Touring libraries, controlling documents, anticipating the Borders and having birthdays

Yesterday, we took this year's MSc Information and Library Studies students on two library tours. In the morning we visited the new Sir Duncan Rice Library at University of Aberdeen. We were divided into three groups and taken round by Susan McCourt, Elaine Shallcross and Janet MacKay, all of whom did their librarianship course at Robert Gordon and, indeed, I taught both Elaine (in our first cohort of distance learning students) and Janet (who did the full-time course). The students were very impressed by the new building and the presentation given Susan was very interesting and showed both the philosophy behind the building and the university's aspirations for it. I seem to have spent a considerable amount of my time up there over the last week.

Then, in the afternoon, we had our annual visit to the Central Library where we roam all over that equally fabulous building. We began with a presentation from Susan Bell charting the development of the library and how it has changed over its 120 years (and yes, before you ask, Marcus Milne was mentioned). We were then in four groups for this visit and the students especially appreciate seeing all the behind-the-scenes areas and hearing from staff what their role entails. We ended with a presentation from John Grant about the current priorities for the service before a question and answer session led by Fiona Clark. Altogether it was an excellent day and one which was very beneficial to the students.

Today I have been involved in discussions about various short-course developments. We have recently launched one of these (five credits worth at undergraduate third year level) called Document Control Foundation. This is basically introductory training for those working in document control in the energy sector (primarily in the oil and gas industries). It struck me this morning as the meeting to discuss this was finishing that this aspect of information work is one that I haven't touched upon at all on the blog and yet Information Management work in the oil and gas sector is a crucial component of our professional life here in the North East.

The Document Control Foundation course was born out of a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) which our department had with a local company called the Amor Group. Amor provide technology and information solutions to a wide range of firms including many in the energy sector up here. They also were behind technologies used for online check-in by some well-known airlines and for many of the systems used at Scottish airports so I suspect you may well have used their products without ever knowing it. Amor does a lot of work in supplying document controllers for the energy sector and the central plank of the KTP was the formation of the Information Management Energy Forum which brings together practitioners in this field and also seeks to share good practice and develop suitable training.

This was lead by my colleague, Dr Laura Muir, together with the KTP Associate appointed for the project, Fionnuala Cousins. We struck gold in the appointment of Fionnuala who has been the driving force behind the forum and its activities. The KTP formally ended in February but the partnership is still very strong and I appointed Fionnuala an Associate Lecturer within the Department as soon as the project finished. The Document Control module was (along with an annual Benchmarking exercise) one of the most tangible outcomes of this KTP and, although only launched in May, we will have had nearly one hundred students complete it by the end of the year. We are very proud of the success of the KTP project and are working hard on building on this.

The oil and gas sector in Aberdeen has a bewildering array of information professionals working within it and many of them are our graduates. One of the key things about developing this kind of short-course training is actually listening very carefully to the sector and to what the businesses in question require. This has been central to the approach that Laura and Fionnuala have adopted and it has paid dividends and we fully expect to carve out a very distinctive (and, indeed, unique) niche for IM educational provision with this. We will be developing short courses in other areas too but the energy related ones are a particular achievement.

Next week, I am delighted that CILIPS Policy and Resources Committee is coming to Aberdeen for its November meeting and I am looking forward to welcoming everyone to RGU for that. Our campus is something of a building site at the moment with our huge new teaching building (and new library) going up and it is now about six months from completion.

At the end of next week, I am off down to do a presidential visit to the Borders and this is something I have been looking forward to enormously. I am very grateful to Margaret Menzies for organising a super programme for me. I have a great love of the Borders as I spent many wonderful family holidays in Kelso as a child and my love of that part of the country has never diminished. I may even break into the Lay of the Last Minstrel when I report back on my trip on the blog later. I am delighted that I can also manage to find time on Friday next week to visit the new Johnston's Visitor Centre at the mill in Hawick. This was very much the creation of my very good friend James Sugden who was, until recently, their Managing Director (he also holds an Honorary Doctorate from RGU). We are having lunch there on Friday so next week promises to be a real treat on a number of levels.

Now dear readers, I am having a day off tomorrow (an almost unheard of thing for me during term time) as Mrs Reid has a special birthday tomorrow. I do, of course, mean my mother and not the other Mrs Reid, of Penicuik, a lady much renowned on this blog last year for keeping the Immediate Past President on the straight and narrow. I am very grateful to the Penicuik Reids for their good wishes for the impending birthday :o)

Education, Salvation and Damnation

Well, dear readers, the two events which I mentioned yesterday turned out to be really lovely as I knew they would. Despite torrential rain and thunderstorms in the Stirling area yesterday, the reopening of Bridge of Allan Library was a fantastic occasion with lots of people turning out. I am very grateful to Elizabeth Farr for inviting me to this. I really do like the whole look and feel of Bridge of Allan library and I particularly like the quotations around the walls, especially the RLS one about the Allan Water. How apt.

 

It was lovely to be able to catch up with people and have a blether and it was particularly good to see Robert Ruthven back for the event. Poor man, he has to deal with academics now he's University Librarian at Glasgow Caledonian and we all know what they are like. Robert's legacy in Stirling is brilliant. What a great team the staff in Stirling Council Libraries are. They are always so motivated and positive and committed to giving a first-class service. There are so many people in that service that I count as friends and not just professional colleagues. Robert is, of course, always characteristically modest about his role but I'll pay tribute to him and say what a sterling (every pun intended) job he did in giving leadership and vision as well as creating and fostering a first-class team of highly professional staff. Robert, Elizabeth and Sheila are all librarians I hold in seriously high regard; their commitment and dedication shines through the service in Stirling along with that from all their other colleagues. So, yes, Bridge of Allan library's reopening was a great occasion and I wish it every success.

Today, I was at a birthday party - the 120th birthday party for Aberdeen Central Library. Many of you will know this building well. For those of you who don't, it is located on Rosemount Viaduct in the city centre. Next to it is St Mark's Church and beyond that is His Majesty's Theatre. This venerable troika is known affectionately in the city as "Education, Salvation and Damnation". Hence the title of this posting.

 

The party was very well attended by staff past and present, members of the public and civic leaders including the Lord Provost who opened proceedings and made three long service presentations to staff. He launched the publication of a lovely little book celebrating the anniversary. Then, I'm afraid, the proceedings went down hill for yours truly was invited to speak. On such occasions I am reminded of something the curator at Chatsworth House once said to me; he described the late Duke of Devonshire's talks to groups visiting the house as "His Grace's twenty minutes of inaccuracies". Well, I hope I wasn't that bad today. Anyway, here is a summary of what I said. Some of it you may have heard before!

 

The 1890s was, of course, a felicitous time to be considering a new public library building because of the keen interest of the millionaire philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie had been born in Dunfermline in 1835. His family emigrated to the United States in 1848 and his first job was in a bobbin factory; later he became a telegraph messenger and steadily rose through the ranks of that company. Eventually, he went into the steel industry and ultimately created, after a series of mergers and takeovers, US Steel, one of the biggest and most successful companies the world has ever know. His wealth at its peak has been estimated at around $300 billion in contemporary values.

Carnegie had some very fixed views about wealth and philanthropy and famously declaring in his book The Gospel of Wealth that a man who dies rich dies disgraced. As a consequence, he was determined to use his enormous wealth for the greater good of society. He had a strong attachment to learning, self-improvement and education and these formed a cornerstone of his philanthropy. Libraries played a key part because of the affection and gratitude he had for the libraries he himself had been able to use in his formative years. He had an underlying philosophy to life which explains much about the man. He said that a man should:

 

■Spend the first third of his life getting all the education one can;

■Spend the next third making all the money one can;

■And spend the last third giving it all away for worthwhile causes.

 

Carnegie was clearly no soft-and-cuddly philanthropist. The acumen he had shown in building up his business empire was more than matched by his approach to funding libraries. Virtually all of 2,509 Carnegie Libraries built across the English-speaking world were built using a tried and tested methodology, called the Carnegie Formula. This required recipient towns to make a contribution matching that of the donation. Additionally, he required the town to:

■Clearly demonstrate the need for a public library
■Provide the site for the building
■Provide annually ten percent of the cost of the library’s construction to support its running costs; and
■Provide a free service for all

 

It was Carnegie’s staunch belief that the recipient towns had to show an ongoing commitment to maintain and enhance the library. Without that, he would walk away and, indeed, on some occasions, did just that. Aberdeen, however, embraced Carnegie’s ideals and committed itself to his formula because there was, amongst our Victorian forefathers, a real sense of the worth and value of a free public library. So, on Tuesday, 5 July 1892, the great man himself attending by the worthies of Aberdeen came to the official opening ceremony.

At our CILIPS Annual Conference in Dundee last month, I invoked the memory of Carnegie. It was, by coincidence, the day on which the Olympic Torch Relay arrived in Dundee and I reminded our delegates that Carnegie had used the symbol of a torch for his libraries. Indeed, a torch was often carved in the stonework above the entrance or incorporated in the decorative scheme internally, although interestingly not here. Carnegie, however, saw the analogy clearly: libraries were to be beacons of learning and education and hope for the community.

And, in the intervening one-hundred and twenty years this library has continued to carry that torch brightly, now supported by branches throughout the city and, in many cases, sharing services with schools and being integrated into the heart of the cultural well-being of this city. Some great characters have presided over this institution and they have seen it change and flourish.

Alexander Robertson was, in 1899, succeeded by the redoubtable GM Fraser who was to preside as City Librarian until 1938, an extraordinarily long and fruitful tenure. There a wonderful photograph of him in the local studies collection, looking every bit the urbane sophisticate with a pair of lorgnettes perched on his not inconsiderable nose. Fraser was succeeded by an equally remarkable character with an equally long tenure. Many of you know the high regard that I hold Marcus Kelly Milne in. His reign as City Librarian took us to the end of the nineteen-sixties. As an aside, it is remarkable that in its first seventy-five years, there were only three City Librarians. During Milne’s time, the torch shone very brightly in spite of the inevitable challenges of the Second World War and its aftermath. I have previously written about how Milne saw a time of crisis as an opportunity to innovate not least in the introduction of his Books you can borrow a current awareness bulletin he started in October 1941. Truly necessity was the mother of invention.

And since Marcus Milne, the service has continued to evolve and adapt. Technologies not even dreamt of one-hundred and twenty years ago are now central to all that we do and Carnegie would have been bemused by the notion of using the library from the comfort of one’s own home down a telephone wire or on the move using something called Wi Fi. That’s said, there is much which he would still recognise and approve heartily of. Not least that the City of Aberdeen has continued in its steadfast commitment to his formula of supporting the building he gave.

Today, Carnegie library buildings are not without their challenges but this one remains a beacon in our city. Libraries are, as Carnegie intended them to be, transformational spaces, places of hopes and dreams, expectations and reality, help, support, education, fun, learning, enjoyment and so much more. They are amongst the most trusted public spaces in the community with some studies showing as many as 85% of people saying that the library is their most trusted public service. Aberdeen Central Library is all of these things and so much more.

There are two final things I would like to say. Firstly, I have dwelt on some of the people who have had an impact on this place and I’d like to say a little more about that. Those inspiring characters from the past who did so much to establish this place in the hearts of Aberdonians are more than matched by today’s team led by Fiona Clark. They are continuing the process of development and enhancement to ensure a library service that meets the demands of the twenty-first century whilst remaining true to Carnegie’s fundamental beliefs.

The torch is in the safe hands of a superb library team. But, there are other people to mention too. And they are, of course, the users for whom, over the generations, this place has come to mean so much. This is a focal point for our city in architectural terms of course, but for the countless thousands who use it this place is also a focal point in their lives and the impact that this building, its services and its staff has had is truly incalculable.

Finally, I am going to return to Marcus Milne for some closing words. In his Public Library Annual Report for 1941-42, he began his introduction with some words of Vladimir Ilych Lenin; a most unlikely bedfellow for Mr Milne but the quote is apposite:

"Let us see the pride and glory of a public library....in the magnitude of book circulation among the people, in the number of new readers enrolled, in the speed with which enquiry for any book is satisfied, in the quality of books lent for home reading and in the number of children led to good reading and the use of the library"

Indeed, the Pride and Glory of this public library is clear for all to see. Thank you Mr Carnegie. Thank you Aberdeen. Thank you all who have worked and used this place. Long may education, salvation and damnation dominate Rosemount Viaduct. Happy Birthday Aberdeen Central Library.

Ok, so I know you've heard about my esteem for Marcus Milne before and, yes, I've used the Lenin quote before too but both were very right and fitting for today. So, these last two days, have given me more reasons to Love Scottish Libraries (as if I needed more).

Pastoral idyll Aberdeen style

I am sitting in my office looking out at what can only be described as a very dreich Aberdeen morning; the fog which seems to have enveloped the north-east for the last three weeks is as thick as ever and it is drizzling persistently. Added to this, I have diggers, drills and lorries making a noise below my window as building contractors do work on our car park. Altogether, therefore, it is a pastoral idyll that I am looking out at. Not.

It has been a while since I last posted mostly because I've been caught up in the day-job and it has been a hectic two weeks and I see time slipping through my hands ahead of my holidays at the end of next week. Normally, I'd be saying roll-on the holidays but this year I'm wondering how I can fit in a couple of extra days to get various things done ahead of my leave.

I have, amidst this frenetic fortnight, managed to achieve something immeasurably satisfying, namely a major clear-out of the office with stacks of stuff put into recylcing and a good tidy-up. My office now looks respectable again (but I fear it won't last once I come back from holidays). I am rather delighted to have fallen heir to a complete run of the Library Association yearbooks which are now very neatly arranged in my office (I know, I am showing how sad I am).

One other thing that I did during this fortnight was have lunch with two people that many readers of this blog will recall with great affection, Douglas Anderson and Mike Head. Doug and Mike were, for quarter of century and more, the backbone of the library school at RGIT and many of you were doubtless taught by them and, of course, Mike was President of the Scottish Library Association in 1984. What we all describe as "the old gang" Mike, Doug, Dorothy Williams, Robert Newton, Rita Marcella, Liz Davidson (our school administrator in the 1990s) meet up a couple of times a year to reminisce over lunch about Dewey Decimal, Ranganathan, AACR2 and other such cerebral matters. I should add that is not "old" as in age.

In about an hour, I am heading off down to Bridge of Allan for the official reopening of the library there and I am very much looking forward to it. Avid readers will recall that I was down there in April for the Central Branch "Meet the President" which I much enjoyed and I am looking forward again to seeing all my friends in Stirling Libraries. And, then, after that I have an evening meeting in Stirling itself at which the Immediate Past President His Excellency Mr Alan Reid will be present. I know Alan is having a tour of the new library in Dunbar and the John Gray Centre in Haddington today and, as you know, I was so impressed by these the other week. I look forward to hearing Alan's take on them this evening.

Tomorrow is also a busy day. Not only do we have a visitor to the Department from Austria but then, at lunchtime, it is the celebration of 120 years of Aberdeen Central Library and I am looking forward to this very much and I have my speech all prepared. I do fear, however, that as in Dundee, the Lord Provost's chain will out-do my one. I really think CILIPS should get something more like the Order of the Garter ;o) for the President. Funny how this job turns every president into a connoisseur of regalia.

I will be posting up details of both the Bridge of Allan visit and the Aberdeen Central Library event towards the end of the week.

Fit a rare efterneen

Es efterneen, I maun hae gaun throuw tae Aiberdeen. E day wis e "Meet the President" we e North East Branch. A pucklie o ye will hae jaloost thit a cos it wis Aiberdeen n e North-East branch thit I'm claikin awa in e Doric. Es for e rest o ye, ye'll aa hae thocht thit I jist hiv haen an affa mishanter we ma keyboard n the wirdies maun be comin oot in a richt sotter.

That, dear readers, is what we call Doric and that's the way many of us born and brought up in the North-East were fortunate enough to speak at home or in the playground and some of us still do, of which more anon.

What that opening paragraph says is this afternoon I was meeting the North-East Branch at Aberdeen Central Library. As I noted the other day, it was full of friends, many of whom were former students. I spoke about the role of President, some of the things I've been up to and some of the things that I've found really inspiring during the visits that I've been making. We then had a really lively discussion about some of the current issues for our sector. Michael Charlton asked what I thought about the use of volunteers in libraries. A really interesting issue. My answer? Well, they can have a role to play and many libraries use them effectively as, for example, mentors in basic IT training or in local studies projects but they are not and they can not be a substititute for real staff. Apart from anything else who will manage the volunteers and, for example, sort out the problems when a volunteer simply decides they have something better?

We also discussed the co-location of services and, that familiar subject of other agencies being keen to work with us because our brand is so trusted and valued. There was also some discussion about continuing professional development and the mix of skills and personal attributes that the successful librarian or information professional needs. A good, lively debate and the future of our profession is very much in safe hands judging by the people who gave up their Saturday afternoon to come and meet the president. Unfortunately, the President has had a rotten cold all week and was still croaking, coughing and sniffing today.

One of the most distinctive features of life in the North-East of Scotland is Doric, that wonderful, lyrical form of Lowland Scots that is spoken up here in various forms. For many unfamiliar with it, the dialect, vocabulary and accent can often seem inpenetrable. For those of us brought up with it, the Doric is a cherished part of our cultural inheritance. But, my word, how it has declined since I was a child and I often hear local students going about the campus who just speak what I would describe as a sort of non-descript "standard" Scottish. I was fortunate to be brought up in a household that encouraged its use without that ever prejudicing the importance of speaking correct English (spikkin proper).

There are, however, many great champions of the Doric not least people like the incomparable Sheena Blackhall and Norman Harper whose columns regularly capture the distinctive essence of the north-east. And, my own favour piece of Doric literature? Well, I think you have to go a long way to beat the poetry of Charles Murray (1864-1941) and, in particular, The Whistle.