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Biall brighton2015
The document discusses the experiences of Emily Allbon, a law librarian, who faced challenges in her collaborative efforts following a change in library leadership. It highlights the importance of collaboration within libraries and across academic institutions to foster innovation, community, and resilience in the face of disruptive changes in higher education. Additionally, it outlines various successful collaborations and strategies for engaging with different stakeholders, emphasizing the value librarians bring to diverse projects.
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Biall brighton2015
- 1. Infiltrate and conquer? Showingthe world what librarians can do Emily Allbon @lawbore #BIALL2015
- 2. A sad story… •Law Librarian for 14 yrs • City University London • Great relationship with the law school • Lots of recognition for my work • Freedom to develop a very varied role
- 3. but… • Arrival ofnew Director of Library • Felt I was too involved with law school • Sought to dilute and cut my role “not a team player”
- 4. Going onto thedark side…
- 5. What?!! And youwant me to listen to you after that???
- 6. A successful, collaboration-rich libraryand information service will: • be part of the shift to open-access scholarly communication • be entrepreneurial and mutate services, take risks, and learn from (regular) failures to confront disruptive technologies • collaborate within and outside our professional and institutional boundaries, working as part of multi- service teams and with organizations and businesses outside our perceived sector walls From: Rebecca Davies ‘The Changing Higher Education Context’ in Melling & Weaver: Collaboration in Libraries and Learning Environments (2013), p.10-11
- 7. Benefits of collaborationwith those outside libraries • It makes new relationships possible – beneficial to all • We are in the ‘edgeless’ era of Higher Education; convergence & holistic shared services rule. • Need to make our value explicit as traditionally our services much more obvious. #win
- 8. Connect & collaborate– avoid the Echo chamber • “A situation in which information, ideas or beliefs are amplified or reinforced by transmission and repetition inside an ‘enclosed’ system” (See more via Ned Potter and Laura Woods http://www.slideshare.net/thewikiman/echolib- newcastle-2)
- 10. • Looking outfor Calls for Papers at academic law conferences (BILETA, ALT) • Writing articles • Tweeting and connecting with lawyers, going to events • Joined Editorial Board of the Law Teacher • Entered the Routledge/ ALT Teaching Law with Technology Prize I muscled in by…
- 11. There’s a lotof potential support & collaborators out there!
- 12. Mrs Bennett &friends in Bath
- 13. Connect & collaborate •I’ve worked with: – Academics – Students – Ed Tech peeps – Students – Alumni – Publishers – Other law librarians – Lawyers
- 14. With academics: Learnmore • Partof Lawbore website – focus on legal skills • Multimedia resources • Worked on Mooting section with an academic colleague, developing resources together. Talking Essays • Bank of essays of varying standards in core subjects • Written & audio feedback
- 15. With academics Marketing videoscribe •LLM International Business Law • Approached by programme director to communicate with potential students in a different way
- 16. With students Sharing experiences •Via Learnmore (if skills related) • Via blog Future Lawyer (if profession-focused) • Gives them the chance to raise profile, write for fun, communicate with peers • Helps us foster community feel & show what’s going on out there • Peer learning – inspire others!
- 17. Collaborating with students •Lots of potential here! • Maria Bell & Jane Secker at LSE – Student Ambassadors for Digital Literacy (SADL) project • Collaboration between the Learning, Technology & Innovation team (Lti) and Library to: “explore the role that student ambassadors can play in developing and integrating digital and information literacy into the curriculum” See: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsesadl/
- 18. With alumni Sharing experiences online… •Interviews, articles …and in person • Bringing them in for mooting workshops, careers talks • Creating opportunities for our current students (e.g. UKHRB)
- 19. With publishers Anatomy ofa law report • Helping students understand the layout of a case within a law report • Audio hotspots narrated by Paul Magrath from ICLR *Also Halsbury’s Laws of England – what is it for? with Lexis for the blog.
- 20. Summer collaboration plans •Research resources around a virtual brief – videos, animation (with academic colleague) to support BPTC students • Induction week exercise around Legal Writing & legal landmarks (with help of Academic Support team) for first year undergraduates • Creation of snappy video resources for new law students (with alumni)
- 21. Other experiences • MartinO’Connor – UCC Library • Collaboration on an exhibition (July-Sep 2014) about an iconic bar and nightclub in Cork, Sir Henry’s.
- 22. More on SirHenry’s collaboration… • Initial spark from a tweet • Collaboration between a librarian, a DJ/Promoter and an academic but also the massive Sir Henry’s community • Collaboration encouraged via social media (Twitter, fb & a project blog) • Benefit to library – national media coverage, brought those to UCC who had never been, connections with town.
- 23. Other egs • Uni-widecollaborative Learning Spaces projects involving Facilities, IT, Library, Student Services, Students Union, Schools – Campus Hub: University of Victoria, Wellington NZ – Saltire Centre, Glasgow Caledonian – Information Commons, Sheffield Collaboration between academic & support departments key to success. • Collaborative Data projects across many universities – Library Impact Data Project stemming from University of Huddersfield.
- 24. Barriers • Existing attitudes •History • Different cultures • Communication • Autonomy See Cook & Lewis (2007) Student and Academic Affairs Collaboration: the divine comity, National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA)
- 25. What do wehave to offer ‘outsiders’?
- 26. Lots to offereg. 1 Nicola Roles in library world: Researcher at The Guardian, Researcher at Lehman Brothers Current role: Director, Anti-Money Laundering, Deutsche Bank Skills still utilised: 1. Ability to organise the work of the team to ensure that we can find the information again if required to produce it to senior management, the regulator or law enforcement. The information collated is varied and may include correspondence, interview records, bank account data and management information. Producing information for any of these requestors can be required within short deadlines so having an effective system for organising information is essential. 2. Knowing how to find information and leveraging the knowledge of colleagues and peers is undoubtedly important when conducting an investigation
- 27. Lots to offereg. 2 Chris Roles in library world: Law Librarian, Cardiff University, Director of Library & Information Services (Library, Learning Tech, IT), BPP Current role: Head of Student Technology & Learning Resources at Pearson College (more of a CIO role – listening to business, works out what business needs & then articulates to tech team) Skills still utilised: 1. Good at translating business needs into technology needs 2. Working out relative value of things 3. Conversing with techies (explaining needs & listening to technical restraints) 4. Management – budgets, staff, contracts
- 28. Lots to offereg. 3 Vanessa Roles in library world: Library Assistant, BPP, Collection Development Librarian, BPP, Law Librarian, Kings College London Current role: Ebook Sales Specialist, Proquest – soon to be Director of International Sales, Geoscience World. Involves presenting at conferences & selling different ebook acquisition strategies like pda, dealing with consortia & completing tenders in order to broaden reach. Skills still utilised: 1. Library induction talks really helped me become more comfortable presenting. 2. Knowledge of how library budgets work helped me sell more efficiently to libraries (just knowing what a MARC record is gave me huge advnatage over other sales people) 3. Dealing with difficult law students at enquiry desk.
- 29. Lots to offereg. 4 Lisa Roles in library world: Information Officer for Telecoms, Media & Tech group, Freshfields (research, current awareness & managing ‘info bank’ of legal precedents. Information Officer, FSA (managing e-resources, enquiry desk work on legal/business research, bit of cataloguing) Current role: Senior Knowledge Manager for Global Corporate Finance Business, KPMG (work with country leaders in the business to help define a knowledge strategy for their business, looking at size/focus of business & short/long-term priorities Skills still utilised: Help people articulate what they need – making sense of an immediate requirement, understanding a situation – fleshing it out and predicting what might be needed in the future. Ability to get to grips with complex ideas. Communications skills.
- 30. Lots to offereg. 5 Rebecca Roles in library world: Library Assistant, Norton Rose, Librarian, Addleshaw Booth & Co, Information Officer & Senior Information Officer, Norton Rose (research/enquiry work, cataloguing, current awareness & training) Current role: Freelancer Indexer at Thomson Reuters & OUP. Abstracting & indexing legal and regulatory journal articles for Westlaw LJI. Creating electronic records for domestic & international legislation and cases to enrich content on their databases. Skills still utilised: Abstracting/writing Indexing Cataloguing/records management
- 31. Lots to offereg. 6 Susanna Roles in library world: Research Librarian, Trainer, Library Manager at Slaughters, Dentons and Baker & McKenzie Current role: CSR Manager at Baker & McKenzie. Manage charitable partnerships and staff volunteering. Help coordinate pro bono programme. Coordinate sustainability activities. Also manage some of the social mobility work experience programmes. Skills still utilised: Clarifying needs - dealing with approaches from charities etc, working out where to direct, what to focus on. Analysing needs of enquirer. Being a "hub"...as librarian built role as point of contact, place to come with queries, problems. Become a connector within organisation. V useful when pulling together groups of volunteers. Research skills...benchmarking, what are other organisations doing? Have helped refine search strings for CSR news alerts!
- 32. Librarians are: • Superbat needs analysis • Ace organisers • Great at networking – knowing who to go to for that specific bit of info • Tenacious – never giving up in our hunt for information • Understanding tech • Managers • Teachers • The ‘hub’ within an organisation – connecting people …on top of all the traditional skills!
- 33. Need some extraammo to encourage people to work with you? Skilling up? • ITIL – IT service management methodology (service requests, change management, incident, problem, capacity management, service improvement) • HEA Fellowship – Fellow/Senior/Principal • Introductory Certificate /PG cert/MA in Academic Practice
- 34. What makes acollaboration work? • Enthused committed team members • Individuals who each offer something different to the project • Schedule & deadlines – a timeline with a little flexibility worked in • Everyone needs to get something out of it • Willingness to compromise to find a solution
- 35. How do weget people on board? • Talk about the benefits • Use something visual to convince them • Use examples of things done elsewhere • Align to vision & strategy
- 36. Get out thereand collaborate like crazy…
- 37. Thanks for listening! •https://uklibchat.wordpress.com/2 015/03/31/feature-23-a-recent- interview-with-a-librarian-and-his- experience-of-collaborating- outside-libraries/ (UCC exhibition) • Maria Bell & Jane Secker, ‘Transitions from School to Higher Education: Understanding the Needs of Undergraduates at LSE’ Information Literacy, Lifelong Learning and Digital Citizens – Second European Conference, ECIL 2014, Croatia, October 20- 23, 2014, p.309-318
- 38. Image credits • Sadface: 11th May 2009 by Jaina https://www.flickr.com/photos/pizzagirl/3522509847 • Bricks: Brick wall by Lars Thomsen https://www.flickr.com/photos/solarflare/4632635380/ • Rocket: Crazy rides rockets by Brandon Doran https://www.flickr.com/photos/brandondoran/5311343572 • Social Media Marketing Madness http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/23861/10- Social-Media-Cartoons-Guaranteed-to-Make-You- Smile.aspx All others purchased from istockphoto
Editor's Notes
- #2 This session looks at how exciting things can emerge by creating opportunities and forging partnerships with those outside of the library world. The speaker will showcase both established and newly developed learning resources from the lawbore site created with input and in collaboration with academics, e-learning specialists, students, alumni and publishers. Covered will be insights into tools and technologies used. There will be a look at strategies on how to successfully connect with stakeholders (students/faculty in this case): what works best and why, as well as effectively communicating big ideas to potential partners, encouraging them to want to get involved. Emily will also explore personal experiences around how these partnerships have enabled her to have far greater reach than envisaged within her institution.
- #3 In charge of mooting Organised events Took initiative to do things in collaboration with others
- #4 Was originally going to call this talk ‘Traitor or innovator’ Called me a diva, traitor and declared that I was not a team player The situation was dire and I had to get out or lose what made me love my job.
- #5 So I swapped to academia, teaching within the law school. I teach Legal Method, English Legal System and Land Law currently. I’m a personal tutor to 72 students, and teach the entire LLB1 cohort weekly which this year was around 350 students. Moot Director. It’s pretty unusual to make this step and I’ve been very lucky to have the opportunity (law school rescued me). New lecturers are generally expected to have PhDs and significant publications. However they wouldn’t have done this if I hadn’t been for the contribution I had made to the school – contributions that basically equate to assessing needs of users, seeing some gaps, having some good engaging ideas to push these forward and to bring others on board if they have different expertise. Stuff I’m sure many of you do frequently.
- #6 Despite leaving the profession I a large part of my heart remains with librarianship and my work still involves many of the activities I loved to do before. The thing that really hurt was being accused of not being a team player when for years I had been working with so many different people, just not necessarily librarians within my own institution. Librarians are fantastic teachers, organisers and collaborators – I want to remain a part of that.
- #8 What do we get out of it??? As faculty research and teaching practices continue to shift in response to their rapidly changing information environment, their uses of the library also change, as does their perception of the value the library offers. Faculty used to rely almost exclusively on the library for the scholarly materials they needed for research and teaching, and librarians guided faculty to and otherwise facilitated the discovery of these materials. As scholars have grown better able to reach needed materials directly online, going to or using the library is not essential to carrying out research and so faculty are turning to other options. Guthrie, K. and Housewright, R. (2010) Repackaging the Library: what do faculty think? In Climbing Out of the Box: repackaging libraries for survival, special issue, Journal of Library Administration, 51 (1), 77–104
- #9 A few years ago there was a fair bit of buzz about the ‘echo chamber’ – basically the idea that as librarians we spend too much time telling other librarians about the great work we do. It’s so important to get out there and be part of the networks and communities that your clients/users rely upon – for me this meant engaging with the academic law community.
- #11 We have to move in different circles from those we are familiar with. It can be intimidating being out of comfort zone Social media has made it a little easier in some ways Go to non-library conferences
- #12 It’s a big community out there – external to the library, your organisation, your country even. We know how much support we can get from other librarians internationally – sharing experiences, being helped with tricky enquiries, collaborating on projects (shout-out to Alison and Deb) Deb and I met at Internet for Law conference – Alison and I did paper together at AALL some years ago but what about those other parts of the business or institution? Are there opportunities for getting involved?
- #14 Mostly on my own prompting.. I’ll tell you about a few examples…
- #16 Technology always helps to engage people – they want swanky, shiny things with their name on it! https://vimeo.com/130077230
- #22 This summer UCC Library is mounting an exhibition to document the distinctive history of this legendary and iconic Cork City music venue - Sir Henry's. Sir Henry’s bar and nightclub, located on South Main Street, Cork (1978 – 2003) was renowned locally, nationally and internationally for its vibrant music scene. It is hoped that this exhibition, which launches Wednesday July 9 and will run until Saturday September 27, will be a catalyst towards establishing an archive related to Sir Henry’s and the wider popular music scene in Cork. The objectives of the exhibition, curated by Martin O Connor, (UCC Library) Stevie Grainger (Radio Presenter and DJ at Sir Henry’s) and Eileen Hogan (School of Applied Social Studies, UCC), are: To begin the process of creating a permanent archive of popular music in UCC Library starting with Sir Henry’s and branching out into Cork’s wider popular music scene To document a very much hidden history of an important part of Cork’s recent social, cultural and musical past To preserve this history for future interested parties To engage with the wider Cork Community as part of UCC’s outreach programme
- #23 Collaboration – Stevie G & Eileen Hogan (academic) Applied Social Sciences Dept at UCC. PhD on Cork Live Music scene Community – those who owned the club, worked there, clubbers, bands who played there, drinkers. Gathered material from them – tickets stubs, set lists, flyers, photos, clothing, records. Also gained certain items from the family involved in setting the club up originally. Vital to get a well-rounded exhibition – from both dance and rock sides. Also wanted personal stories, narratives, information. Benefits – press had interviews and features on the exhibition. Irish press as well as some nationals. 200 people at launch, then visiting every day.
- #24 As libraries move from being focused around collections to students –learning spaces require the collaboration and input on a cross-institutional; basis. Integrated learning environments where students can work alone or collaboratively, space flexibility. Also students themselves. Some universities have also lead collaborative projects on behalf of their institutions – developing and managing learning spaces outside of the library: Bradford University, University of Bolton, Teeside and the University of Cumbria amongst those. Portsmouth, Exeter. LIDP analysed the non/low use of library resources over a four-year period (2005 to 2009). The initial driver of this work came from a project looking at equality impact assessments. Library usage data, defined as the number of e- resources accessed, the number of book loans and the number of physical accesses to the library, was compared against student attainment. The initial work suggested a strong correlation between library usage and degree results obtained by students, notably with a significant underuse of library resources at both faculty/school and course level emerging as a factor. Correlation between low student library activity and non-attainment. Later collaboration with 7 UK university libraries – Bradford, De Montford, Exeter, Lincoln, Liverpool John Moores, Salford, Teeside.
- #25 Turf warfare & territoriality
- #26 I asked a series of individuals who used to be law librarians and went on to other professions to tell me what library skills they still rely upon today.
- #29 not that librarians are difficult customers! It's just if you can deal with a BVC student threatening to sue you and turn that around then you can deal with anything...
- #30 2. I now work for KMPG as a Senior Knowledge Manager for the Global Corporate Finance business and I’ve been in my role for 10 years. I work closely with the country leaders in the business to help define a knowledge strategy for their business, looking at the size and focus of the business and what their priorities are for their business in the short term and over a longer period. I work with them to understand which markets and clients they want to attract, how they need to collaborate with colleagues in other geographies (either to share business opportunities or to leverage knowledge and experience) and what resources they need to do their day to day work. I then establish which resources they need and which communications channels will support them. Much of this involves connecting people to technological solutions, but this is never easy and a lot of awareness/training both in process and tools is necessary. As well as working with individual countries I need to ensure that what I do fits into the overarching KPMG Advisory knowledge strategy (the Advisory part of KPMG is essentially the consulting part) and that people are made aware of how others work and what they do, ensuring that teams do no operate in silos and are able to demonstrate a ‘one firm’ approach with their clients. 3. The main skill I’ve taken from librarianship is the ability to help people articulate what it is they need. My experience has been in corporate environments which are pressurised and early on I learnt that asking ‘what do you need?’ doesn’t necessarily result in someone articulating perfectly what they’d like. Much of what I do now is very similar to business analysis and I think that my early experiences at Freshfields helped me to develop skills in making sense of an immediate requirement and understanding a situation, fleshing it out and also predicting what might be needed in the future. The ability to get to grips with often complex ideas and information has also been a key skill. When I joined Freshfields I had no legal or Telecoms knowledge or experience and similarly when I joined KPMG I knew very little about Corporate Finance, but I think librarians develop the ability to analyse a situation and identify what they need to know in order to be able to support their customers/clients/team and what can be ignored. People sometimes assume I have a much deeper knowledge of Corporate Finance than I do and I think that is because I can talk knowledgably about areas that are important to the people I support. Communication skills play a big part in what I do now and were critical in my previous roles. Not just in the obvious area of dealing with egos and personalities, but also in dealing with the complexity of global working. I work in a global team and manage a number of colleagues who work in our offshore team in India. Cultural understanding and sensitivity is key. I began to develop these skills at Freshfields working with people at all levels in many different geographies and now identify communication skills as being the critical factor in the smooth running and cohesion of the team I work in.
- #32 Clarifying needs: used on enquiry desk, v important still. Dealing with approaches from charities etc, working out where to direct, what to focus on. Analysing needs of enquirer translates to analysing needs of an organisation. Being a "hub"...as librarian built role as point of contact, place to come with queries, problems. Had become a connector within organisation. V useful when pulling together groups of volunteers. Also still use research skills...benchmarking, what are other organisations doing? Have helped refine search strings for CSR news alerts!
- #37 With other non-library depts. in your organisation With other librarians in the UK and beyond With your users