CaKE 2 took place in February 2015, so a long time ago now. However, I made copious notes at the time, so they’ve jogged my memory sufficiently that I feel I can talk about the event with an air of authority. But if I’ve missed anything, or anything piques your interest further, you can access the Storify here and the main CaKE blog here.
First was Lucy Welch, talking about the accessibility issues of non-print legal deposit materials, which was the subject of her dissertation. Now publishers are able to choose to provide LD copies as print or non-print, obviously it’s cheaper for them to go for non-print; however this causes a number of issues for LD libraries trying to offer access to these materials:
Her conclusion was that there is a wide gap between user expectation and the reality, but that libraries are firmly on the side of the readers so improvement in the situation is likely.
Liz Osman then took to the stage, discussing what she learned at the Rare Books and Special Collections Group (RBSCG) conference. This was with a view to creating a special space for the rare books in her library, so this talk was specifically geared towards improving knowledge of housing rare books collections in the non-specialist library.
The conference covered a wide variety of projects. One of the tips Liz pressed home was when planning for something like this, to ask for everything, so if you have to make cuts you've got more to work with. Another useful thing to note is that the British Library Collections Care team will come and do free monitoring of a rare books space, but offer paid services for anything more.
Other lessons Liz learned for rehousing projects were:
I think this was a useful talk, because there’s a lot of practical advice there which is applicable to all projects, not just those relating to special collections.
The next talk was from Celine Carty, who attended the Cataloguing and Indexing Group (CIG) conference. This was a more general overview of what the conference is like, which is helpful for anyone wondering if this conference is suitable for them.
For something so specific, it actually covers a wide area, and all kinds of libraries, from BBC footage metadata to the pharmaceuticals industry. Talks can be quite technical, but Celine assured us there wasn’t too much RDA! It’s quite a small conference, so attendees don't have to choose between talks, everyone attends everything. There were two points that Celine really impressed upon us:
It certainly sounds like a conference I’d like to attend at least once, just to get the flavour of what’s happening in cataloguing. I’m not a cataloguer, but I have to catalogue, so knowing where to go for the best information would be really helpful.
Clair Castle covered her experience at the UK Serials Group events. My notes say check out the blogpost for this one, which is available here. The talk touched on a number of things, covering altmetrics, good networking, open access, things libraries should be providing (such as getting libraries to do Open Access instead of academics). She did that it could be quite overwhelming, as these are quite big conferences.
The next talk was a very practical one: Claire Sewell and Katherine Sendall, with Presenting Conference Posters – Some Top Tips! The presenters drew on considerable experience for this talk, which made it highly accessible and full of ideas for implementation. Advice and comments included:
The next talk was one I was particularly interested in, as it focused on an event I couldn’t make in the end: Chris Barker, with UX and ethnographic methods for librarians.
It was a very practical day, full of discussion of methods, including cognitive mapping, interviews and diaries. One particularly successful method of gaining feedback (used in a lot of college and faculty libraries around Cambridge!) was the graffiti wall – somewhere with post-its and pens where users could write comments (‘can we have sofas’, ‘lights not working’, and so on); informality works well. The workshop then included the attendees trying things themselves to get idea of how users feel.
On the whole I’m starting to have mixed feelings about the usefulness of UX in libraries – at least, UX in my library. I think it works best in a large, diverse library, where maybe you have a lot of repeat visitors (like students in college/faculty libraries), and you don’t really get to know how they work and what they’re succeeding and failing at when using the library (or choosing not to). This isn’t so much the case in the library here, where the library staff engage directly with every user, every time.
There are other aspects I’m not so comfortable with too – one is the lack of reliability. Because it’s so focused, UX is really valid for the user or users it samples, but it’s too small-scale to be reliable, therefore it has to be used in conjunction with other, larger-scale methods to ensure that you’re not just changing everything around to suit one person, thereby inconveniencing thirty others. The other problem is the question of ethics. When conducting research, it was firmly drilled into me that shadowing or observing people without their knowledge is at the very least, morally dubious. However, by making your presence known, you affect the result. So do you want detail and validity, or ethical soundness and the Hawthorne effect? Decisions, decisions..
Jo Harcus discussed attending three management courses, including an ARLG event. Despite being quite diverse management courses, there was some overlap, and a lot of what was covered was applicable to the library setting. Some of the real take-home points she made:
Corpus Christi runs these sorts of courses, with a staff discount, so keep an eye out. She also encouraged interested people to participate in the library leadership reading group (#llrg).
This was definitely something I wouldn’t have thought twice about (I am obliged to do very little in the way of managing or leading at work), but Jo made it sound interesting, and the courses aren’t that costly, so this is something I hope to revisit in the future.
Getting toward the end, the penultimate talk was from Helen Murphy, who had attended a course on copyright.
The course was quite expensive, so think twice before going on it. It also assumed a lot of prior knowledge of copyright issues, but there were lots of areas where a lack of knowledge didn’t impede her. The course covered, amongst other things, accessible copying, preservation copying, what is "reasonable", VLEs, and what to do if you get found breaking the law. These areas were covered mainly by actual scenarios, so the take-home point for Helen was that copyright is often a thorny area, and there’s not always one right answer. A useful link provided was www.copyright user.org, and for more information on digital copyright there’s also the UKEIG (UK e-Information Group in CILIP).
Last, it was Charlotte Hoare, who went to Marketing Your Library, a social media workshop run by Ned Potter, which I believe he does on a reasonably regular basis, so the opportunity to attend will come round again. There were lots of important messages from this:
And his rules for social media:
I thought there was a lot of good stuff coming out of this, but I would have liked more practical information rather than these sorts of overarching objectives – hopefully though I can go on the course, and get the practical help I need to market my individual library!
Finally we read through the post-its which we had filled in at the start as an ice-breaker: what makes a good conference, how do you get the best out of a conference, and which conferences/courses would you recommend to others. These are all available on the CaKE blog.
One tip that really sunk in was that it’s a good idea to always ask for training budget money every year. Even if you’re not successful every time, it gets your institution into the habit of expecting to give the library money for training, which hopefully they’ll then start to set aside as a matter of course.
So that was the workshop – phew! We covered so much, and I really enjoyed it (and the cake was superb!). There was lots of new information to take home, resources that other people discovered and shared, and ideas for the future. I couldn’t go to the last CaKE because I was on maternity leave, but if there’s another one, I’m going to be there with bells on!
- Lots aren’t accessible for the visually impaired – using personal devices would benefit accessibility, but publishers aren’t really on board with this idea.
- Usually they’re read-only and users can’t print out copies – this is worse than the previous situation as readers could take photocopies from print materials, but now libraries can’t provide a loan copy or print off a copy for users.
Her conclusion was that there is a wide gap between user expectation and the reality, but that libraries are firmly on the side of the readers so improvement in the situation is likely.
Liz Osman then took to the stage, discussing what she learned at the Rare Books and Special Collections Group (RBSCG) conference. This was with a view to creating a special space for the rare books in her library, so this talk was specifically geared towards improving knowledge of housing rare books collections in the non-specialist library.
The conference covered a wide variety of projects. One of the tips Liz pressed home was when planning for something like this, to ask for everything, so if you have to make cuts you've got more to work with. Another useful thing to note is that the British Library Collections Care team will come and do free monitoring of a rare books space, but offer paid services for anything more.
Other lessons Liz learned for rehousing projects were:
- Librarians and archivists know best - don't let others tell you what you need
- Demand contracts are written: promises are worthless
- If you're leading a project, bring your team with you; it can be disruptive and scary for them if they don't know what's going on.
I think this was a useful talk, because there’s a lot of practical advice there which is applicable to all projects, not just those relating to special collections.
The next talk was from Celine Carty, who attended the Cataloguing and Indexing Group (CIG) conference. This was a more general overview of what the conference is like, which is helpful for anyone wondering if this conference is suitable for them.
For something so specific, it actually covers a wide area, and all kinds of libraries, from BBC footage metadata to the pharmaceuticals industry. Talks can be quite technical, but Celine assured us there wasn’t too much RDA! It’s quite a small conference, so attendees don't have to choose between talks, everyone attends everything. There were two points that Celine really impressed upon us:
- Don't worry about feeling like a fraud for not being a good cataloguer, everyone feels a bit like that!
- Go for bursaries too, often there are not many applicants
It certainly sounds like a conference I’d like to attend at least once, just to get the flavour of what’s happening in cataloguing. I’m not a cataloguer, but I have to catalogue, so knowing where to go for the best information would be really helpful.
Clair Castle covered her experience at the UK Serials Group events. My notes say check out the blogpost for this one, which is available here. The talk touched on a number of things, covering altmetrics, good networking, open access, things libraries should be providing (such as getting libraries to do Open Access instead of academics). She did that it could be quite overwhelming, as these are quite big conferences.
- Posters are great for shy people because interacting one-on-one with individuals is a lot easier than addressing crowds.
- Posters are there to share ideas, like a visual essay. So make sure you have clear headings, try not to be overwhelming with information, and make sure the logical path is easy to follow.
- Your poster should be eye-catching but not cluttered. Use a sensible font, readable from about 3 feet away but attractive from 6 feet away.
- Include contact information!
- Look up examples online, there are often good tips available (Colin Purrington’s website is good).
- 800 words is about right, don’t go any higher, but you can use less.
- Be careful choosing colours - dark backgrounds make a poster hard to read.
- Font size should be 24pt minimum for text (headings should be bigger).
- Creating it in PowerPoint is fine, then it can be saved as pdf before printing out.
- Think about the kind of questions you're likely to be asked so you can prepare answers.
- Speak to the person, not your poster!
- Bring correction materials in case anyone spots any errors!
The next talk was one I was particularly interested in, as it focused on an event I couldn’t make in the end: Chris Barker, with UX and ethnographic methods for librarians.
It was a very practical day, full of discussion of methods, including cognitive mapping, interviews and diaries. One particularly successful method of gaining feedback (used in a lot of college and faculty libraries around Cambridge!) was the graffiti wall – somewhere with post-its and pens where users could write comments (‘can we have sofas’, ‘lights not working’, and so on); informality works well. The workshop then included the attendees trying things themselves to get idea of how users feel.
On the whole I’m starting to have mixed feelings about the usefulness of UX in libraries – at least, UX in my library. I think it works best in a large, diverse library, where maybe you have a lot of repeat visitors (like students in college/faculty libraries), and you don’t really get to know how they work and what they’re succeeding and failing at when using the library (or choosing not to). This isn’t so much the case in the library here, where the library staff engage directly with every user, every time.
There are other aspects I’m not so comfortable with too – one is the lack of reliability. Because it’s so focused, UX is really valid for the user or users it samples, but it’s too small-scale to be reliable, therefore it has to be used in conjunction with other, larger-scale methods to ensure that you’re not just changing everything around to suit one person, thereby inconveniencing thirty others. The other problem is the question of ethics. When conducting research, it was firmly drilled into me that shadowing or observing people without their knowledge is at the very least, morally dubious. However, by making your presence known, you affect the result. So do you want detail and validity, or ethical soundness and the Hawthorne effect? Decisions, decisions..
Jo Harcus discussed attending three management courses, including an ARLG event. Despite being quite diverse management courses, there was some overlap, and a lot of what was covered was applicable to the library setting. Some of the real take-home points she made:
- Management and leadership aren't the same thing, but both sets of skills are important.
- Often people have a natural dominant management style, but may be required to adopt different styles to get the things done.
- Authentic leadership: leaders are self-aware, knows their strengths and weaknesses, are open, and acknowledge that management is a process, you're always learning and improving.
- Communication is key. Unexpected responses give you a clue to what's the problem.
Corpus Christi runs these sorts of courses, with a staff discount, so keep an eye out. She also encouraged interested people to participate in the library leadership reading group (#llrg).
This was definitely something I wouldn’t have thought twice about (I am obliged to do very little in the way of managing or leading at work), but Jo made it sound interesting, and the courses aren’t that costly, so this is something I hope to revisit in the future.
Getting toward the end, the penultimate talk was from Helen Murphy, who had attended a course on copyright.
The course was quite expensive, so think twice before going on it. It also assumed a lot of prior knowledge of copyright issues, but there were lots of areas where a lack of knowledge didn’t impede her. The course covered, amongst other things, accessible copying, preservation copying, what is "reasonable", VLEs, and what to do if you get found breaking the law. These areas were covered mainly by actual scenarios, so the take-home point for Helen was that copyright is often a thorny area, and there’s not always one right answer. A useful link provided was www.copyright user.org, and for more information on digital copyright there’s also the UKEIG (UK e-Information Group in CILIP).
Last, it was Charlotte Hoare, who went to Marketing Your Library, a social media workshop run by Ned Potter, which I believe he does on a reasonably regular basis, so the opportunity to attend will come round again. There were lots of important messages from this:
- All marketing is communication, all communication is marketing.
- Avoid white noise. Be timely and personal; talk benefits, not features.
- Promotional activities are not enough. It's a cyclical process including dialogue between library and user.
- Have a plan, document it.
- Make sure your team is with you.
And his rules for social media:
- Know why you're there
- Don't overcommit
- Get the tone right
- Chase engagement, not numbers
- Listen!
I thought there was a lot of good stuff coming out of this, but I would have liked more practical information rather than these sorts of overarching objectives – hopefully though I can go on the course, and get the practical help I need to market my individual library!
One tip that really sunk in was that it’s a good idea to always ask for training budget money every year. Even if you’re not successful every time, it gets your institution into the habit of expecting to give the library money for training, which hopefully they’ll then start to set aside as a matter of course.
So that was the workshop – phew! We covered so much, and I really enjoyed it (and the cake was superb!). There was lots of new information to take home, resources that other people discovered and shared, and ideas for the future. I couldn’t go to the last CaKE because I was on maternity leave, but if there’s another one, I’m going to be there with bells on!
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