INSIGHT President’s View
Being a virtual President I
’M now over halfway through my term of office. I won’t mince words, it’s been tough! Lacking the affirmation that comes with physical interaction
has proved a challenge. I’ve not yet developed (and I’ve yet to meet someone who has) virtual peripheral vision. It’s difficult therefore to gauge the impact of the initiatives I’ve put in place as I am unable to “read the room” in the way I might were I leading an event. Conversely, I have “met” more people and had more in-depth conversations with members than would have been possible pre Covid. I look forward to the regular “In conversation with…” sessions. Everyone I have spoken to (nearly two dozen) has been generous with their time. Each has had a story to tell and some very sound advice to pass on. In the past few months, I’ve heard some very inspirational addresses. One that stood out for me was at CILIP Scotland’s Annual Conference from keynote Kerry Hudson (
https://kerryhudson.co.uk). You can tell an author/storyteller when they say: “It’s genuinely no overstatement to tell you I don’t think I’d be alive today without libraries.”
Kerry’s vivid description of the role a Library played in her formative years was both moving and inspirational and drew comparison with a similar address I’d heard a few years back from food poverty campaigner Jack Monroe (
https://bit.ly/3r4iH85), a strong supporter of PlanZheroes, the charity I was a Founding Trustee of. It’s said you can tell the standing of a person by the stories people tell about them when they’ve gone, so the recently departed Lotti Henley must be looking down on us with pride. Lotti, one of the “gang of three” behind the idea of tackling surplus food waste that became PlanZheroes, passed recently at the grand old age of 94. Having worked together I featured her in the “Who I admire (and why)” section of my website (https://
bit.ly/3whYVGY) and it was lovely to see her life honoured in The Times last weekend in a very moving tribute
14 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL DIGITAL
“European Princess who founded a food charity”. All three, Kerry, Jack and Lotti, have known desperate times and found comfort in books!
‘In conversation with…’: Stories, advice and keywords that stuck
Despite being involved in conferences and AGM’s I did manage to get in a couple of chats, with Alison Day and Chair of CILIP’s Metadata & Discovery Group, Dr Diane Pennington. Though in different parts of the ‘industry’, Diane helping to educate tomorrow’s librarians and Alison providing better knowledge to support clinicians, both have drawn on core skills developed through librarianship. They’ve adapted to virtual working, providing remote support to colleagues and students and in Diane’s case, re-engineering her teaching approach including arranging virtual placements! Unsurprisingly her university has risen by 25 places in the global Library & Information School rankings. When Diane suggested how challenging it can be to let people into your home environment and that virtual teaching (via Zoom or Teams) is harder without visual affirmation, I nodded. This comment from Alison captures the changing role of Knowledge & Library Service practitioners in Health, reflecting a shift from merely capturing and distributing, to curating and communicating; not just finding, but analysing and identifying who will benefit from knowing!
“Five years ago, we would send out a list. Today we send out a summary.”
This proactive stance is repeated through their push towards improved health information literacy and language. Here’s a few more of their wise words:
“Be open to look at things through other lenses. Get comfortable with technology. Go out and explore what it can do and LEARN together.”
“Better signage, better sources, better letters.”
Paul Corney (
president@cilip.org.uk) is President of CILIP.
www.cilip.org.uk/
I have slots free for Thursdays in October and would love to include you:
President@cilip.org.uk.
Keywords
Proactive; determined; resilience; metadata; resilience; entrepreneur; adaptability.
Presidential Debate
I’m hoping many of you attended the recent debate. Thanks, Kate, Isobel, Sue and Shelley for your amazing contributions. If you missed it live, you can watch it here https://vimeo. com/571556079.
The third will be held on 29 September. We’ve lined up some incredible international speakers to discuss, the future of urban centres as we adapt to distributed working environments. What do these changes mean for our towns, cities and High Streets? How can knowledge, librarians and information professionals continue to adapt services to address the new realities of daily life, and what can we do to ensure that nobody gets left behind?
Presidential musings I hope you enjoyed Mike Wall’s story and, like me, are eagerly anticipating reading Kate Thompson’s on p. 36 of this issue.
And finally
Please bear with me for a while if I am not as prominent. After 18 months of juggling too many balls, I need a time out so I can return refreshed and reinvigorated for the fourth quarter when I hope I might get to meet some of you face to face! IP
July-August 2021
‘‘
I have “met” more people and had more in-depth conversations with members than would have been possible pre Covid.
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