Library Camp East was organised by a small group of brilliant librarians, and attended by a bigger group of brilliant librarians.
It took place at Harlow College in Essex, the number one college in the country.
It was a chance to meet new people, catch up with people I hadn't seen in a while, and finally meet people I only know from Twitter.
There were lots of really interesting session pitches, but you can't go to everything, so I chose Claire Sewell's session on Creative CPD, discussing different ways of accessing learning and development in a time when budgets are being slashed and professional training courses are hard to come by.
I realised that my library service is really good at this - offering a variety of different training and development opportunities both in-house and further afield. We discussed work shadowing, library visits, online courses, lectures, unconferences, networking events and skills sharing between colleagues. One library service asks experts to train non-experts - a peer learning service, rather like cascade training, but the experts aren't necessarily the managers.
The outcome was that we all need to be more proactive in finding out what development we want and finding ways to access it - and we also need to be brave enough to ask our managers for training and support - after all, the chances are they will say yes. And it is important to record your learning, either through a reflective blog, learning log or Personal Development Plan, so that you can refer back to it when you need to.
The next session was a discussion regarding the Purpose of Libraries - what are they for? are they always good? There were lots of good ideas here, as the session participants were not just from academic and public libraries, but also from professional sectors too. There was a discussion about whether libraries have to prove their value too much as they are often running at a loss - should libraries be neutral and runs as not-for-profit organisations, or should they use a more standard business model with profit built in? Although a lot of the early comments related to public library services, there were several crossover points, such as adding value to users' lives; encouraging education and literacy, including digital literacy; creating a safe, welcoming space for all users to feel comfortable in; providing a non-judgemental information service.
Then, there was lunch, which involved lots of cake of varying types, but also my very popular jewelled couscous!
The post-lunch session can be a difficult nut to crack, but I attended Liz Osman's discussion on library refurbishments and RFID, where we discussed our experiences of using the new technology. Having installed RFID technology very recently at my library, I was interested to learn how others have fared. The general consensus was that the benefits of RFID (better stock control mostly) greatly outweight the disadvantages (tags are quite visible and may be removed by users). There was some concern that the trend towards RFID and self-service was designed to remove staff from libraries; however, self-service has been in use for many years so I don't think RFID cannot be blamed for falling staff numbers.
After another foray to the cake table I joined the 20 Questions discussion run by Anna Martin. After a slow start, a lively discussion took place offering words of wisdom regarding "what I wish I had done/known then" and answering questions based on lived experiences. There were a lot of points made about good and bad career decisions - when to go with your gut; whether to quit a job if it's unfulfilling; how long you should stay in a post if it's a safe job. Of course, all of these questions have very subjective answers, and each person's experience was different. However, it is clear that taking charge of your life and career and actually making a decision, whether it turns out to be good or bad at the time, is much better than sticking your head in the sand and hoping that it will all work out in the end. It was universally agreed by the group that you should take every opportunity that is offered and that you shouldn't be afraid of change.
The final session was Disasters in Libraries, created by Sonja Kujansuu, who is investigating this topic for her Masters' dissertation. There followed a discussion which started off with Ian Stringer's experiences at Barnsley library service, where library disasters seem to be part and parcel of daily life: major fire followed by lengthy rebuild; theft of brickwork; roof blowing off in a storm - you couldn't make it up (Ian is writing a book about his experiences, which is sure to be fascinating)! Nobody could top Ian's stories, but discussions about protecting and saving collections soon developed into talking about business continuity management - how to keep services running in a disaster situation. I realised that although I had never experienced a "disaster" to our collections, I have had to deal with heating and power failures and wasps' nest, all of which have closed my library for short periods of time. The important thing here is to communicate with users at all times - letting them know which services are inaccessible, which services they can access and when normal service may be resumed.
All in all, a very interesting day, and worth travelling down the M11 on a Saturday for!
Roll on the next Library Camp!
