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

CILIP London Group Meeting - Biddy Fisher's Presentation

Last night I spent an enjoyable couple of hours at this event, networking and listening to Biddy Fisher’s (CILIP President 2010) “swan song”, as she put it.  

Biddy was describing the process and outcomes of the Defining our Professional Future review work CILIP has been carrying out over the past year.  She pointed out that events over the course of the year had made the review even more vital and timely than they could have envisaged at the outset.

The work of Research by Design was praised, with Biddy explaining that it is just as important for CILIP and its members to accord other professions respect for their expertise as it is for us to expect it for ourselves.

At the beginning of her talk Biddy asked all the ‘tweeters’ in the audience to stand up, and a good half of the people there duly got to their feet – as Biddy said on Twitter this morning “Half the audience last night #cilipldn were Tweeps - Brilliant!”

On a more sobering note, references were made throughout the evening to the impact of the economic situation on members and on CILIP itself, with savings having to be made in 2011 of £1.1m.  Annie Mauger (CILIP CEO) didn’t have full figures to hand but in answer to a question from the floor promised to find out what proportion of the total operational budget this represented.

The overwhelming outcome from the focus groups, questionnaire and stakeholder telephone interviews was reported to be that CILIP should focus on:

Promotion

Advocacy

Lobbying

Which, as Biddy said, amount to ‘campaigning’.  Biddy paid tribute to several members, particularly amongst the new professionals, who are working actively and successfully in this regard, especially highlighting Ned Potter for his ‘Outside the Echo Chamber’ work and Johanna Anderson for getting on Channel 4 with her Friends of Gloucestershire Libraries campaign.

- Nicola Franklin