LIC Conference

Working Together: Keynote Address

Derek Law

Director of Information Strategy,

University of Strathclyde

Introduction.

Almost since its creation the Library & Information Commission has been arguing the case for developing cross-sectoral services throughout the libraries of the UK. Part of that argument is to suggest that the present rigid vertical structures between public libraries, university libraries, college libraries, the libraries of professional bodies etc. do not reflect the way in which users actually manage their information. We have created a world which assumes that users “belong” to a single sector, despite the emerging evidence to the contrary from such research as the BLRIC funded Peopleflows Project. I believe very strongly in the concept of serial library users. If you use one library you probably use – or at lest have rights - in two or three. I have suggested elsewhere that a much more plausible model is that of the fictional Sheila the Staff Nurse from Sheffield, who is a member of staff of the Hallamshire County hospital. As such her “local” library is the Hallamshire Hospital Nursing Library, which she uses mainly for professional current awareness. The local library is inevitably small and underfunded so she also makes regular use of the library of her professional organisation, the RCN. Of course, nursing is becoming a graduate profession and she is involved with the University in training placement students. This requires her to use the Sheffield University Medical Library for more advanced material and to work on student course materials. Sheila has an active social life and is involved in a local music society. She is a member of the local Sheffield City Library, which provides everything from records and music scores to histories and biographies of her favourite composers. The indefatigable Sheila is ambitious and is learning new skills by undertaking a distance learning MBA from the Strathclyde University Business School. Its library provides courseware and learning materials to help with this. Underpinning her personal system is the Document Supply Centre at Boston Spa. While she is fortunate in living close to Boston Spa, like most people she tends to think of it in terms of interlending. And finally she has an AOL account which allows her to manage everything from children’s homework to chatting with professional colleagues overseas. Sheila may be an exceptional paragon but is at least as plausible as the two dimensional beings we believe inhabit the sectors we have created.

We are the problem. Librarians live and work in professional sectors and as today’s meeting demonstrates are to some degree peripatetic in engaging with their professional colleagues. It would be foolish to deny the great success of such programmes as Local Information Plans, but most of us do – and perhaps prefer to – work with our comfortable peer group. We have created rigid vertical boundaries between our library sectors. Users on the other hand occupy geographic spaces and have different social and professional peer groups. They use the libraries available to them horizontally in terms of where they are physically and of course Sheila’s libraries are jumbled throughout Hallamshire and she needs access to a number of them to live her very full life. This horizontal concept seems bound to grow and expand. We have as a profession done little useful thinking on how the present government agenda will accelerate such use. A range of programmes and societal changes face us. Lifelong Learning, Continuous Professional Development, distance learning, the learning city and the knowledge society will all put our safe vertical structures under unsustainable pressure.

The Myths of Access. And of course we all suffer from a series of comfortable myths, which assign to ourselves the path of virtue and place the blame on others. We are all aware of urban myths; I too have my share. So for example:

Universities keep other users out – And keep stock as reference only. We have moved to a situation where 40% of the population enter Higher Education. As well as current students, graduates have automatic rights of access to university libraries. Many universities run outreach programmes. Strathclyde for example has 40,000 members of the public registered for courses each year above and beyond its 17,000 students. They run business information services and are heavily involved in interlending. They are not, of course, public libraries, but it is quite rare for anyone who needs to use material in a university library to be turned away.

Public Libraries are free, welcome students, and support ILL. Anyone who has borrowed a record, made an inter-library loan or reserved a book will confirm that using a library is no longer free – although the core business of lending still is. Students do form a significant proportion of local library users – but we now have a situation where the majority of students are mature and/or part-time and as such are legitimate users of such libraries rather than a tedious burden. Welcome new students they may do, but not always new users. It is a very educative experience to move to a new city and try to join a public library. With no utility bills for three months, no rate or rent book until the City authorities get round to issuing them and no history at the address it is all too easy to become a non-person. And none of the three public libraries of which I am a member give any indication that inter-lending is available. Even rather grudging inter-branch lending attracts punitive fees.

The BL should have stayed in the Round Reading Room. We have one of the finest national libraries in the world, now appropriately housed in the wonderful building where we meet today. The BL is integral to the future of co-operation between sectors and to condemn it to continue as a cosy gentleman’s club would have been a disaster.

Co-operation is the solution. Co-operation between libraries is hardly novel. Indeed we have a proud and honourable tradition of co-operation both locally and nationally which we underplay and I sense undervalue. Within my professional lifetime there have been huge steps which imply a quite staggering ability to work together.

Shared standards. We have developed and universally adopted a set of standards which allow us to share everything from catalogue data to physical texts as a norm rather than an exception. A public library user in Southampton would be able to enter a university library in Aberdeen and understand how to use the catalogue, identify a text and find it on the shelves. As a library school student I spent many hours on topics as varied as The Prussian Instructions and faceted classification. Almost unthinkingly we now have created a world of MARC, AACR2, Dewey and ILL vouchers. We created interoperability before the term was invented.

Shared values. Most of us here today work in the public sector. Despite the erosion of the Thatcher years I suspect that most of us share a set of values and perhaps entered the profession with at least some sense of public service. For most of us the concepts of public sector, public service and common good are positive values which we espouse and which will facilitate cross-sectoral working.

Relevance to the Government’s Learning Agenda. I come from a city full of social deprivation by no means unique in the UK and from a society with a tradition of education as a means of self-advancement. The Public Library service has a remarkable record in supporting self-advancement and we have a genuinely accessible public education service. The Library Association, the LIC and others have been arguing long and hard that these traditions can be built on and developed as a key plank of delivering the government’s agenda. At the same time I believe that we are further from universal network access than the prophets would have us believe and that public provision will grow for quite some time if that agenda has been delivered. The provision of network access in public places will be critical. The slogan of Tom Wilson, head of the Glasgow Telecolleges Network is that in Glasgow you are “Never more than a bus-stop from the Internet”. We have the tools, we have the skills and linking our networks could give us a central role in the developing programme of government initiatives. Much play is made of joined up government under new labour. According to taste we can be the glue or the string which does the joining.

Solutions. There are some simple and obvious things we can do locally and nationally to speed the process of working together. We are quite poor at telling people what is available. This is one of the reasons why the urban myths emerge. I can see little reason for example why we should not at local level develop shared and publicised access at least for reference. Those involved in LIPs will do this already, but could probably do it better. We now have such tools as websites to make this easier and more accessible. Although not cross-sectoral I would commend the M25 Group website which links institutional OPACs and provides standardised information on access. And if anyone thinks that it is easier to do this within a sector than cross-sectorally they clearly have no concept of the internecine warfare called the University of London! At the Regional level I would suggest that the growth of the Regional Development Agencies offers new possibilities. We have a good record in the UK on national initiatives. However we would benefit from some discussion of state-wide (ie regional) initiatives in the USA. There consortia for co-operative acquisition – increasingly of electronic resources- and co-operative acquisition have developed well beyond anything seen in the UK. At a quite different level the LIC has been ploughing a rather lonely furrow in support of a National Information Plan. There is to be a major conference on this topic in March and I would urge that we throw more professional weight behind this initiative.

Managing the solutions. In conclusion I would suggest that there are three broad themes which we need to explore and develop during the course of this meeting.

Management of Things. We have largely mastered the world of print. Broadly speaking a user can identify, locate and gain access to any at least commercially published book or journal published anywhere in the world. By common consent however the electronic world is in chaos. We need to develop and build coherence in electronic collections while considering how we can make the print collections we manage even more coherent and accessible.

Management of Relationships. To see a public librarian at a SCONUL meeting is even rarer than sightings of University Librarians at a PLA Conference. There is a substantial lack of dialogue between our vertically structured organisations. So we need to undertake co-operative activities which will build a climate of trust. In the expressive American phrase we need some “low-hanging fruit” which will offer quick ones and demonstrate the value of co-operation.

Management of Perceptions. We need to demonstrate relevance. We need to do this internally to show the value of working together. We need to do this cross-sectorally to destroy the urban myths and to offer the services users need, not the ones we think they need. We need to do this publicly to demonstrate to government and civil service that the library service remains as relevant as ever it was.