Bibliotheca Moraviana

Yesterday, I had the great pleasure of doing a 'Meet the President' with staff from Moray Libraries. This was a particularly enjoyable event since this is my 'home' library service. I was first introduced to the whole notion of the library as a very small child and had such fondness for it (and, indeed, the library assitant who ran it) that my love of libraries has enduring over the intervening years. The local heritage service has been something of a second home in particular.

Yesterday, I met with the senior staff at Elgin Library and outlined what I've done over the course of my presidential year, the places I've been and the things that I have seen. I spoke about the things that have particularly impressed me during my travels like the Macmillan partnership in North Ayrshire, the newly-refitted library in Bridge of Allan, the John Gray Centre, the 120th birthday party for Aberdeen Central Library, the Crime Fiction Festival in Orkney and the Heritage Hub in Hawick. I also spoke particularly about the capacity that libraries have for changing lives and how we as librarians are central to this. I know I was preaching to the converted but I think there was enthusiasm for and agreement with the things I was saying.

We had a good discussion about branding and marketing of libraries and why it is sometimes difficult for us to get the message out to the people who need to hear (i.e. policy- and decision-makers). I mentioned something which most of us are familiar with, the elevator pitch, the fifteen seconds of soundbite that we should have stored to use when we are with someone who "needs to know" or is in a position to help or influence on our behalf.

Being in Elgin Library as President of CILIP Scotland was a strange phenomenon for me because, as a student, I did my placement there and little did I imagine that I was return, years later, as the bearer of the presidential chain. Now, obviously, dear readers, you will consider me very slightly biased in my opinions of Moray Libraries because I have grown up with them and still use them. So, forgive me as I launch into a paean of praise.

I have to say Moray has an excellent library service which has, over all the years I've known it, continued to innovative and to look really creatively at how to enhance and expand the service provision. The Learning Centre is one obvious example of this and the range of learning and educational opportunities available through the library is excellent. I love the feel of Elgin Library, the range of stock and resources and I have to say I love the Mobiles too and love seeing them with their distinctive images trundling round the byways of Moray. Even doing right back into the early days of automation, the creation of the service's online Local Studies Index LIBINDX was a considerable innovation and, indeed, I have on the bookshelf in front of me one of the late Mike Dewe's books on local studies from the 1980s which contains an chapter about LIBINDX.

I've been delighted to be involved with the various initiatives to enhance the local heritage provision in Moray which I have mentioned previously. I know it is very much "my thing" and I risk boring people by banging on about it. However, it is worth saying that Moray has an exceptionally fine local collection, probably one of the top five in Scotland and that is why it is so important to see a new and really exciting strategy emerging for its future development. All the more so because it is so linked to economic development, partnership working, social inclusion and all the other priorities which are so rightly at the heart of the agenda for our local authorities. It is also a really commendable project because it brings together so many of the key business stakeholders in the area.

The Moray staff team, most of whom I've know for a long time, is so committed and enthusiastic. They continue to drive the service forward. They are also really good reflective practitioners, learning from what they've done and using that learning to enhance the service further. Alistair and Sheila Campbell run a great service, with a great team of colleagues. The people of Moray love their libraries (me included) and we are all very lucky to have excellent provision. Moray Council also demonstrates not inconsiderable foresight in recognising the crucial place which libraries have in their communities and using strategically to deliver so many of the key policy agendas and services.

The genetics of the librarian

This afternoon I am off to Glasgow as I am speaking at the Health Libraries Group's annual conference tomorrow morning. This has been a long standing invitation; in fact, ironically, the invitation was the last email I replied to before the Christmas holidays and the event itself tomorrow is the last engagement before my summer holidays. I am looking forward to it. My presentation is called "the genetics of the librarians" and it will look at the changing role of the information professional. I am, of course, going to view this from the perspective of a library school academic and ask some questions about the nature of people drawn to the profession, the nature and content of what we actually teach and its relevance to the ever-changing work environment and I'm going to ask some questions of ourselves and what we as a profession look like. Some of these are themes that I touched on in Belfast and they are things that I am very interested in. However, I think that I can also tease out some of these issues from a practitioner perspective too given all that I see and hear when I'm out and about and, particularly, what I've seen during this presidential year.

The programme for the conference looks extremely impressive with tremendous diversity in the range of topics being covered and many prominent speakers. One of the most impressive aspects is that there is a clear focus on value and impact (as you'd expect) in many of the sessions. I think other parts of our professional sector can learn a lot from health libraries in this respect.

On a completely different note, it has been our graduation ceremonies this week; always a very pleasant time as it is so rewarding to see students mark their success formally. For me, this year's highlight was the graduation of one of my PhD students, Kate Friday or should I say Dr Kate Friday. Kate has been looking at how family historians use the web for their research, how it has revolutionized genealogy and what the implications are for local studies collection in all of this. So, obviously, all themes very close to my own heart. I think it would be good in due course for Kate to share some of her findings with members of LocScot and I'm sure she'd be delighted to do that. And, while I'm on my familiar hobby-horse of local studies, can I just draw your attention to the new JISC Mail list that Thomas and Roana have established. If you are into local studies, please sign-up.

Local Studies agent provocateur

Yesterday, I had the great pleasure of speaking at the LocScot Local History Day School which was held in the A.K. Bell Library in Perth. Many of you know that I have a great interest in all things local studies so this was an event that I was really looking forward to and it didn't disappoint in any way.


The turn-out was very good and there was evident relish and enthusiasm for the role that our local studies collections play both in library terms but also in terms of wider Scottish society. I was thrilled when Eleanor McKay asked to me to speak at this event and also asked me to be thought provoking. I think I may have ended up putting the emphasis on the provoking but, I suppose, one of the roles of an academic is to ask the difficult questions and, whenever possible, to suggest possible solutions.

I adopted a quite self-critical approach, looking at our local studies collections individually and the sector as a whole and focussed in on some of the key areas that I think we need to address. These included issues such as losing users to the online providers, online presence and visibility, digital content and also the preoccupation with physical access to physical collections.

Local studies have a long and illustrious history going right back to the Public Library Acts in the 1850s and specific mention of them being made by WHK Wright at the inaugural meeting of the Library Association. Local studies users are the original lifelong learners, self-improvers who undertake intricate and complex, often multi-disciplinary, investigations and demonstrate real enthusiasm for their work.

However, our online presence in the local studies field could be better I'm afraid to say and I was pointing out some key examples such as the number of clicks it takes to get from Scotland's People to a local studies site. I also touched on the fact that lots of our websites speak about the "wealth of information" that our collections have but don't really give a good flavour of that wealth in an online environment. Brand local studies or, as I think, brand local history is also very important and I gave some suggestions on how this might be tackled. I quoted a piece of research done here at RGU, in which one family historian said "I wouldn't have thought of using the public library" and highlighted that we can't expect users to come to us and that we underestimate our users at our peril.

I did enjoy provoking discussion and debate and there was certainly a great buzz during the brainstorming sessions. I was also keen to get the group to think about the alliances and partnerships that could be created and mused about getting displays from events such as Local History Week out into shopping centres and supermarkets and working with companies and organisations through their Corporate Social Responsibility schemes.

So, lots of ideas, lots of debate and lots of discussion about the future of local studies collections which are, in my opinion, our other national library.

What I did on my Easter holidays.....

I was on holiday last week and very enjoyable it was too, apart from the snow on Tuesday. The weather being so foul at the beginning of the week meant that I could stay in, guilt-free, and do some family history. The results of my digging around ended up posing more questions than were answered, but doesn't it always? It's really interesting how so much of this kind of research can now be done from the comfort of home using online tools like Scotland's People or Family Search. I did, however, have to make a trip to the local studies collection in Elgin to photocopy Arradoul Episcopal Church's parish registers for the 1760s and 1770s (there will be a prize at conference for anyone who can pinpoint Arradoul).



In the course of my research last week, I made quite a lot of use of Ancestry which can be good but it can also be dangerous. Many people who post their family trees on Ancestry fail to do the necessary corroboration of facts, rely too heavily on information online, make speculative guesses and then post them as fact which in turn leads lots of others to copy the same mistake into their pedigrees and errors end up as being presented as truths. I encountered a lot of this last week and it often builds the frustration nicely. The internet has revolutionized the way in which genealogists ply their trade now but it is foolish to assume that it can all be done online. I wonder, however, how well our local studies collections are responding to the new generation of online family historians? Local studies is, as many of you know, something I'm very interested in and these unique collections provide us with a really distinctive picture of Scotland. There is a real challenge here for librarians looking after local collections; how do we get the meat of the collections more widely available (and not just for the family tree brigade important though that is). One of my PhD students, Kate Friday, has recently completed her doctoral research looking at "e-genealogy" and how family historians use the sources and also what lessons are to be learned for local studies collection in this virtual family history world. There are some very interesting results from her study about the visibility of our local collections online and the type of content that is available.

I am going to be tackling some of these issues when I speak at Locscot's Spring Seminar on Wednesday, 25th April at AK Bell in Perth. The day is about the future of local studies and, I think, a big part of that is going to be about local studies in an online world. Ironically enough, my own home area of Moray has a very good online tool LIBINDX which indexes a vast array of local sources, including newspapers and gravestones. But, there is plenty more to be done.


So what else did I do during my week off? Well, I had a couple of days in Edinburgh to see the new exhibition at the Queen's Gallery at Holyroodhouse and pretty spectacular it is too, with one corner of the room having drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo. And, then, the highlight of my sojourn in the capital was a trip to the zoo to see the pandas. I'd been concerned that we might not see them because of their mating rituals but by Thursday they were back on show. They were adorable and I want one but fear supplies of bamboo in Port Gordon are limited.


This week I'm delighted to be going to the LILAC Conference dinner in Glasgow. It is so good to have such a big, well-know library conference happening here in Scotland. Then next week it is off to Belfast for the CILIP Ireland / LAI Joint Conference at which I'm speaking about professional education now and in the future.