May 2022 - OxCam event

On 12th May, following the success of the previous year’s trainee talk, CLG hosted its own ‘Varsity’ special: a selection of the Cambridge and Oxford library trainees had the opportunity to talk about the projects they've been focusing on this year. We'll let the trainees report back on their projects, in their own words!

Katherine Knight, Newnham College

“I spoke about my efforts to involve the library in both college and university-wide access projects – from being involved with the early stages of the Unlocking Libraries project, to reintroducing school group tours to our college library, and finally running critical reading workshops with groups of KS4 and 5 students (including them reading a scholarly article on Pokémon Go!) Whether it’s learning how to do Harvard referencing properly so I can tell over 100 students on Zoom, or working out how not to appear on a student’s TikTok, this project has often been a challenge but never unrewarding! I find that access and outreach is so important to ongoing information literacy, as it prepares students to make the most of library resources when they reach university, and I’d encourage all libraries to look at how they can build it into their routine work.

Cambridge Library Group have been such a fantastic resource for me in my traineeship: having started during Covid, they were a wonderful way of exploring different kinds of librarianship in lieu of the usual library trips, and I have very much enjoyed being on the committee this year. It was a pleasure to speak for the Cambridge Library Group again and I look forward to seeing how they continue to support library trainees in the future!”

Ellen Woolf, Anglia Ruskin University

“I am very grateful to CLG for inviting me to speak at the Cambridge and Oxford Graduate Trainee Talk, as it was a great opportunity to showcase the Graduate Traineeship and the benefits it can have for both trainees and libraries alike. The Graduate Trainee at ARU has quite a different experience to one at an Oxford or Cambridge college library, so it is really interesting to meet one another and have these discussions. While every traineeship is alike in structure, training, and visits, it seems that every trainee has a totally unique experience. This speaks to the diversity of different academic libraries and illustrates very well that there is no one way to run a successful library.

I discussed how the Graduate Trainee slots into the staffing structure at ARU, the different working groups and projects I’ve been able to participate in, and the experience of working on the Cambridge Graduate Trainee website, CaTaLOG. I reflected on what I’ve learned so far, and looked ahead to what’s next after the traineeship ends. Being a Graduate Trainee has been a truly wonderful opportunity to learn about library work, and it has given me an exciting and inspiring start to my career.”

Heather Barr, St Edmund’s Hall

“I was delighted to join the Cambridge Library Group as a speaker at their Graduate Trainee Talk. Joining forces from Oxford with the Cambridge trainees has been a real highlight of my year, and I hope it’s something that continues in the future! My talk focused on my Library sustainability project: Going Green Together. This aimed to reduce the St Edmund Hall Library’s impact on the environment, and to encourage sustainable practices across our readers and staff. From weighing the bins to work out the percentage of our waste which is recycled, to waving my hands at the bathroom lights’ motion sensors to work out how long they are staying on, I am sure I communicated just how… glamorous this project has been! It has certainly been very rewarding, however. For example, messaging and tips to reduce printing succeeded in reducing the amount of paper used over 90 days by over 1600 pages! Speaking at CLG was an excellent opportunity to learn about others’ trainee experiences, and what really stood out for me was the breadth of what librarianship can look like. Even though we all work in academic settings, providing a service to a similar demographic of students, hearing from Ellen, Katherine, and Georgie highlighted just how varied this work can be, and I’m greatly looking forward to continuing to share and learn from innovative ways of interacting with collections and readers.”

Georgina Moore, St John’s College

"How do you make a digital edition?  For my Graduate Trainee project, I learnt to transcribe, edit, and encode a digital edition of one of St John’s College Library’s most popular Special Collections items: a collection of letters by Jane Austen. Even if you have no coding experience (I didn’t before I started), using the free and accessible 8 part training course created by Emma Huber at Oxford’s Taylor Institution Library, you really can make your own digital edition. In my talk I stressed that this project developed not only my digital but also my palaeographic skills, allowed me to get to know the collection better, and was a genuinely fun trial and error challenge! Also, Austen is hilarious in her correspondence, so I certainly got a few laughs out of her anger towards Walter Scott who “has no business to write novels, especially good ones. It is not fair.” If you would like to try it for yourself, start the training at https://editions.mml.ox.ac.uk/training/. "

January Event - An Introduction to Radical Open Access Publishing

As someone for whom Open Access is the core of my job I was greatly looking forwards to Sam’s talk and it did not disappoint.

Looking at his background in publishing gives you a nice insight into Sam’s progression from being an editorial assistant at PLOS all the way to Open Book publishers and humanities into launching the Radical Open Access Collective and his academic work with his PhD in Digital Humanities at Kings College London (https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:24135/) And it is the different viewpoint of the humanities instead of the STEM focus I have in my work that was happily very well explored in this talk.

Sam works in the OSC as a Scholarly Communication Specialist supporting researchers with open access publishing but on a basis that is slightly different than mine. The MRC CBU is funded by the UKRI with it’s mandated OA policies. Sam works on the wider university basis on why they should be doing it instead of just having to and that is one thing I really wanted to know about.

This also ties in wonderfully with the work of the Radial Open Access collective, a group of small publishers, getting together and working on funding, organisation, advocacy and progression through publishing for publishing, not because you have to do things a certain way.

Bringing people together to help with the under-represented parts of community. It is the northern hemisphere, well-funded governmental bodies and organisations that are setting policy to force us one way and the large publishers are making the most of that change over time.

It does indeed need to be much more scholarly-led not policy led which I totally agree has led us from one form of issue to another, but with higher bills and less choice and freedom for our researchers. And it will only progress further. If UKRI policy is to continue on it’s intended route then all publishers will be Gold OA. With the inherent costs involved in funding that. When I’ve asked what happens at that point I was told then they will work on changing things when they get there.

We need to change things now. And the Radial Open Collective isn’t the one going to be doing that for us, but it is the right mindset at the right time to make changes and has the ideals of how to get people involved in publishing for publishing’s sake, for change in the way researchers work and publish and even get people to actually consider the ethics underpinning their work. From the choices of where you publish, to the totally free editorial and review work that thousands of people in Cambridge do for free on a regular basis. These are things that need to be addressed and tit was really nice to see this being explained and expanded on in this talk.

And I look forward to seeing more of these issues being addressed in projects such as the new Rights Retention policy that the University has recently started.

Post contributed by Kevin Symonds, Research Governance and Information Manager, Cambridge University

April event - Bansa Community Library

April’s CLG event was the first to feature speakers presenting from across continents. It was an inspiring evening, as Jatin Lalit Singh, Founder of Bansa Community Library & Resource Centre, based in Bansa and New Delhi, and Abhishek Vyas, MPhil Education student at Cambridge University and the Community Library’s Academic Coordinator told the story of Bansa’s genesis and evolution.

Both presenters had backgrounds in law, and it was while Jatin was studying law in Delhi that he came across the Free libraries network with its concept of community libraries, and wondered if this might be something that could work in his own home in Bansa, a village about the size of Soham, in rural Uttar Pradesh. Jatin was aware that his own privileged background had given him a level of access to a range of educational resources especially books, but what about the many in India for whom this was just not possible? Could a community library make a difference? The subject was eagerly discussed online by a group of Jatin’s friends, all of whom were law students, but none of whom had met in person.

Across the road from Jatin's home in Bansa was a temple. Jatin reasoned that as temples have large grounds, there might be room for a small library. The temple authorities and village elders were approached with tentative plans, and these were enthusiastically received. The temple leased out the land for a peppercorn rent, and then Abhishek and Jatin started to fundraise. They were not able to get government funding but interested parties contributed to what they saw as a worthwhile and exciting cause. 

An architect friend designed the building and gave it its bright colours. 

Bansa Community Library

Soon shelves were up, and books swiftly arrived to populate them. Volunteers reached out to communities, talking to them about the new resource that was shortly to be available; alongside this, colourful wall paintings (in the same colour as the library buildings) sprang up advertising the library. The publicity was needed, as there was initially some confusion. Villagers wondered if the new building was a kindergarten. Or perhaps it was a school, or a community centre? In truth it was a mixture of everything, but this made advertising and promotion tricky – the Bansa team wondered who exactly were going to be their readers.

Their very first reader, who arrived the day before the official opening, inspired them to a realisation that their readers were everyone. Mr. Mahendra was a 63-year-old man, who was absolutely delighted to discover that there were books available for free, and he soon spread the word excitedly around the village about the new library. As Jatin commented after meeting Mr. Mahendra: “we [knew we] needn’t worry if people would come and read because there was no reading culture, [or] because they didn’t know the concept of community libraries, but that day seeing the zeal and enthusiasm of Mr. Mahendra we were convinced that ultimately readers would find the books if they were there to be found, and the library was open.”

Mr Mahendra with books

Resources grew, a computer was added to the library’s stock, along with books in numerous Indian languages and dialects, and from further afield too (Dan Brown and Harry Potter both proved popular). Alongside this, classes were started for students preparing for state exams. A conscious decision was made not to promote the building specifically as a library as people had so many, often quite different, ideas of what a library should be. Indeed, Abhishek had been adamant from the beginning that the library should be seen as a resource centre, and this was included in its name; ready to serve, change, and adapt to the needs of the 36 villages that would use its services. For some, the building would be a library and a school, for others a community centre. Dance and music classes, alongside a range of talks were started, and locals of all ages took part in activities there from young children to the elderly. 

Bansa Community Library classes

Children were encouraged to visit the building on the days when new books arrived and took a huge delight in seeing and handling them. Determined to make the community library as inclusive as possible it was decided that there would be no fines. For many even the possibility of a small fine would discourage them from using the space and its many resources, so as a people’s library it is truly open to all with no fines, fees, or subscriptions. Anyone, of any age, can come in, give their name which is jotted down in a book, and can then borrow or use any of the facilities for free. Alongside their work in promoting education the staff of Bansa Community Library also promoted the largely unknown concept to rural India of reading for pleasure.

The library was already offering a range of services across its communities but when India was hard hit by a brutal second wave of Covid, Bansa Community Library and Resource Centre became a vital community hub. 

In common with many community buildings worldwide, the library became a Covid testing centre, but Jatin knew that people were dying in the Bansa area sometimes because of a lack of medical resources, other times simply because they lacked knowledge about the disease, so the team decided to start its Rural Covid Relief Work, and this would lead the library to become a focal point in the battle against Covid. Alongside Covid testing, it stocked free medicines and medical equipment – everything from thermometers to hand cleanser and masks, with volunteer staff on hand who could race out to those who were ill, with blood pressure monitoring equipment or oxygen level monitors. They also organized vaccine registration, and even provided transport in exceptional circumstances. Staff were kitted out with bright yellow t-shirts, to match the glorious yellow walls of much of the library, and these t-shirts became a sign of hope in the rural communities of Uttar Pradesh.

Abhishek’s insistence on calling the library a resource centre might have seemed odd at first, but suddenly it made sense. Yes, this was a library, but it was also a place where you could borrow sports equipment or toys, learn to play a musical instrument, or study for exams; a place where children could look at picture books, or where you could find a friendly face with an oxygen monitor for your father. 

Since then, the Community Library has made huge strides. Children love the building, and a student council has been established who give regular ideas for how they would like the library to be run, and what projects might be useful going forward. This has been immensely important in engaging them with the work of the library, and in improving their self-confidence, and sense of self, and they have become a vitally important part of the day-to-day running of the library. Classes are run regularly to offer advice on homework, and to provide remedial classes for children who are struggling with specific subjects. Peer to peer learning is also encouraged and has proved extremely popular. Law students and young lawyers volunteer to give talks on basic points of law, and to make everyone aware of their rights and how the law works. 

A large LED screen was recently added to resources, and this has meant that virtual classes for all ages can now be held online with volunteer teachers from across the country talking about a range of subjects for all ages and abilities. Earlier this year a Cambridge PhD student talked about STEM subjects to a large and enthusiastic audience. The LED screen has also been used in a recent popular venture - film nights - to which all are invited (Home Alone opened the film season).

As the range of activities increased, some dedicated staff were needed and Bansa Community Library and Resource Centre now has a manager to manage all the activities, and the two librarians who are employed there. A female librarian has been employed as the library has become increasingly popular among female readers and students, who find the community library a safe place to work. Its growing popularity has also meant that it is rapidly outgrowing its current two rooms, and there are plans to ask for land to provide a third. 

It was an inspiring talk about an amazing project, and I think we all left feeling proud to know what a difference a library can make, and energized by the enthusiasm of the young team who started and continue to run this incredible project. 

The young people of the Student Council have put together a YouTube video touring the Community Library. It gives you a real flavour of the joy that is Bansa Community Library and Resource Centre. Do turn on closed captions when you play the video, and change language of settings to Hindi, to make optimal use of the English subtitles.

Bansa Community Library Welcome Tour by Student Leadership Council

You can also follow the team on Twitter @BansaLibrary

All photos are courtesy of Jatin Lalit Singh and Abhishek Vyas, with many thanks for their help. 

Post contributed by

Margaret Jones

 

February event - Ellen Krajewski - CILIP Carnegie medal and judges experience

CILIP Carnegie medal and judges experiences

Many thanks to Ellen Krajewski who presented so enthusiastically on the CILIP Carnegie Medal and Judge’s Experience. She has been a judge three times for the prestigious Carnegie Medal and Kate Greenaway Medal and had a year as Chair of Judges. Ellen has always had a passion for books and retired in 2019 after being a School Librarian for many years. All 14 judges on the panel are librarians and members of CILIP. In addition they are all required to join YLG. Each area of the UK is represented by a judge and there is a CKG Working Party which is the strategic power behind the Medals.

Ellen covered the awards’ cycle and went into detail about which published books are eligible for entry. Publishers have no say in the nominations which are put forward by CILIP members. The Diversity Review took place and resulted in positive changes showing how the awards can champion diversity. 

For the past three years there has been a Shadowers’ Choice Award, voted for by the large number of Shadowing Groups who all read the shortlisted books. Some of the groups are based abroad and they tend to be from public libraries and schools. Ellen described the various types of meetings the groups hold and members of the CLG were keen to start their own shadowing group as soon as the shortlist is confirmed.

The new name of the Yoto Carnegie Greenaway Awards reflects the new partnership with the innovative digital company which secures the future of the award. Winners will be announced on 16 June and hopefully this year the presentations will take place in person as well as being live streamed. Ellen rounded off her comprehensive talk by picking out some of her favourite winners and shortlisted books, including books in verse.

Links:

CILIP Carnegie Awards: https://carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/

September Event - Assessing CILIP Level 3 LAIS Apprenticeships

Assessing CILIP Level 3 LAIS Apprenticeships

I always like hearing from people outside of the University (even though the speaker works for another Cambridge University!) as it provides a view into how other places do things.  This time the talk was about something that Sarah does in her own time and with her own equipment, but that obviously has a lot of benefits for many because of her work.  

The involvement from candidates and assessors that goes into the Apprenticeship assessment is something I knew nothing about but that was going to change, and with some always welcome interaction from the audience in the chat.

Sarah is a former NVQ Assessor so it's not a surprise that she was recruited by CILIP pathways to be in the first group of self-employed assessors.  The work involved by the apprentice’s is a great way of making the most of their current position whilst also increasing the value of their professional skills and behaviour for the future.

 

For each candidate it takes 12-18 months, working alongside their employer and the tutor building up portfolio evidence of their Knowledge, Skills and Behaviours (KSB's) including statements from colleagues who work alongside them. I especially liked the idea that the portfolio, isn't just dry boring pages of text but can include videos, presentations and photos. Things that I don't think are used enough to show what we are all actually capable of so it's really nice to know this is in there as part of the assessment.

There is off-job training as well.  When the tutor and the employer think the apprentice is ready and the "Gateway" is reached, a project approval form can be submitted.  This is when the assessment begins and everything they have done is matched against the expected set of 29 KSB's.

It sounds a really good way of integrating real world experiences to a structured level of assessment. I especially liked the KSB on "The nature and value of research"- “How did you assess user needs" as that is something we all do as default from experience so thinking about a response and then writing it down really shows the level of what you do know.

The timescale for completion after someone has reached Gateway is 9 weeks, so it's something it could be planned around an individual’s work and personal life.  The flexibility of choosing when to start, when you are ready rather than an arbitrary you have to do this now contrasts with a more traditional training environment.

Sarah introduced a couple of activities with us in the audience entering our answers in the chat. We had examples of a couple of the KSB's asking what questions we would ask to assess the candidate’s skills. And I think we did rather well at that which is always pleasing when you do participate ;)

Knowing that candidates get experience, training and a qualification is valuable on its own but using this to go towards CILIP certification and chartership should give a lot more people the route towards professional recognition anyone wanting to map out a career would be aiming for.

And without Sarah's talk I would guess that many of us would never have known about it.

There are future developments, allowing people in Information Manager/Chartered Librarian and Archives and Records Managers roles to follow the same routes and be assessed in their sphere is excellent progress.

Another great talk :)

More information can be found here: https://www.cilip.org.uk/page/CILIPPathways  

Kevin Symonds

Research Governance and Information Manager

MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit