Techhie update

I have updated the settings for this blog to allow comments to be added; however these will all be subject to moderation by the administration team.

For those without a Google account, there are options under other to leave your name, or to post anonymous.

Hampshire libraries in the media

The HIOW letter to The News has been published in the edition of 22nd March in it's entirety (I have found another similar letter from a history group in Basingstoke appalled at the lost of professional staff). However, this morning, I have received a message from El Presidente who has fired off an email to a local FM radio presenter who infuriated her with a jibe at the current strike action in Hampshire public libraries. I have also created another RSS feed on MyYahoo page for news items on the strike action which seems well supported yesterday and today; I hope the strength of feeling shown causes a rethink. I note that the powers to be in the Council apologise for the disruption caused, but perhaps they should have thought of that when they proposed to downgrade professional standards and service.

Libraries in local press

A while ago the local paper for Portsmouth, The News, ran a negative article on the decline of librarianship due to increasing use of the web and the restructure of Hampshire County (I hope their strike today and tomorrow in opposition to these plans sparks a rethink). Such a wonderful piece of journalism could not be left unanswered and the collective thoughts of the HIOW Committee have now been sent to the Editor, the text of which is below.

"Dear Sir,

Your Monday investigation (12^th March) as to whether the species of librarian is becoming endangered due to the web, highlights a narrow and incorrect viewpoint of the library profession. In Hampshire and the Isle of Wight there are over 500 members of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), in a wide spectrum of organisations. To focus your article and arguments on the public-sector issues currently alive in the County does not fully represent or do justice to the depth and breadth of skills and experience utilised by librarians in education, business, museums, health, government, and defence as well as those colleagues currently under fire and torment.

The profession of librarian is far from endangered, and is currently enjoying the challenges of electronic media; the format of information may be changing, but professionally qualified staff are still required to educate their users in information literacy. This is another role a librarian fulfils, the teaching of information literacy to those who do not understand the nature of data gained from websites and other sources. The librarian is trained to guide, inform and empower their respective community of users in the positive and negative aspects of information found on a daily basis. To use library and information sources successfully is a life skill which our non-endangered profession is able to deliver.

It is a sad fact that libraries are always a soft target for budget balancing quests by local authorities, and currently Hampshire is sharing this unfortunate burden with many other Councils in the United Kingdom. The web is no replacement for the printed word and the skills with which the library staff provides a professional community service.

Yours faithfully,

Nigel Sturt

Communications Officer

Hampshire and Isle of Wight Sub Branch (CILIP South East)"

Last trip for a while

Wednesday 21st March saw me once again on the platform of Fareham station heading out for the Berkshire College of Agriculture (BCA) @ Maidenhead. The purpose of this trip was to attend the LRC forum hosted by Andy Kirk of the JISC RSC SE, and featured presentations on evalued tool kit for electronic information services, the new build experience at BCA and other developments. One presenter was not able to attend due to technical difficulties with their search engine so sent furry goats (their logo) as an apology. Another useful feature is the round robin of learning centre updates from attending Colleges and I ended up giving a 10-15 minute presentation about my new role, and demonstration of the Virtual Library being created in Moodle. I managed to slip in a quick comment about putting into practice some of the training from the previous week's meeting of JISC RSC SE Heritage user group meeting by showing reading lists from the online catalogue placed in academic courses on the VLE.

Ho hum, staff updates finished for a while, now it's time to write reports, claim for expenses and see where I can get to next.

Wiki is now official

A recent headline from CILIP announced wiki has become the latest batch of words to be added to the Oxford English Dictionary.

In quoting from the online version of the Independent ©

Wiki is defined as: "A type of web page designed so that its content can be edited by anyone who accesses it, using a simplified mark-up language."

Pity someone recently had the thought of turning the OED into a Wiki style product according to another headline; it's not even 1st April yet. Nothing gave me more pleasure than deleting that gem.

It's never quiet in the library and information world

Reading thru headlines of bloggers jailed, bloggers freed, Google and YouTube facing copyright action big time, DVD format wars, satellite broadcasting tensions, the national and internation situation for library and information services is continually changing. Even locally, readers will know of changes taking place in many local authorities, and CILIP are aware of more across the country. The biggest issue is that facing Hampshire County with what seems to draconian measures to balance its budget against the perceived information service needs in public libraries; UNISON has now received and approved a mandate for strike action on Thursday 22nd and Friday 23rd March, with a protest awaiting Police approval in Winchester on the first day. This situation has been reported frequently in the Hampshire press, and even Dr McKee has had a letter published in the Hampshire Chronicle championing the issue of quality service needs qualified staff. However, The News in Portsmouth, 12th March 2007, led with a very negative doom laden article that the growth of the web is one of the key reasons for the start of the end of the librarian as a career option. What utter rubbish; the growth of electronic services is challenging the library profession, but qualified staff are still need teach their respective communities how to use and interpret the mass of information with which they are faced on a regular basis. The HIOW Committee met last week and added this article for discussion and a letter will be issued shortly to The News telling them what a positive and progressive career librarianship is, whether it be with books or electronic media. The final text of the letter will be posted here in library land.

New HIOW URL

CILIP's website has had a new template posted which has altered the existing URL to that given in the title link, http://www.cilip.org.uk/branches/byregion/southeast/sub/hampshire.html, so emails have been posted to advise of the change. More updates to follow as I am still trying to remember recent events and whether they are blogworthy (is this a new web 2.0 word?)

Busy

Wow, Hamphire Librarian has been really busy. We should have taken sarnies to the meeting considering his long update. What a star.

Have been too busy with new staff training and refreshing my poultice walloping skills to have called in before - that and trying to pin my boss to come down and talk to me......

The HIoW AGM is now set for 16th May and electronic info is the key with a practical session on this blog and our Jiscmail facility to help those like me who are not totally au fait with the practicialities of it all. Not surprising when you know the IT I have here is so old, creaky and working on more-or-less obsolete hard and software (NT4) that it drives me nuts. Another reason to pin down my boss cos we have to have a softly softly approach as currently the IT is supplied courtesy of the MoD and my plan is for us to deal with it in future.

So well, back to the dino-world.

Day trip to London, part the two

The CILIP web training took up the morning, and was really really useful. From Ridgemount Street I then had to move out to Twickenham for a meeting of the South East, Eastern, and London Heritage Users Group, hosted by JISC RSC SE & London. This was again a wonderful afternoon with many contributions from myself during discussions on the Heritage library software. I learnt of several useful contacts for use in Heritage developments and how to publish reading lists in Moodle. Again I met a colleague from the Oxford training on the 6th March, such is the small world of library systems. Two hours of updates and discussion on Heritage, a tour of the College library (one has to be nosey), and then it was back to Waterloo and home to Fareham, reached after 1900 hours; a long day, but one of the most productive I have had for a long long while.

Day trip to London, part the one

Staff development doesn't happen often to me, but when it does, it comes like buses, in groups. Wednesday 14th March saw me on Fareham station in time for the 0619 train to London for a meeting with the web team at CILIP, especially, Patricia McHugo, @ 0900hrs. After a quick breakfast in MacDonalds, I was ready to receive the wonderful training which lasted about 2½ hours. Patricia took me through the web editors forum on CILIP communities, demonstrated the blog space from the same service, and we went to town on the content management server used to power CILIP and the Sub Branch of HIOW. A big thank you to Patricia from myself and the Committee of HIOW for the time given; I hope we can do justice to the web facilities allowed to us. After the Committee meeting this evening, I now have a seven point action plan for my communications role, some of which relate to the website and ideas for additional pages as we expand our services under the possible banner of "HIOW - local CILIP in action" (my idea, I forgot to mention this in my report, well it was long enough). I also found out that CILIP advisors also check this blog as one saw it mentioned in the presentation from Karen Blakeman. Hampshire seems to have a reputation that proceeds them, one of action.

Day trip to Oxford

Tuesday 6th March saw me in Oxford all day at the home of Heritage Library Management software, receiving specialist training on the many areas of the management menu. My new job since January has been a systems librarian in all but name, but makes my last few years of managing and developing our library software officially part of my duties. I am currently blessed with a tame server engineer in IT who is glad of the support I give, and allows generous access to the two servers so I can tweak and play, sorry, develop our system. Very good lunch provided at the pub down the road, beats in house catering and makes things simpler for the company to manage. Training would have been better over two days as there is so much in the management module to cover, the few hours would not have suited the novice user; fortunately I have eight years experience to compensate, and I still learnt some new things, but mostly had confirmation what I had been doing was good. It was also good to meet some people I have been corresponding with on the Heritage mail service, Marvin.

Update

It's been a long time since we last met; been busy with the fact that I am currently covering two jobs at work with the usual competing pressures, etc. So while I am waiting to download my 300 plus junk mails and a handful of useful ones, plus 10MB of updates from Norton, and goodness knows what from Microsoft (hope it's not the whopping 230Mb .net update we've had fun with at work), I though I would bore you with my fast moving last few day in a few blog entries. Earlier this evening HIOW had another Committee meeting and our thoughts are with the two members from Hampshire County reapplying for their jobs in the restructure - good luck Jane and Helena and best wishes. At the meeting an article from The News, 12th March 2007, was tabled for discussion and response - more in another post shortly.

Where are the library bloggers?

This is where the library bloggers can be found - a new list on JISC mail, and with over 200 subscribers already since launch a short while ago. I am waiting to join and see what is happening; judging by the archive of mail the list is very busy comparing tips, tricks and favourite software for web 2.0 and other techno things.