University, College and Research Group

Umbrella - UC&RG (Northern) sponsored place reports

UC&RG (Northern) sponsors a free place at either Umbrella or CILIP UC&RG/CoFHE conference. This opportunity is open to personal members of CILIP, who live or work in the UC&RG (Northern) region, or a University of Northumbria student on a library course, who will be a first time attendee of the conference.

Sponsored delegates are invited to report on the conference.

Report on Umbrella 2011

Jennie Kelly, Librarian
North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers

Thanks to generosity of the University College &Research (UC&R) Group Northern, I was lucky enough to attend CILIP’s Umbrella 2011 conference as a first time delegate and I had an enlightening time. Before I even reached Hatfield, I had learnt new skills as I signed up (nervously) to Twitter after noticing the prominence of the hashtag in their publicity! I work for a small charity library as a solo librarian with no training budget. I have previously paid myself to attend smaller events on topics such as map cataloguing or rare books but a large conference was certainly not a possibility without a grant.

In order to win the place, I had to identify which sessions would be useful in my role in a statement to the group. This focused my mind from the start on what I planned to get out of the two days. My current problem is a large uncatalogued photographic collection and an entire session was offered on images and metadata which I had been envious of since I received the first Umbrella advertising! My second priority was the strand covering volunteers in libraries as I currently manage around 70 volunteers who, together, contribute over 7500 hours over a year to the Mining Institute Library.

Both the sessions I had identified as priorities did give me useful solid information, and also made me feel part of a community of librarians and professionals who were all dealing with the same issues and problems. The groan of experience when someone asked a question about how you fire a volunteer showed that… The volunteering session also reminded me that a huge part of the contribution volunteers can play is outside the time they actually spend at your library. Their advocacy of your service to all the other people they meet is a massive support, just as much as a couple of hours spent cataloguing some reports.

In addition, I got new ideas at unexpected sessions. Following a talk on technology in libraries, I am now seriously considering switching to an open source library management system such as Koha to save the yearly fees and probably get a better system. If there are any other north-east librarians using Open Source who I could visit, I would be extremely grateful for a chat about their experience of the switch over.

Umbrella also pushed me to try CPD 23 (http://cpd23.blogspot.com/), a self-directed free online training programme, which won the Judges Choice prize (and was runner up for the delegates prize) for best Poster at Umbrella and everyone was talking about which “Things” they had done so far.

Understandably, there was a strong focus on the Save Our Libraries campaign throughout the conference which is more relevant to public librarians than myself, however I still use public libraries, despite not working in the sector, and I care about the future of our libraries. Despite working with an unusual rare books/archives collection, I still felt included in the community and the discussions as I felt I could find useful and applicable ideas in all of the sessions.

Above anything else, Umbrella was an amazing networking opportunity and also a chance to step away from my day to day work and see the bigger picture whilst getting new ideas from new people. Simply having the possibility to bounce ideas with other librarians was a fantastic experience, and I hope I will be able to keep doing that digitally after the conference thanks to Twitter, Facebook and my blog.

If you want to read in more detail about Umbrella and the things I learnt, see my blog at http://mininglibrarian.wordpress.com. The Institute is also on Facebook and we’re open Monday to Friday 10-5 and I offer free tours if you would like to come down and see the building and the collections.

Finally, I can only say thank you once again to the UC&R group. The opportunity for new professionals to attend big conferences like Umbrella is so important and I hope more people can benefit in the future, even in the current economic climate.

Report on Umbrella 2009

I had the pleasure of attending CILIP Umbrella on the 14-15th July at the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield sponsored by UCRG (Northern).

More than 700 delegates attended from across all sectors of the library and information world.

In the opening plenary session the keynote speaker was Charles M Brown, Director of Libraries – The Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County (USA). He outlined the work done in the reorganisation of the public library to meet the challenges of the 21st century, particularly in their attempt to improve their services and become a 5* library. Such aspects as becoming more customer focussed, getting more community involvement and being more responsive to your employees were discussed. Staff engagement was an important element in this, with an emphasis on bringing people together whose opinion may have never been asked before and communication about any implementations through ‘Change Ambassadors’ . This aspect was particularly interesting for me.

After a refreshment break, where you had the opportunity to look around the exhibition and the poster displays, the break-out sessions began. There were nine strands running:

Libraries as spaces
Our skills
The shock of the new – technology
The shock of the new – practice
Professional values
Our professional future
Only collect
The value of libraries: advocacy & funding
Information skills for life

It was impossible to attend everything, we were encouraged to be ‘creative’ in our choice of sessions. There was plenty to choose from, sometimes it was difficult to decide and I was torn between two or three options.

All the sessions that I attended were all very well presented, interesting and stimulating. All the speakers were informative and entertaining. I tended to choose the sessions on information literacy, but had the opportunity to attend sessions ranging from how we cope with new technology to implementing user surveys. I got something useful from all the sessions that I attended which I could take back into my work environment and for my professional development. I was interested to hear about the work of the Information Literacy Group as this is a group I hadn’t thought of joining before. Also as someone who does a considerable amount of teaching in her post it was good to learn about the work of Debbi Boden and Ruth Stubbings on SMILE (Study Methods and Information Literacy Exemplars) and also Sir LearnaLot http://www.lilacconference.com/sirlearnalot/

Between the sessions, as well as looking around the exhibition and chatting to people, I had the opportunity to go the university LRC where I was able to look around and log in to the network on the pcs.

The first-timers lunch gave you the opportunity to meet people, from other organisations in a friendly environment and there were people on hand to give you advice on how to get the most out of the conference.

The evening social event, a meal at the Hendon Airforce Museum, was excellent. The surroundings for the meal, underneath a Lancaster bomber, was superb and Eve Pollard as the after dinner speaker was entertaining. My companions for the evening were some Public Librarians from Bexley, a lady from the public library service in Australia and a lady from OUP. It was a very pleasant evening and highlights one of the great benefits of Umbrella namely that you can meet and chat to professionals from other sectors, and even from other countries. On returning back to the campus there was an opportunity for a Karaoke session in the bar, but I decided to pass on that one.

The whole conference was well organised, the staff at the University of Hertfordshire were very polite and courteous and there were plenty of student guides around so you always knew where you were going. The rooms were clean and comfortable, with ensuite facilities – a far cry the student accommodation I remembered from my days at university. The campus was modern and pleasant. I wish I had brought my swimming costume as there was an excellent, tempting pool that delegates were able to use.

There was a definite buzz to the whole event and although it was an exhausting couple of days I think it was definitely worth attending and I would look forward to attending the next event in 2011.

Patricia Crosier, Teesside University.

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Last modified on: 31/01/2012 09:25 AM