CILIP Event – CDG and London Group joint AGM and Talk by Annie Mauger

Last night’s combined event saw a good turn out at Ridgemount Street, for networking over a good spread of hot nibbles and drinks before the serious business started.

The two AGMs were rattled through quite quickly, although there was a point of discussion over how to continue with group activities in the face of reduced financing for branches and groups.  The London group in particular had found this difficult in 2010, partly due to a lack of expertise and confidence amongst their few committee members in running self-funding events (ie those charging for attendance, rather than being free).  CDG in contrast reported it had been running events on this basis since 2009.  There seems to be scope for sharing of expertise on this front and perhaps for some more jointly run events in future.

Onto the main speaker for the evening, as Annie manfully overcome both a nasty cold and Powerpoint technical difficulties to give a very interesting and uplifting talk about how CILIP is planning to face the future and succeed.  Some of the initiatives she described included:

Challenging Chief Librarians in charge of council library services, who may not be CILIP members, to join and lead the way for their staff in demonstrating how professional networking and CPD is of benefit.

Working more closely with SCONUL on joint advocacy to bring CILIP and the academic librarian community closer together

Working with other information professional groups and associations as part of the ‘Fragmentation of the Information Profession’ initiative

Review of how CILIP works with its Branches and Groups, so there is an agreed expectation of ‘if members give their money and join groups, they can expect a minimum of xx services in return’, with some SIG’s working in closer collaboration or even merging in some cases.

Review of qualification, accreditation and Chartership – especially focusing on cumbersome processes and advocating the benefits of professional qualification & development to universities and employers alike.

Annie set a challenging target for CILIP of reaching a total of 20,000 members by 2020.  In order to do this, she said that CILIP has to focus very clearly on being a membership driven organisation – making it very explicit what benefits members get in return for their subscription, clarify ‘who deals with what’ and how to communicate with CILIP, and reduce some of the ‘mystique’ or perceived cliquiness/impenetrability of the organisation.

- Nicola Franklin