnerships

Every year the Challenge provides opportunities to build new and develop existing partnerships.

The sporting theme enabled links to be developed with local Playing for Success Teams, local businesses, local sporting groups and organisations.

Many of these partnerships lead to funding opportunities, for example, new links were made with Sport across Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent leading to the sponsorship of bookmarks given out to children completing the Challenge in Staffordshire Libraries, together with their medals and certificates.

2. Funding

Additional external funding has allowed library authorities to buy extra materials for the Challenge and to fund promotional events to encourage participation.

Some libraries in Birmingham received extra funding from their constituencies, one from a local sports college, and in Staffordshire and Walsall, funding from local Community and Learning and Neighbourhood Partnerships. This funded a range of activities for children during the summer holidays.

Sandwell received funding from the Extended Schools clusters, enabling the service to buy special book collections to support the Challenge and also incentives.

Dudley’s close work with Literacy Consultants resulted in funding to support a programme of events to support the Challenge. These included poets, a storyteller and shape poetry workshops, as well as the launch and celebration events.

3. Work with Schools

There is no doubt that close work with schools has helped to generate high numbers of participation in the Challenge and libraries across the region engaged with 703 schools. Authorities have been keen to stress the Summer Reading Challenge as a pleasurable activity, rather than a ‘school based learning activity’, although the Challenge is clearly supporting young people in ‘enjoying and achieving’ in their reading.

Herefordshire, Solihull and Staffordshire library authorities sent letters, or flyers to their primary, first and middle schools informing them about the 2008 Challenge and inviting them to ‘get in touch’ for a visit by a member of library staff to an assembly, or for a class visit to the library.

Most library authorities encouraged assembly visits to tell children about the Challenge and what is happening in libraries over the summer. They were quick and easy sessions that targeted the whole school in most cases. At St. Michael’s First School in Staffordshire, a member of library staff challenged the Head Teacher to read six books over the Summer holidays during an assembly visit. When the member of library staff returned to the school in September to present medals and certificates, the Head reported back on her reading and was presented with a medal and certificate. The children loved this!

Dudley participated in two National Year of Reading conferences for schools, where they had stands advertising library reading initiatives such as the Summer Reading Challenge and reading groups. The first was in May and resulted in teachers booking library staff to go into school assemblies to publicise Team Read. Library staff were also invited to talk at meetings of Literacy co-ordinators, mainly from Primary schools in June /July, where they were able to explain all about the Challenge and its value in helping children enjoy reading.

In Staffordshire on going focused work with local communities and schools has also generated greater participation in the Challenge. For example, in Tamworth library, staff have been working with the National Literacy Trust and carriers UPS on a literacy project targeting local schools. This work has resulted

in an increase in both starters and completers in the District in comparison with the 2007 statistics:

4. Promotional Activity

Promotional events throughout the duration of the Challenge helped to encourage children to participate and encouraged completion. Many authorities had a big launch to encourage starters whilst others concentrated on encouraging finishers. For example, Staffordshire held completers parties at libraries throughout the county. Along the way there were all sorts of activities.

Telford and Wrekin’s “Don’t be Board” activity encouraged children to make their own board games based around their favourite story book, and many chose sporty themes to tie in with the Challenge.

Solihull produced flyers advertising the Challenge which were given to children in school assemblies, at outreach events and activities on the run up to the Challenge. Using this method of promotion has seen numbers of children participating increase across the borough.

What did Families say about the Challenge?

“I thought Team Read is brilliant. I can read much better now.” Young person from Telford and Wrekin.

“I thought Team Read was a great idea and it really inspired me to read more. I found myself reading non stop for hours.” Young person from Dudley.

“Wonderful. Nice because it is the first year Alfie could read by himself. He read so well!” Parent from Telford and Wrekin.

“It’s been great – my daughter has really challenged herself and has chosen ‘chapter books’ as she calls them. It’s meant that she‘s got into The Secret Seven now and there’s plenty of those!” Parent from Telford and Wrekin.

“Both my children enjoy using the library and love the activities that take place. The Team Read is very encouraging. It keeps children occupied and stimulated and they reap the benefits and the rewards. It’s great! We shall look forward to next year’s.” Staffordshire Parent.

2009 Challenge

Authorities are now looking towards the future and how they can continue to build and develop on the successes of the 2008 Challenge.

If you would like more information about the Summer Reading Challenge please visit The Reading Agency website at www.readingagency.org.uk, or contact your local public library service.

Sue Ball is Service Development Officer Children and Young People with Staffordshire County Council.

[email protected]

Football author Tom Palmer entertains the crowd at Harborne Library.

Year Number of Starters Number of Completers

2007 593 353

2008 717 460

CILIP West Midlands at Careers Unlimited, University of WarwickI was thrilled to find out that CILIP West Midlands was going to have a stand at the University of Warwick’s Careers Unlimited on 27 January. Having studied at the University, and now working in its library, I know how successful its careers fair is at introducing students to the hidden market of arts, government and public sector jobs. It is a chance for them to meet industry representatives in order to learn more about their chosen careers and to make valuable contacts. As a recent affiliated member, I thought it would be a marvellous opportunity to meet other members of the CILIP West Midlands’ branch.

When I arrived, I saw that the CILIP stand was abuzz with eager students asking about the various roles available in library and information services. Undergraduates and postgraduates from a variety of disciplines crowded around the table to talk to the Vice Chair of CILIP West Midlands David Viner and, from the University’s Arts and Sciences subject teams, Jessica Duffield and Katharine Widdows. Many of the students were already aware of CILIP (except for one or two bewildered would-be accountants who had made a beeline for the word ‘Chartered’!). Some, like me, had come especially to find out about LIS careers and I overheard that they too had begun to apply for graduate traineeships.

With David, Jessica and Katharine busy answering questions, I decided to bide my time by looking through all the promotional material on display. Chomping on a complementary piece of ‘Warwick University Library Rocks’ rock, I took in the information greedily. Everything a prospective librarian could need was there: lists of graduate trainee posts for 2009/10, lists of CILIP accredited postgraduate courses and lists of LIS job websites. I snapped up a copy of everything I could get my hands on, including a copy of the previous edition of Open Access.

Replete and triumphant, I seized my chance to introduce myself to David when the crowd had cleared. He had heard I was a new member and he invited me to the branch’s Annual General Meeting at Coventry University the next day. I left the stand with a greater sense of belonging to CILIP, and hugely encouraged that there were lots of other graduates, just like me, at the start of their careers in librarianship. I also left with a DVD tour of the British Library (a definite stop on my next trip to London with my automatic Reader Pass) and a fabulously pink CILIP mousemat. The latter now sits proudly on my desk, encouraging every whir and click of my mouse as I send off trainee applications.

Adrienne Cooper was formerly a Digitisation Assistant at the University of Warwick Library

[email protected]

Ed. Since this event Adrienne has been accepted as a Trainee Librarian at the Oxford Union Library, so congratulations!


We Did It Our Way(Almost) 80 years of libraries working together in the West Midlands region

Part 3 – “The noughties” – other journeys

In Part 2 we saw how momentum was built through the nineties with the help of externally funded projects. What was now needed was focus and prioritisation, and in order to move from transition to delivery, The Libraries Partnership – West Midlands (TLP-WM) was designed to consolidate work already in progress and position libraries regionally. The RDA (Advantage West Midlands) and the RCC (West Midlands Life later to become Culture West Midlands) were the main targets. The new millennium began with a successful high profile launch.

At its inception TLP-WM created two Development Manager posts to which Claire Bell and Liane Kordan were recruited.

Claire took charge of INTER-ALL, a regional business information project funded by the European Regional Development Fund and involving 12 public library services. Bringing in almost £1 million, this was a very tangible result of David Potts’ work over the previous two years with Brian Gambles, Ian Everall and Graham Beaumont, all having major input. It took library services into the challenging realm of delivering outputs for Government Office (“numbers of businesses supported”). INTER-ALL forged new collaborations in the provision of business information across the region including web-based services. Together the partners were able to meet all their targets on time and within budget.

Liane picked up the content and training strands. Approaches to cross-sectoral digital content development were pursued with project funds secured from NOF Digi. An on-line learning resource – Revolutionary Players – was created on the theme of the Industrial Revolution, drawing from the

Liz Charlton (Government Office), Baroness Christine Crawley (WM Life) and Mary Heaney (Convenor) at the launch of TLP-WM

region’s museums, libraries and archives collections. Work was led by Malcolm Dick and his team.

In parallel, the DCMS/Wolfson funded project Multi-Net aimed to link public and university library content via broadband networking. Sadly TLP-WM’s partnership with Synetrix Ltd did not achieve the functioning regional inter-connect between the regional Higher Education network MidMAN and the 14 Local Authorities that would have under-pinned this (although it got very close). Nevertheless, a much higher profile for libraries was achieved and the existence and value of our offer was highlighted in the emerging regional ICT strategy of Advantage West Midlands. As a result of INTER-ALL and MultiNet, we got to the table ready to exploit future opportunities.

DCMS/Wolfson funding was also obtained to run the Caring with Books project. It focused on children in care and was led by Linda Saunders who was to become Acting Director of TLP-WM in 2002-3. This work provided many helpful pointers for individual library services, profiled joint working via a number of events and showed that TLP-WM could add value for the contributions of member organisations. If reading is crucial in the 21st century, then so is metadata (information about information). This was especially true before Google reigned supreme. Heather Williamson’s work on Crossroads (funded by Resource) was unashamedly museums-libraries-and-archives-wide, part of the preparations for a Single Regional Agency to be launched as MLA West Midlands in 2003, and merging TLP-WM with the Museums and Archives Councils. Her work helped the development of Cornucopia which in turn underpinned Find It (nationally) and Inspire West Midlands (regionally).

So what (since 2003) has MLA West Midlands done for libraries? Both its Chairs of Board (Judith Elkin and Glen Lawes) and both its CEOs (Kathy Gee and Jon Finch) have been committed to the libraries agenda.

Much has been achieved together but four achievements stand out. Two were public-library focused and involved a partnership with the Society of Chief Librarians. SCL-WM had invited WMRLS to its meetings from the mid 1990s onwards and successive Chairs (Karen Lees, Kushal Birla, Linda Saunders and now Janene Cox) have encouraged positive relationships with MLA West Midlands. When the Big Lottery’s Community Libraries programme arrived, it was supported at regional level by some fascinating discussions about library spaces and community engagement, in which Big Lottery and public library staff along with MLA West Midlands all got involved. It won’t be long now until we see the first fruits of £8 million of investment across six West Midlands authorities and ten service points.

The other example of MLA West Midlands and SCL-WM working well together – on the partnership with BBC Learning – is regarded as good practice nationally. Much of the credit for this has to go to Keith Benton, a champion of, and friend to, libraries across the West Midlands over

others. Book jacket images and item descriptions are now the norm for such interfaces. These products are a massive step forward from their predecessors, although many of them are still based upon a distribution model where the software needs to be installed and maintained on the library site.

Talis Prism, in addition to delivering these new features, is built upon a whole new architecture based upon the Talis Platform. As it is provided as a Software as a Service (SaaS) hosted solution, it relieves system managers from concerns about hardware and software installation, maintenance and upgrades. Effectively they are subscribing to a service which delivers OPAC functionality to their users, in the same way that broadcasters get the Sky TV platform to deliver their programs to viewers.

Whether these so-called Next-Gen interfaces are just add-ons to current systems, or delivered as software services, they are still just OPACs. They are only a window into a library catalogue, providing information from that single data source. Some systems employ federated search techniques (with varying degrees of success) to widen the sources of information for a user, but inevitably, they are still only providing a view in to one or more library silos.

Again spurred on by the Open Source community, we have recently seen examples of ways to extend the reach of the OPAC beyond its local catalogue. Links out to Amazon (to offer purchasing options) or to Google Book Search (to provide a scanned preview of a book) or to Delicious (for personal bookmarking) are just three common examples of this trend. Whilst working with the Talis Prism interface, its design makes it particularly easy to add such extensions, and it became clear that there is no simple way to share and reuse the individual examples of such innovation. Although using the same service, and delivering the same functionality, the work to add Google Book Search to the National Library of Australia’s interface would be very different to do the same for Talis Prism. Multiply that by the number of possible extensions, and again by the number of OPACs and you have potential for a massive duplication of effort, and missed opportunity for reuse, on a global scale.

Talking to libraries it was clear that there is a desire for such extensions, but it is equally clear that they would want to select ones to match their own local needs and requirements. It is unlikely that any single developer or system supplier could provide the large array of possible extensions to satisfy such requirements. That is a niche ideally filled by an open source community.

Those who have attended one of the many Talis Prism introductory days will know that much work has been undertaken to build such extensions to add value to the Talis Prism user experience. To make this a simple process, a JavaScript based framework was developed. The Javascript framework ensures that anyone capable of copying a few lines of code into a web page, can create, enhance and share new extensions. The framework, which is suitable for use on many interfaces, is called Juice - JavaScript User Interface Componentised Extensions.

To widen this community as far as possible (and hence increase the opportunity for the creation of as many extensions as possible) we have launched an Open Source Project, to which Talis has contributed the source code of the Juice framework and several example extensions. The Juice Project is hosted at Google’s Open Source code repository Google Code. It can be found, along with a wiki containing documentation and discussion mailing list at: http://juice-project.googlecode.com. The project was launched in February at the Code4lib 2009 conference in Providence Rhode Island, when it was demonstrated by enhancing the VuFind Open Source OPAC along with Talis Prism and Talis Aspire. Links to the slides from the presentation by Richard Wallis, and a video of the event can be found on the Talis Web site and the Juice Project site.

Whilst encouraging everyone interested in extending OPAC interfaces in this way to join and wherever possible contribute, Talis will remain active contributing members of the community, enhancing the project for the benefit of all. We expect there to be three types of people engaging with the Juice community. Firstly, there will be a group of expert JavaScript developers, who will help improve and expand the framework itself. Secondly, a group who will create the new extensions, often by copying similar ones. Then finally, but probably by far the largest group, will be those that want to simply extend their OPAC’s by copying examples and using the extensions developed and contributed by others.

Launching and contributing to The Juice Project is a win-win situation for Talis and our customers. The whole library community can benefit from the framework and the extensions already developed. As the community grows and develops new and innovative extensions, it can only benefit users of Talis applications enhanced by them.

Extensions already available at the launch of the project include Amazon.co.uk, Google Book Search, Waterstones, Del.icio.us, OpenLibrary, LibraryThing, LibraryThing Common Knowledge, WorldCat, and Copac. If you are interested in Juicing up your OPAC, regardless of supplier, check out and join The Juice Project and its discussion group.

Visit: http://juice-project.googlecode.comOr join the discussion at: http://groups.google.com/group/juice-project-discuss]

The article was previously published in Issue 12 (Spring 2009) of Panlibus Magazine http://www.talis.com/panlibus

Richard Wallis is Technology Evangelist with Talis

[email protected]


Kathy Gee and Geoff Warren with Tony Jones of Shakespeares at the opening of MLA West Midlands’ offices in Grosvenor House, Bennetts Hill, Birmingham. This is now MLA Council’s main operating base.

many years. He is now overseeing the next stage of the BBC Learning/Public Libraries partnership as national co-ordinator. Like the Big Lottery work this has been challenging - organisations like the BBC or BLF are driven in a variety of ways internally and externally. To collaborate with them is never straightforward but can be enriching.

Cross-sectoral library work (from which the other two examples are drawn) is that much more demanding again. Inspire West Midlands (to which reference has already been made) has taught us that even the simplest concept of access to different kinds of libraries for all is not as easy as it seems. The flip side of bringing people to a wide range of resources is bringing digital content directly to people. This is what the Advantage West Midlands Libraries Challenge was all about. The project was bid for by TLP-WM and then taken over by MLA West Midlands. Led by Steve Fuller and Vicki Watkin and their teams it involved a total spend of £1 million (50% each from AWM and library partners). Its great strength was the wide involvement of different geographical and sectoral partnerships and a correspondingly diverse range of content from across the West Midlands.

University and public libraries both played key roles and the programme showed that libraries are powerful stimulants to Broadband take-up - a key advocacy argument as well as being the required output. The Bits for All project in the Black Country was particularly successful and award-winning. Chrysalis was the portal that held it all together.

Throughout the noughties, the Libraries Forum has been something of an anchor for the libraries domain regionally (as have its Chairs Liz Hart, Andrew Green and now Kate Gardner, respectively from the university, public and FE library sectors). Amongst those who have most faithfully supported it, Pat Noon (also a Libraries domain MLA-WM Board member) contributed much of the philosophical underpinning for cross-sectoral collaboration. The Forum’s set-piece annual events (as with so many of our conferences held at the excellent Austin Court) were memorable occasions. Now that MLA West Midlands is being wound up, the libraries domain must decide how to interact with the new MLA. Will a Libraries Forum in the present form still be needed? It would be ironic if our thinking and working

together lost momentum at a time when the concept of service integration (for instance in the proposed Library of Birmingham and the Worcester Library and History Centre projects) is attracting so much attention and major investment (and making many of us very excited about the future).

“We did it our way” has been the theme of these three short pieces. After almost 80 years of unbroken regional library agency work, it seems that our pathway is merging into a much broader cultural highway with an English Regions rather than a West Midlands Region direction and focus. Time will tell where the road leads us to. However, nothing can be taken away from the value, pride and pleasure of improving library services in the region together. In the end, it is people who are the essential ingredient of co-operation because it’s one thing you can’t do on your own. And as Dubya might have said, never misunderestimate people...

Geoff Warren took early retirement from MLA West Midlands in March 2009.

[email protected]

Warwickshire people are inspired

Warwickshire ended its activities for the National Year of Reading with a celebration at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Courtyard Theatre in Stratford on 14 January. Warwickshire’s new mobile library with ‘Romeo and Juliet’ livery was a backdrop to actors from the RSC’s concurrent production of the play.

Library staff who had played a key role in the Year in Warwickshire were on hand and local author and illustrator Steve Smallman came in his capacity as judge of the county’s Be Inspired writing competition. Winners across the three age groups for this competition came to receive their goody bags of books and book tokens. Some books were kindly provided by New Books manager Guy Pringle, along with 12-month subscriptions to newbooksmag and the teen version tbkmag.

Winning entries are on the library service’s website at: www.warwickshire.gov.uk/libraries.

Left to right: Paul MacDermott, Ayub Khan, Alison McKellar (all from Warwickshire Libraries), Niamh McCann and Owain Arthur (actors from RSC), Stella Thebridge (Warwickshire’s National Year of Reading Co-ordinator) and Melanie Whitehead (RSC education department).

(APPG) on Libraries, Literacy and Information Management into the leadership and governance of public libraries in England http://www.cilip.org.uk/aboutcilip/ newsandpressreleases/news081010.htm

Information Matters, building government’s capability in managing knowledge and information, the strategy developed by the Knowledge Council, and published by the Government in November 2008 http://www. nationalarchives.gov. uk/services/publications/information- matters-strategy.pdf

Taking stock: the future of our public library service, a report commissioned by Unison http://www.unison.org. uk/acrobat/17301.pdf

JISC’s ”Libraries of the Future” debate, http://www.jisc. ac.uk/librariesofthefuture

I think we should welcome these initiatives, and see them positively as pointers of the interest and support that exists for libraries, and recognition of the importance of information management.

I would like to finish by thanking people for supporting my nomination as a trustee, and to say that I would welcome contact from anyone with views on CILIP and its future direction.

Jill Lambert is a trustee of CILIP.

[email protected]

Continued from page 3 Juice up your OPACAs Technology Evangelist for Solihull based Library and Semantic Web Technology company Talis, my concerns are much broader than just promoting, explaining, and influencing the developments of the leading edge library applications that Talis provide to many UK Academic and Public libraries. My goal is to promote and celebrate innovation in the world of libraries and the web, regardless of the vendor of the system behind that innovation. One of the best ways to ensure that innovation is beneficial to all, is to release shared software under an Open Source licence making it clear from the outset that it is for the whole community to share. It is this principle that is behind my release, under such a licence, of a set of simple tools that can enhance the experience for users of all library discovery systems.

The development of the library discovery interface has evolved dramatically over the last couple of years. Early web OPACs first emerged in the mid 1990s, but did not change much over the following decade. The web evolved significantly over that time, though, leaving many OPAC interfaces looking old, tired and confusing for those that have grown up with Google, FaceBook, and YouTube. Back in 2006/7 we started to see a movement, started mostly by the Open Source community, towards delivering a next generation of OPACs.

These developments started behind the scenes at the data storage and indexing level. The faster and more flexible indexing that came from software tools, with names like Lucene and Solr, soon lead to the realisation that you could build a better system by pulling data out of the core library system, to search it independently. It was not long before other benefits of these tools became apparent to users - the two most obvious ones being relevance ranked results sets and faceted browsing.

Early examples of these new interfaces started to appear at some North American Universities, the National Library of Australia, and other forward looking institutions. There is now a wave of next generation OPACs being introduced by every library system vendor and many open source groups, that the people behind these examples can be credited with starting. Commercial products such as Ex Libris’ Primo, Encore from Innovative Interfaces, SirsiDynix’s Enterprise, WorldCat Local, Aquabrowser, and of course Talis Prism, are being supplemented by VuFind, Blacklight, Scriblio, and Bibliocommons, all of which are from the Open Source world. There are many to choose from, although currently, there are a relatively small number of libraries who have implemented one.

The designers of these systems were also able to take advantage of developments and techniques, now prevalent across the wider web, to deliver a ‘better looking, easier to use’ interface that can compete in the usability stakes with commercial sites such as Google, Amazon, the BBC, and

International RelationsThere can be few Public Libraries which have such a splendid and imposing “Portal to Knowledge” as this one. This is the Main Entrance to Brooklyn Central Library in New York City. A splendid late Art Deco structure the Library comes complete with elevating words for all who love libraries – it warms the cockles of a librarian’s heart! The quotations are believed to have been written by Roscoe E Brown, President of the Library’s Board of Trustees in 1942, back in the days when a politician could be cultured and visionary.

“Here are enshrined the longing of great hearts and noble things that tower above the tide, the magic word that winged wonder starts, the garnered wisdom that has never died.”

Mike FreemanInternational Relations Officer


CILIP WM Members’ Day & AGMWednesday 28 January 2009Lanchester Library, Coventry University

Margaret Rowley, Chair of CILIP WM welcomed everyone and gave thanks to our host Caroline Rock, Coventry University Librarian.

The 2009 CILIP president, Peter Griffiths, then addressed the group. As the former Head of Information at the Home Office, he is ideally placed to speak about the government’s “Information Matters” strategy. He outlined what he sees as CILIP’s priorities in response to this, i.e. accreditation, activism, advocacy and affordability. His presidential themes for the coming year are professionalism and professional development, new ground activism, leadership, collaboration and opportunity. He believes we as librarians need to expand our skill set to include information audits and security, something anyone who has taken a management course will be very familiar with. He suggests that librarians can lead in the management of information and collaboration with IT departments as they work together for the public benefit. We should also be working towards collaborative operations with archivists and records managers.

He also touched on the APPG public libraries group set up to review the leadership in Public libraries.

Mr Griffiths summed up the “insurmountable opportunity” for information professionals in the coming years, and recommended new partnerships and continuing relationships with current partners. He recommended working with other professional bodies and accreditation bodies and stressed how valuable the CILIP groups and branches are for sharing experience and bringing their knowledge back to CILIP.

CILIP WM members who have recently chartered or revalidated received special certificates from Mr Griffiths.

Caroline Rock’s team then gave us a tour of their fabulous library building, which has won awards not only for its eco design, but for its functionality as a library – something we can all appreciate. I was particularly interested in the “Learning Lounge” in the basement, where learners have PCs and vending machines, so users who want to munch

whilst they work can be directed there, rather than soiling the workspaces upstairs. Eating and drinking in the libraries is a growing issue for all of us and something we all need to address in some way or another - or spend more and more of our daily lives as “eating police”!

WM branch, CDG and CoFHE WM all gave their AGM reports.

Finally, Ayub Kahn, Head of Warwickshire Libraries (Strategy), gave a very interesting and thought provoking talk on social inclusion. He began by explaining that “inclusion” and “diversity” is not, as many people believe, restricted to those people who are not mainstream. Policies for inclusion are just that, to include everybody and actually most people fall into at least one of the “minority” groups.

Mr Khan referred to the legal requirements for libraries to meet the needs of diverse groups and also highlighted how poor literacy leads to poor work opportunities and poverty, which in turn leads to poor housing and poor health.

He spoke about what Warwickshire is doing to satisfy the requirement of various groups, e.g. Polish Nights and conversation clubs, and the issues that they face with having to meet the needs of a rapidly changing and mobile population. He spoke of the barriers to the “Libraries for All” ideal which include the rules and regulations (see eating and drinking above!), opening hours, lack of literary skills, accessibility – particularly for rural folk, and non-users’ perceptions of libraries as being not for them.

I had first hand experience of this recently when talking to a parent whose son had been invoiced for a lost book. When I suggested that if he had lost a book from his public library he would also be expected to pay, I was met with “I wouldn’t know love, I’ve never set foot in the place!”

In all, a very interesting talk which gave me some ideas for things we could do in college to help our own inclusion.

Finally, there was time for a quick panel Q&A session with Mr Griffiths, Mr Khan and Ms Rowley.

Members’ Day resources can now be downloaded from the CILIP West Midlands website at: www.cilip.org.uk/wm

Wendy Parry is Deputy Head of Library & Study Centres at Worcester College of Technology.

[email protected]

Margaret Rowley and Peter Griffiths with those receiving certificates.

Panel Discussion with Ayub Khan and Caroline Rock.

in the Library. We happened to mention the idea to the Polytechnic’s Systems Analyst, who came back a few days later with a plan to produce it for us.

After several years in London, I moved to Newcastle Polytechnic, as Faculty Librarian for Science & Technology. The Polytechnic (now the University of Northumbria), was awaiting a new library building. In the meantime the science and engineering collection was housed in the old gym, with the changing room acting as the Library back office, and a wooden platform on scaffolding as a mezzanine study area.

I left Newcastle Polytechnic on the birth of my first child, and for many years worked on a part time basis on short-term contracts. Although this does not sound directional in career terms, it was actually very useful in widening my experience of the profession. It included several years as a Visiting Lecturer in the Library and Information Studies Department at Birmingham Polytechnic, now Birmingham City University, plus a short spell as a research assistant at OCLC Europe. OCLC was launching some of the first bibliographical CD-ROM databases in the UK. Although the technology has now been overtaken, at the time it was a huge step forward in information searching. I then returned to the “real” library world; first as an Assistant Librarian at Birmingham City University, moved to Staffordshire University as Engineering Librarian, and then to Aston University.

Along the way I have been involved with the former Institute of Information Scientists (IIS) Midlands Branch, and as Treasurer for the JIBS User Group (for electronic resources in higher and further education). Acting as Treasurer for the User Group also drew me into membership issues. I would often be contacted to ask why it was worth an organisation continuing to pay the fee to belong to the Group. I would like to put my point of view here on membership of CILIP. In strained times, it is inevitable that people will question the value of subscriptions. An active organisational structure though, is necessary, if the message that libraries and information benefit society and the workplace is to get through. The more people that belong, the more effective this message will be.

Being new to the Council, I am still finding my way through the structure and the way it works. It is clear though that there is now a strong emphasis on advocacy. In practical terms, advocacy can seem a bit nebulous, but there are several recent initiatives, which hopefully bode well for the future:

The review of the public library service launched last October by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) http://www.culture.gov.uk/reference_ library/media_releases/5532.aspx

An Enquiry by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG)

In Focus: Jill Lambert Last November I stood – with some trepidation – for election to the CILIP Council. I knew that the governance of CILIP had been modernised recently and wanted to make a contribution to what I believe is a great service and profession. Having been elected, I joined the group of 12 trustees until 2011.

My background is predominantly academiclibraries, interspersed with spells in other areas of the profession. I worked at Aston University Library & Information Service (LIS) for 10 years, until retiring as an Assistant Director in Autumn 2007. At Aston I had a dual role of head of academic liaison for science and engineering, and public services. The role of academic liaison in university libraries is widely understood, public services less so but are basically “front-of-house” activities. Public librarians would be very familiar with most of these activities – circulation, shelving, printing, photocopying, comments, complaints and the security of users and the building. I am sure my old colleagues reading this will smile, when I say that this was both satisfying and problematic. It is very rewarding to introduce new services - laptop loans for instance - but it also involves continual striving to meet the increasing expectations of students. Our efforts were recognised though in 2007, when LIS achieved Charter Mark status (now replaced by the Government’s new Customer Service Excellence standard).

I began my career as a Saturday assistant in Ilkeston Public Library in Derbyshire. I still have much affection for this Carnegie Library, where I was trained in the basics of issuing, discharging, reservations and shelving. After graduating with a science degree from Bristol University, I worked in the Paint Research Association’s Library in Middlesex, before taking a post-graduate diploma in Librarianship, at what is now John Moores University, but was then Liverpool Polytechnic. The highlight of the year was always the Library School’s annual boat trip on the Mersey. The trip took three hours; to fill up the time the boat would go down river towards Runcorn, then up to the mouth of the estuary, afterwards hovering somewhere in the middle until the three hours had passed.

My first professional post was in the Engineering & Science Library at the Polytechnic of Central London, now the

University of Westminster. It was a good time to be working in

the polytechnics. They had only recently been

established, and there was a lot of scope to make changes, even if you were on the bottom rung of the

ladder. It sounds trivial now, but my colleagues and I managed to implement the first computerised subject index

‘ ’My first professional post was in the Engineering and

Science Library

Continued on page 4


There are four key drivers behind the decision:

The inadequacy of the present Central Library to deliver a library and archive service suited to the twenty-first century.

Its poor physical condition, with a huge repair bill to refurbish and extend accommodation for archival storage and display.

The desire to release the Paradise Circus site, of which the library forms the largest single element, for development.

The opportunity to complete the regeneration of the west end of the city centre.

The budget is formed of three elements: -

£134m prudential borrowing against an accumulating revenue budget stream, also the source for project management.

£20m Capital receipts.

£39m as yet unspecified but which, should external funding not be secured, the City Council will underwrite through further prudential borrowing.

The total new development will be 31,000 sqm, the largest public library in Europe. We will open in June 2013.

The Library of Birmingham is one of the major projects which will reposition the city over the next 5-10 years as a serious player in the global league table for quality of life and economic success. The library sits alongside the £600 million development of New Street Station, a runway extension at Birmingham International Airport, skyscraper developments and a new city park.

We have reflected the aspirations of the City in relation to the Knowledge Economy and the development of its heritage assets, but we have retained a clear focus on people: our library will achieve results for people, and will offer something for everyone, a truly universal service.

“The best public library in the world” is a deliberately challenging and ambitious statement. But we should be bold. In striving for excellence we aim to be creative, radical and innovative, and seek to impact on the international scene. I set three yardsticks by which we should measure success in future years: -

The Library is universal, accessible and inclusive. It will offer something to everyone in the community. This cannot be said of traditional city-centre reference libraries, even the great ones. This will be a library both for the learned, and for the learner.

The Library will be an active, results-focussed organisation. We will deliver outcomes. This library will not be a passive storehouse of information but an active powerhouse of learning.

Continued from page 1


The Library will endure. It will be a demonstrator for sustainable design, and respond flexibly to changing technological, social and economic development.

We have anchored our strategic agenda in three distinct themes, which resonate with the corporate strategic vision: -

1. Building the Knowledge Economy;2. Investing in Children, Young People and Families; and3. Promoting Community Culture and Heritage.

Our project is structured around a number of major workstreams: - Funding and Finance, Transformation, ICT, Human Resources, Design and Construction, Transition, Communications and Legal and Property. Each requires capacity to deliver, clear deliverables and a strategy for achieving objectives.

The change is fundamentally away from a transactional model of service, based upon the notion of the book (as surrogate for any physical media) and information as products...to an enabling infrastructure for social interaction, knowledge acquisition, and personal and community development. A participative model of service delivery...we aim to free people from the constraints of democratised information, and to enable people to convert information, through a process of learning and exploration, into knowledge.

Of course, transformation has already started, and will be a continuous process up to and beyond the opening of the new Library in 2013.

This is a unique opportunity to change the cultural, social and physical face of Birmingham – forever.

Firstly, as a landmark building which comes to define the city and its citizens. The Library of Birmingham must be a design to inspire the soul.

Secondly, the Library of Birmingham must genuinely meet the needs of the city, and its many diverse communities. The key to future success lies in being inclusive, open and accessible.

Thirdly, the Library of Birmingham will only succeed if it reaches beyond the city centre, through the network of Community Libraries, into all parts of the city.

The library must rise to the challenge posed by too many in society who are too busy for the library, or perceive no value to themselves in the services it presents: the response

should be robust, imaginative and constantly surprising.

With the launch of the Design plans for the Library we now invite your response, I’d be very grateful for any comments!

Brian Gambles is Assistant Director Culture with Birmingham City Council.

[email protected]

Before we all returned to our own libraries, we had a super lunch and the opportunity to talk to colleagues and look at some of the resources on display.

Kate Gardner is Head of Library & Study Centres at Worcester College of Technology.

[email protected]

Kate Gardner introduces Nick Baker, Hereford Cathedral Librarian.

Inspire at sub-regional level

In the last issue of Open Access, David Parkes described the development and operation of inspire in the West Midlands. In that article, he talked of Inspire as relying on a framework at the sub-regional level and describes it as “very much a grassroots initiative”.

Hereford & Worcester (H&W) Inspire is very much an example of such a grassroots initiative – launched on 15 November 2006 with a poet on a motorbike touring all of the H&W libraries that had signed up to Inspire. The poem that was written following the launch has since been adopted by Inspire nationally. The group has since gone from strength to strength and meets regularly to discuss issues and share ideas.

Since our launch we have focused on awareness raising about each other’s collections and have had open days, tours and even job exchange programmes. Our latest event was a half-day conference for staff of the H&W Inspire libraries, held at the University of Worcester.

It was attended by over 40 members of staff from the different libraries. Attendees heard about some of the special collections held in our libraries. The first speaker was Andrew Green, Co Director of INSPIRE England and a member of the INSPIRE Management Board. Andrew talked about the bigger picture and helped to put H&W Inspire into context. We were very lucky to catch Andrew before he leaves the region to take up a post in Wandsworth as Head of Library & Heritage Services. Rachel Johnson of the University of Worcester told us about the superb collections of children’s literature held at the University, including a collection of works by and about Henty, the prolific 19th Century author, which makes up the strongest research collection about this author anywhere in the UK. In addition, we heard about The Elkin Collection, a more recent collection of multicultural children’s literature. There were some truly fascinating books on display, which we all enjoyed looking at and which gave rise to some interesting discussions about political correctness and colonialism.

Reminding us that we don’t just benefit from our shared printed resources, Lesley O’Connell Edwards from Worcestershire County Libraries talked about the very useful range of e-resources provided by the County Council, which are available to library members from their computer at home or wherever it might be.

The two cathedral librarians (Hereford & Worcester), David Morrison and Nick Baker enthralled us with lively presentations about their amazing collections. As an academic librarian, I was particularly intrigued to see examples of the graffiti that the bored monks wrote on their textbooks. It is nice to know students don’t change.

We finished the morning with small group discussions about ideas for future co-operation between the H&W Inspire librarians. Debbie Boden of the University of Worcester talked about Lollipop & Sir Learn a Lot, two staff development packages, which she has helped to develop and which will be on offer to the staff in local libraries.

Marketing Push

As the newly appointed Marketing Officer for CILIP WM (starting in January this year), I have been very impressed already by the dedication and commitment the committee has shown towards CILIP work. All Branch committees are made up of volunteers who give their time freely to support the work of CILIP.

I am not the only person on the committee working on our new Marketing Strategy, David Viner (Vice Chair) and Roger Fairman (Webmaster) make up the rest of the Marketing Group, and we have already started to look seriously at our web presence, which includes the setting up of a CILIP WM Twitter, development of a Facebook Group and investigation into a NetVibes page to bring our web output together into one place. We are also looking into increasing our attendance at university careers events, running more of our own events, and getting in contact with Special Interest Groups in the West Midlands, such as CDG and UC&R, to see how we can help publicise their work and support them further.

I have also met with Mark Taylor the head of CILIP Marketing at Ridgmount Street, and he has been very supportive in offering advice on everything from branding, to how to run a successful exhibition stand. He has also provided marketing materials for events, and introduced us to the services we can access through the Membership Support Unit. I’m sure there is more assistance to come!

We are all aware of the need to increase CILIP membership and spread the word - and this is one of the things the West Midlands Branch is working towards. Please feel free to contact me if you have any suggestions or questions relating to Branch Marketing.

Katharine WiddowsMarketing [email protected]

May 2009Vol. 52 No.2

A newsletter from the West Midlands branch of CILIP

We aim to create the best public library in the world. For such an investment the people of Birmingham deserve nothing less. The weight of responsibility rests heavily upon us – but what an opportunity!

Integrated with Birmingham Repertory Theatre, the Library of Birmingham will be a unique centre for learning, information and culture. An enduring beacon for Birmingham, it will raise the city’s international profile and deliver excellence to local communities. Accessible and welcoming to all, it will reach out to the most disadvantaged

citizens. It will be a universal meeting place, a hub for the region, an engine for the knowledge economy. Through written, printed, audio, visual and interactive resources and technologies, the Library of Birmingham will link the people of Birmingham to the world. It will bring the world to Birmingham.

Dutch architects Mecanoo have been appointed to lead the Design Team, with Wolverhampton-based Carillion awarded the contract for construction, which begins in 2010.

In this issue...In Focus: Jill Lambert.............3

International Relations.........4

Juice up your OPAC..............4

Summer Reading Challenge:Success across the West Midlands...................................6

CILIP WM at CareersUnlimited..................................7

We did it our way..................8

Warwickshire people are inspired.....................................9

CILIP WM Members’ Day & AGM....................................10

Inspire at sub-regional level.........................................11

Marketing Push....................11

Committee News................12 2009 Committee

Public Libraries Group

Library Photo Competition

Website

Continued on page 2

Aiming High The Library of Birmingham 2013

A supplement to CILIP Update

ISSN 0048-1904


penaccess

Open AccessPublication of the West Midlands Branch of CILIP.Views expressed are not necessarily those of CILIP-WM or of the Editor.

Editor: David VinerSolihull Central LibrarySolihull B91 3RGTel: 0121 704 8534Fax: 0121 704 6907Email: [email protected]

Copy date for next issue:Friday 2 October 2009

2009 CommitteeChair: Margaret RowleyWorcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust

Vice-Chair & Newsletter Editor: David VinerSolihull MBC

Hon. Secretary: Margaret FullerFire Services College

Hon. Treasurer: Patricia Fouracres University of Wolverhampton

Roger Fairman University of WorcesterWebmaster

Mike Freeman Freelance International Relations Officer

Christine Hughes Birmingham City Council Affiliate Member

Hettie Jones Freelance

Paula Keogh Talis

Wendy Parry Worcester College of TechnologyMembership Secretary

Sarah Tongue Solihull MBC

Katharine Widdows University of WarwickMarketing Officer


Committee News

WebsiteCILIP West Midlands are currently looking into how we can raise our online profile. Please could all members of the branch remember to get registered and keep their details up to date on the CILIP website. It will allow us to get in touch with you more easily and help to keep you updated on what’s happening in your region.

You can now ‘follow’ our updates on Twitter www.twitter.com/cilipwm

Roger FairmanWebmaster

Birmingham City Council has approved an investment of £193 million in a new Central Library: The Library of Birmingham. Such an exceptional corporate commitment to the value of culture in delivering physical, social and economic regeneration demands an ambition of the highest order.

Birmingham Central Library.

Library Photo CompetitionThe quest to find the region’s best-photographed library continues.

In the January issue of Open Access I asked members to get creative with their cameras to show off their library. I am pleased to report that we have had a great response so far, with well over a hundred images being added to our Flickr group. http://www.flickr.com/groups/cilipwmlibphotocomp/

Remember the most creative and imaginative shot from our Group Pool will be reproduced in Gazette later in the year, so it is well worth dusting off the camera and having a go at composing the perfect shot.

Due to interest from non CILIP members, the group is now open to the public and organisations in the region are welcome to utilise this project to market their own service. Why not encourage users to capture your library from their perspective? Libraries appear to be a popular focus for the amateur photographer and following some targeted promotion, we have received some great images from members of the Flickr community - but we still need more. So get snapping!

The competition closes on Friday 5 June. If you have got a favourite make sure you join the discussion and have your say.

David VinerVice-Chair

Open AccessDue to the costs involved in producing Open Access, the branch committee have decided to reduce the number of issues from four to three per year for the foreseeable future. We therefore plan to publish our third issue this year in October instead of July. In the meantime, we would encourage members to visit our website at www.cilip.org.uk/wm or to check out our Facebook and Twitter pages on a regular basis for current news.

Public Libraries GroupCILIP WM would like to congratulate Kate Millin who has taken over as Chair of the Public Libraries Group. Kate who is Assistant Director for Libraries, Archives and Adult Learning with Dudley MBC is also former Chair of the branch committee.

Kate Millin with past Chair Pamela Tulloch at a PLG reception in Birmingham.

Documents

Open Access - May 2009 - Vol. 52 No. 2