CILIP North West Celebration Day 20th March 2019 by Marg Charlesworth, CILIP North West Blog Editor

CILIP North West's Celebration Day event, designed to celebrate all things libraries, was held in the newly opened Altrincham Public Library.

The new Altrincham Library 

Sarah Curran, Head of Customer Service in Trafford Council, started the day with an interesting presentation about the successes and challenges she has experienced over the past five years as part of her role managing the Trafford Public Library Service. 

Sarah described how the service has evolved since 2014 when she was faced with the need to cut a substantial part of the libraries budget.

One key development Sarah has made has been to work with developers and other organisations and co-locating new libraries alongside other services. For example, Old Trafford library is now situated in a Trafford Housing Trust building on the site of the former library and community centre. The library runs throughout the whole of the ground floor with no ‘distinct’ space other than the children’s section. There is also a café, 2 GP practices, a pharmacy, opticians, nursery, a hairdressers and apartments. This helps to expose the library service to lots of new users. 

Sarah explained how by joining in the conversation with developers in the early stages, she can request how the library space in the new buildings will be kitted out ready for the library staff, PC's and books to move into when the building opens. By working in partnership, the library service has not had to pay for the buildings or the fit out. Two more new co-located libraries are currently being planned. 

Sarah described other changes that have been made in Trafford Libraries such as the abolition of fines, the use of Open+ technology which enables people to use the library when they are not staffed, partnerships with third sectors and the use of volunteers. 

The presentation concluded with some encouraging figures regarding increases in both issues and visitors as well as a summary of the benefits to the service of becoming part of the Greater Manchester group of libraries. 

Trafford Libraries 

David Stewart CILIP President 

Our next speaker was David Stewart, Regional Director of Health Libraries and Knowledge Services and new CILIP President. David's presentation focused on his CILIP presidential themes for 2019; 

• Research, Evidence and Impact
• The North

David started by outlining the structure of CILIP with its presidential team, boards and national committees, staff, member networks and members. He was keen to stress that CILIP is the organisation that we, the members, make it and encouraged us to contribute to the discussion.

Next, David introduced his first presidential theme; evidence-based practice for all information professionals. David urged us to build any research we undertake upon the existing evidence base. He stressed the importance of making sure that research outputs are easily findable and sustainable as well as the need to bring ‘ground up’ and ‘top down’ research initiatives together. We as a profession need to share what we are doing with each other; ideas that work and those that do not. 

CILIP has looked at the sources of evidence that Information Professionals are using in a variety of contexts and for a variety of purposes such as service development and influencing others. Examples of evidence sources include professional journals, case studies and academic journals, to name a few.
David described three ways in which CILIP is responding to the demand for a research and evidence base:

• The establishment of a Research Coalition, bringing together academics and employers to develop a common Research Framework 
• Fundraising for a pilot initiative to develop ‘test cases’ – small Evidence Bases to address specific sector needs 
• Exploring practical long-term solutions to making research and evidence more accessible using existing infrastructure 

David gave a neat summary of how librarians might report the impact their services make: for example, think about what difference your library has made to your organisation and tell that story, if possible include data such as how much money it has saved. He added that ‘softer’ data such as comments and feedback from users is also important to include to demonstrate the impact your service has had on them.

The second presidential theme focused on celebrating the innovative and excellent work of libraries and information services that are based in the North of England. We were encouraged to bring these to David’s attention as he would like to showcase them to the rest of the country.

It was great to have David with us over lunch and into the afternoon as this provided lots of opportunities to chat and share ideas (as well as to admire the presidential medal!)

Sharing Promotional Skills and Tools 

The final session of the day was an interactive workshop led by Lisa Jeskins looking at how we can how to promote our service and ourselves. It was interesting to pool our cross-sector experience regarding how we market the different services in which we work in order to communicate with influencers and stakeholders. This is something we feel much more comfortable doing compared with promoting ourselves as individuals. 

Lisa explained the relevance of theories such as Cialdini’s Six Laws of Influence to both self and service promotion.

 Cialdini, R. (2007) Influence: the psychology of persuasion. Rev. ed. New York: Harper Business.

For example, the Law of Liking; studies have shown that people learn more from others who ‘talk the same language’ as them (e.g. use the same terminology, understand the issues with which they are grappling etc) 

We also discussed Stephen Covey’s Seven Traits of Influential People. 

Covey, S. (2013) The 7 habits of highly effective people. 25th Anniversary ed. New York: Rosetta Books.

We discussed the importance of Empathy, ‘What does this situation look like from the top of someone else’s mountain?’ Lisa gave us some examples to illustrate that it’s always worth doing some homework on this. 

Some key takeaways from the workshop are included below. 

For promoting your service: 

• Demonstrate the benefits. Show the value and impact of what you do – facts, data, results and feedback or comments from users (see David’s advice above)
• Segment your audience – one message is not relevant to all
• Keep repeating your message, use a range of formats

For promoting yourself:

• Demonstrate your skills by including key achievements at the top of your CV
• In interviews be specific about your role- ‘we’ did this but ‘my’ contribution was ….. The panel are interested in what YOU have done.
• Help others, be useful, be an expert in your area (see the Law of Reciprocity above – people will be more inclined to help you in return)
• Ask for feedback from others 
• Keep an active log of achievements 
• Develop your resilience through reflection – what went well? What didn’t go so well? What can I improve on? 

CILIP North West would like to thank our three guest speakers for such interesting presentations, Trafford Libraries for hosting the event and everyone who attended. 




Further reading recommended by Lisa Jeskins:

 Ned Potter: https://www.ned-potter.com/toolkit (This has a link to 4 chapters that are available OA)

Eileen Elliot de Saez: https://www.bookdepository.com/Marketing-Concepts-for-Libraries-Information-Services-Eileen-Elliott-De-Saez/9781856048705 This is a link to the 3rd ed but seems to be out of stock at the moment. The 2nd edition would still be pretty relevant and most university libraries with a library school have a copy. 

Stephen Covey: https://www.franklincovey.com/the-7-habits.html

Mindtools: https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newSTR_94.htm

Skills you need: https://www.skillsyouneed.com/lead/marketing-skills.html

#CILIPNW2019