"I lost myself in a sea of dreams, I was gone" (aka the one where I go to Library Camp)

Last weekend I went to Library Camp, an unconference held in Birmingham. This was my first time at Library Camp (at any unconference) and I'm planning a post on the experience in general (the early start! the cake!) when I've had chance to reflect a bit. 

However, I want to type up my notes from the sessions I attended while they're fresh in my mind. I'm not going to try to give an overview of each session (I'm sure other people will do that much better than I could), but these are some of the things I thought were useful in each (I don't necessarily agree with all these points, but they are things I took away as as worthy of further consideration. Strictly my impressions of each session, suspect the beauty of a group of attendees with such different experiences is that different people's impressions will be very different).

Session 1: Swearing

This was about being sworn at, not us doing the swearing! How to deal with aggression and bad language when we encounter it at work. Found this session really interesting as there was a range of different experiences, sectors and personal views.

• Response will vary depending on context
  e.g. if there are children present, whether it's a conversation between two library users or aimed at you
  Point was made that some people just use swearing as part of their vocabulary (e.g. a prison librarian's experience) and it's not always personal. If it is personal, it's generally warrants more of a reaction because of aggression behind it. 
• It might not always be the library users that are swearing at staff
  Some people reported that it's sometimes other members of staff/organisational partners that treat library staff badly.
• We shouldn't be looking for antagonism
  Sometimes the way we treat people can put them on edge and lead to a confrontation. This can be due to our own prejudices and done unconsciously e.g. watching a group of teenage boys carefully because we've had a bad experience with other teenage boys in the past
• Often the aggressive person isn't angry with you but has been made so by a different situation
  Trying to understand the problems of the person who is aggressive can help diffuse a situation (empathy strategy). However, it may be difficult to have the time/staff/capacity to do this. Point made that we may need to consider how to balance the needs of all service users. Need to consider whether there's an acceptable standard of behaviour users should abide by no matter how much we empathise with the reason behind their behaviour.
• The way the problem is later treated by management has a big impact on the way a member of staff handles the problem earlier
  Some training courses are more useful than others, some staff feel more supported than others. Most agreed it's important for management to accept it is a problem and value staff by acknowledging the upset they have had if there's a problem.
  

Session 2: Marketing

This was about how we market libraries. This is an area I spend lots of time thinking about, and I didn't get too much new out of it though it's always interesting to hear other people's experiences. (I think at the time I tweeted that I was using this session as 'no time', which I then realised was a pretty esoteric Gwyneth Jones reference. This gave me chance to have my own ideas. Incidentally, some lectures used to have this same effect, which is why my lecture notes are full of random pages of ideas of things I could do only vaguely linked to the topic.)

• What's in a name?
  Branding/image can be difficult to achieve. Some people liked the idea of moving from 'library' and 'librarian' to an alternative that encompasses their role more e.g. 'information consultant'. Not worth change for change sake though, some places moving back to more traditional language.
• Are we in business?
  Yes! Promotion of services is key, partnership working, networking etc
• What do we want to market? What is our offer?
  Our offer is often too wide, we have something different to offer to everybody so should target our marketing. Identifying difference between core service and added value services and finding ways to market these effectively.
• How do we do it?
  Variety of experiences for people in the room, including: getting press to talk to members of public about services to personalise the story, having non-threatening outreach such as market stall or kiosk and allowing people to approach, using ipads to demonstrate a range of services remotely, charging deposit for course/event which is given back on attendance to ensure turnout 
• Barriers can exist in organisations
  e.g. some libraries have to go through the marketing department of their organisation for everything, which can lead to not being able to use social media to promote services, extra cost of marketing materials within guidelines etc

One of my ideas which was vaguely on topic was a branding with 'library as...' with different things (Library as place, library as books, library as information, library as support etc). I imagined how it would look and the potential use. Maybe one day...


Session 3: Media Literacy with young people 

This session wandered round a bit with a variety of issues to do with media, information literacy and varying ages of children/young people.

• What is media literacy? Critical thinking? Searching skills? Validity and reputability of sources?
  
• How can plagiarism be stopped?
  One way could be to use blogs/wikis to get children involved in their own content creation to emphasise how they would want their work to be treated
  (I think you could probably teach this very well with pretty small children by putting their work on display on the wall with the wrong names on - young children have a well developed sense of what's fair and not fair)
• Is this the job of the library?
  People from different sectors in the sessions so this came from different perspectives. School librarians trying to get media literacy into their schools can find it difficult to teach in isolation from subject. Ofsted inspection might make it more likely for schools to see library teaching as valuable but as it's not mandatory for schools to even have a library this could be a way off. Public libraries might run sessions about information literacy but get better take-up with names such as 'Helping your child with their homework'. No-one mentioned school visits to library/partnership working (*of interest for dissertation..)

Afternoon sessions to follow...


"Come Follow Me" - Sophie Madeleine