12Brindley Festschrift

“Don’t give me passion, give me cataloguers”: Lynne Brindley and the Art of the Possible.

DEREK LAW

ABSTRACT

This article provides a personal appreciation of Lynne Brindley’s over-arching professional contribution during her distinguished career written from a UK perspective. In particular the article focuses on her contribution to the Joint Funding Councils’ Libraries Review Group (the “Follett Review”), and to the Follett Committee’s Information Technology Sub-Group (FIGIT) and the subsequent e-LIB Electronic Libraries programme both of which she chaired. The Author concludes she was a pivotal national figure in UK Higher Education and a gifted administrator who could be counted on as a proselytiser and populariser as well as a really good communicator.

The UK Universities’ Computer Board and its short-lived successor, the Information Systems Committee (ISC), which in turn preceded JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee, established in 1993) kept an informal record book known as the ‘Black Minutes’. This contained comments made in committee, which would always seem amusing or bizarre when taken out of context. One such was the sentence memorably uttered by Lynne Brindley in a discussion on metadata: “Don’t give me passion, give me cataloguers”. However, it neatly encapsulates perhaps her greatest contribution to the development of libraries in the UK, that of turning the wild dreams of visionaries and fanatics into achievable goals – then delivering them.

Lynne’s career seemed a model of inexorable progress. She was successively Head of Marketing and of the Chief Executive's Office in the British Library, 1979-85; Director of Library and Information Services, and Pro-Vice Chancellor at Aston University, 1985-90; Principal Consultant at KPMG, 1990-92; Librarian and Director of Information Services at the London School of Economics (LSE), 1992-97, then Librarian and Pro Vice- Chancellor at the University of Leeds, 1997-2000. In each of these roles she made the sort of significant contribution in modernising and developing the institution which would mark a wholly successful career. But her influence was to be much wider.

It is tempting with hindsight to see that early career period at the British Library as being hugely influential in forming her professional character. It was a time of great men and role models: Sir Harry Hookway was Chief Executive, a true gentleman and gifted at forming personal alliances to ensure great plans were achieved - and a committed internationalist; Maurice Line, Director-General of the Lending Division, was an enthusiastic visionary who wanted to change the world – and did; Brian Perry, Director of the Research & Development Department, was committed to evidence-based research in the profession, a shrewd judge of character - and a man who took great pleasure in good food, good wine and good company. Each of these characteristics is evident in Lynne’s approach to her profession.

She first became visible to the larger world during her spell at Aston, when it became clear that her role would grow from the local to the national and international. After a formative period at KPMG it was her return to London at the LSE and her membership of ISC then JISC which gave her the platform to be a pivotal figure in the transformation of the world of UK libraries. In a valedictory talk given in 2006, her contemporary Reg Carr noted (Carr, 2006): “Almost 20 years ago, I published An Introduction to University Library Administration, with Jimmy Thompson, the Librarian of Reading University; and I was inordinately proud of that book, which for a few years at least became a standard library school text. But re-reading the book today is like drifting through the galleries of an ancient museum: it bears virtually no relationship to the book which I would write if I were writing it now. It describes, quite literally, another world that is dead and gone. The writer L.P.Hartley put it perfectly when he said that "The past is a foreign country": they did things differently there. And the biggest change that I detect between then and now is the radical change of culture that has come about in our environment in the last ten years.” It was Lynne who largely guided that cultural change.

Several events converged in 1992 to create a tipping point. Firstly the former polytechnics were re-designated as universities, thereby doubling the number of universities in the UK overnight. Secondly, and as a consequence, Sir Brian Follett was asked to chair a committee to look at library provision in the enlarged sector. This was largely motivated by an overt government view that the re-designation should not be seen as an excuse for a substantial library expansion programme. Thirdly, the Computer Board, which had supervised the acquisition of mainframe computers for universities was tellingly renamed the Information Systems Committee (ISC) to reflect an interest in software and data and two librarians, including Lynne, became members of the Committee. The ISC in general and Lynne in particular seized this platform to radicalise the Follett agenda.

The Follett Committee was set up in 1992 to look at the future of the HE libraries. Much of its work was concerned with prosaic matters such as the number of university library seats and the need for a buildings programme. It is difficult now to remember that time when the role of the Internet for libraries was unclear, when retrospective conversion of the catalogues was seen as the key challenge, when mediated searching was the norm and when the fax machine was still the technology which provided the route to remote content – and before the World Wide Web even existed. Lynne chaired the Sub-Group of the Follett Committee looking at Information Technology.

Her spell at KPMG had attuned her to the importance of what is now called evidence-based practice and before the Follett Committee had even met, a group of four JISC members and staff went with her on a trip to the United States to visit key libraries and to attend the conference of the Coalition for Networked Information. Two other skills became apparent during this trip: firstly the importance of strong preparation. It was a powerfully informative trip and the participants would later joke that they had written their part of the Follett Report before Sir Brian was even appointed as Chairman. Secondly, there was a disciplined approach to evidence gathering, perhaps gained from her time in the more time constrained commercial sector. While no one appreciated good company and good food more than Lynne, she insisted that each of the travellers wrote up the day’s events and lessons from the conference sessions they had attended before dinner and certainly not after dinner or even more likely after returning to the UK. Thus information was shared in a timely way, fresh questions were raised and food was then enjoyed with a clear conscience.

FIGIT (the Follett Implementation Group for IT) was subsequently set up under the Funding Councils’ Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), to co-ordinate the response to the Follett Report. A call for expressions of interest was issued in October 1994, and more than 40 projects were funded in the three-year, £15 million Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib)[1]. Lynne chaired the committee with enthusiasm and quiet aplomb. Surrounded by large egos and the distinct whiff of messianic fervour she ensured that goals were achievable and based on firm principles.

The five main principles which guided its work are now largely forgotten or taken for granted, but were then wholly novel and contentious. They were:

1 ) Free at the point of use. This was certainly not a given. Charged mediated searching was still the norm. That had always been a source of irritation to the computer literate, and a 1993 report stated that “90% of academics had their own microcomputer” (Waddell,1993). The determination to spread electronic methods of working which permeated all JISC programmes would be held back by charging but encouraged by free access. The view was also heavily coloured by the fact that the membership of FIGIT was dominated by librarians for whom free access to information was an article of faith.

2) Subscription- not transaction-based access to data. This model had been developed by CHEST (The Combined Higher Education Software Team) based at the University of Bath for the purchase of software licences. This again fitted comfortably with the librarians’ view of how information should be made available and also their experience with printed journal subscriptions. At that point publishers were pressing the transaction- based model. Fortunately the size of the budget gave JISC sufficient clout to set its own terms, while the experience of CHEST in negotiation ensured success.

3) Universality. The intention was to use the budget to cover all disciplines and all institutions. This again was a hard fought debate. The pressure was to support big science research in Russell Group universities. However there was a clear wish in FIGIT to spread IT skills and practice throughout the HE community. It was felt that this would be greatly helped if every member of staff and every student had access to at least one resource which was essential to them.

4) Lowest common denominator. In the same way it was clear that there should be something for staff and students at all levels. In the post-1992 world where the former polytechnics had become universities, there was no political will to set up an elite system of access to resources rather than a mass system.

5) Commonality of interfaces. The emerging commercial world was obsessed by the proprietary interfaces of publishers. There was a clear wish to make access easy and open.

The clear ambition was systemic change. Lynne and her committee were all too aware of earlier IT programmes in which individual projects had been wholly successful, but the programme overall had had virtually no impact. It was then an overt goal that the eLib Programme should be greater than the sum of the projects and not vice versa. The intention was to break the mould. It was accepted from the start that a programme of projects which delivered on time and on budget but failed to influence both culture and thinking was less desirable than a programme whose projects failed to deliver on time or on budget but which did change culture and thinking. In this she was wholly successful, for barely a single e-Lib project has survived or is remembered, except in the fond memories of the good old days, while the eLib Programme is universally seen as truly seminal.

FIGIT was viewed with inevitable suspicion by other players: the computing community which had “owned” JISC and its predecessors viewed this diversion of attention and resource with undisguised resentment; other JISC committees saw electronic information as their turf; publishers viewed the intentions of the committee with grave suspicion; other library sectors whether national or public viewed with envy this injection of cash into HE Libraries and saw a threat to their position and roles

Much of her effort went into ensuring that each of these communities was placated and/or engaged. Lynne’s good sense, willingness to listen, analytic approach, apparent objectivity and inability to gossip made her a figure trusted by all sides.

The importance of international comparison, benchmarking and practice also remained strong. Links were forged to the United States, to Australia, to the Netherlands and Japan. FIGIT and eLib were unequivocal triumphs. But perhaps Lynne’s greatest success was that everyone felt ownership of that success.

By the late 1990s, Lynne was seen as a pivotal national figure in UK Higher Education. Honours and awards began to follow – as did membership of influential and important national committees. But by the turn of the millennium it had become time to move on to an even bigger stage. For some time the British Library had been becoming remote from the UK academic library community and the dramatic transformation it was undergoing. At some points they had even seemed to be in competition. This detachment was hardly surprising given the British Library’s near total preoccupation with the new building at St Pancras and the associated move, but it was a matter of real regret given the pace of change in the academic sector that the two engines of UK library development were not working in partnership. Lynne’s early career in the BL had given her a clear sense of what a great national library could be and do. Everything she had done, learned and achieved in Higher Education made her the perfect person not just to rebuild the bridges to the UK academic library community, but to lead the UK national library into a digital future, but that story is told elsewhere.

Not herself involved in the day-to-day minutiae of research, Lynne is a gifted administrator who could be counted on as a proselytiser and populariser as well as a really good communicator - characteristics extraordinarily rare in our profession. Her willingness to travel the country, selling the message of change at conferences large and small was a powerful element of transformation. The virtues and characteristics that worked so well in higher education were pithily summarised in a recent issue of JISC Inform. It was indeed “Dame Lynne's ethos of pushing boundaries and making the most of opportunities…” (Brindley, 2011) which has made her a seminal figure in the most fundamental set of changes in Higher Education Librarianship in perhaps a century.

REFERENCES

Brindley, Lynne (1996) ‘FIGIT – RIP?’ JISC News, No.1

Brindley, Lynne (2011) ’Partnership is key to success’. JISC Inform, Issue 30. pp.10. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/inform/inform30/page10of16_Partnerships.aspx (visited 20/3/13)

Carr, Reg (2006) ‘ The role of the JISC in changing the research library and information culture in the United Kingdom’. JISC/CNI Conference York, 2006

Waddell, Pam (1993) The potential for electronic journals in UK Academia. SEPSU. [SEPSU report for the HEFCE Libraries Review].

Derek Law was Librarian and Director of Information Strategy at Strathclyde University from 1998-2001 and Head of the Information Resources Directorate from 2002-2008. He was previously, 1993-1998, Director of Information Services & Systems, King’s College London. He is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Strathclyde and continues to lecture, teach, write and act as a researcher and consultant and he chairs the Board of the JISC Advance Company.

[1] See: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/services/elib/ (visited 20/3/13)