BLA 2011 – Impact, value and stress seals… (Part 1)

View from my gigantic hotel window

So another year, another BLA (Business Librarians Association) conference and Sheffield 2011 is set to be a very different experience for me. For the past 4 years I’ve attended as Chair which involved heaps of work before, heaps of work during and heaps of sleeping after. This year I’m here as an ordinary delegate and so far (hand-on-heart) it’s been Completely Lovely and not just because I can kick back and spend more time at the bar! More importantly I can now fully engage with the content and there’s a lot more time for me to talk to other delegates and the sponsors. Only once so far have I wanted to leap up and sort something out but ultimately, you’ll be relieved to hear, dear reader, I resisted.

One of the obvious highlights of BLA 2011 was the hotel itself – the Mercure St Pauls next to Sheffield Town Hall and the Peace Gardens. My amazing hotel room window view (above) looked out on both and was a nice bonus. Arriving early I also had time to use the hotel gym and pool, my first serious exercise since my 3 Peaks adventure and I was pleased to discover that my knees have now fully recovered.

Another highlight was before the conference proper: the Proquest User Group at the hotel, fronted by (fellow 3 Peaker) Phill Hall and new colleague Mark Ayling. This was a chance to learn about ABI Inform developments and specifically information about new content coming our way. I was pleased to see more market research and economic data was forthcoming and resolved to input direct links to different sections of the database on my return to work to make sure our students and staff are getting the most out of what is fast becoming a very valuable resource once again (for the first time, in my opinion, since the ABI ‘glory days’ of the mid-90s).

Antony and the 'Ladder of Loyalty'

Most delegates would I’m sure agree that Antony Brewerton’s very visual session on advocacy, branding and communication was the best presentation on Day 1. For me, although it was entertaining, a little too much ground was covered and the sort of strategies that were being detailed should already be bread-and-butter to the engaged librarian. If you’ve not embraced marketing and branding by now what is your excuse frankly?! However, there was still much to enjoy. My favourite elements were: the Ladder of Loyalty – turning potential customer into customers and ultimately champions and partners; the video of students talking about the University Library at Warwick which was bravely created by just handing out the camera to students and seeing what they came up with (!); his advice on seeking out talented individuals; and his reflections on the OCLC 2010 Perceptions of Libraries report (including the depressing bottom line that we are still perceived as just being about books, books and more books). How true it is that whatever we do, lots of students and many of our non-library colleagues regularly revert to default old-fashioned perceptions).

A new ‘Question Time’ format session fronted by our very own Dimbleby (BLA Chair – Emma Thompson) was a great new initiative. I’d previously submitted a deliberately provocative question and mine was first up:
“Is there a danger that we’re currently just playing at improving the relevance of library services to our users. Isn’t it time we adopted a radical and completely different approach in order to ensure our continued existence?”

Question Time with Emma Dimbleby

I felt that the responses from the panel were on balance a bit too defensive and rather complacent about both our professional future and what is currently being achieved. I didn’t push the point when asked to respond to the panel after they’d each had their say, partly because I couldn’t see them acknowledging there was an issue and partly because I want to keep a low-ish profile this conference (there were bets from BLA mates on my Facebook page as to how long I could keep quiet for and I like to think that I have surprised them all by managing several hours!). Worth mentioning the excellent contribution of Steve Gianonni of EBSCO to the panel (above right) who provided an external but informed perspective and yet remained endearingly humble about the value of what he had to say. Keep this format next year please committee.

Natalie and Lorna at the first night dinner

For the informal first night dinner I went back to my roots sitting next to five librarians from the North, three of them working on Tyneside, my old stamping ground. I didn’t quite revisit my old Geordie accent even when the contentious quiz results were announced (it used to creep back in when I got excitable). Strangely the team with people who worked and lived in Sheffield won this Sheffield-themed quiz! We reckon we got 19 out of 20, 18 if we were marked ridiculously tightly. The winning team with it’s (ahem) Sheffield-based members got 19. We woz robbed. It didn’t stop us finishing off their leftover chocolates later on though – we’re not that proud! I’ll probably get over this particular injustice in a year or two…

Day 2 kicked off with Shelia Corrall whose presentation had a great deal of valuable content on measuring impact and value with reference to measures like Kaplan and Norton’s Balanced Scorecard. Unfortunately the academic theory-heavy style of the presentation was a bit of a turn off for me, but I will certainly be looking at her PPT post-conference. Personally I think your PPT should make a visual impact (ironic as she was talking about impact) rather than include slides and slides of data and models which are openly acknowledged by the presenter as impossible for the audience to read. I’d rather have Antony’s image-based slides any day of the week. Having said that, it’s high time you were using Prezi Antony – it seamlessly plays video (getting around the problem you experienced) and is far more dynamic than PPT.

Freebies including Key Note's 'stress seal'

I think I got around nearly all the sponsor stands over the first two days and as well as being updated on latest product developments (Key Note’s additional UK company content being particularly worthy of note) and explaining our budgetary constraints, I picked up some rather nice freebies including a furry frog from Emerald, a rugby ball from Perfect and a ‘stress seal’ from Key Note – all for my son John of course. Key Note, as usual, won the best freebies award: Hotel Chocolat chocolates – good move.

Perhaps most zeitgeisty and on topic was Huddersfield University’s Library Impact project presented by Graham Stone. Graham was to have been accompanied by Dave Pattern (@daveyp on twitter  – well worth a follow) but he was unable to attend at the last minute. Their project (in which the BLA’s very own Alison Sharman is also involved) has sought to establish a direct correlation between library use and student attainment and pleasingly was a solid piece of thorough research. Their blog is here.

In short, these guys have nearly proved the correlation. Their research throws up lots of interesting questions and we broke out into groups to discuss them. Our group mainly discussed whether the high-achieving students choose ‘better’ resources or whether they are ‘better’ at choosing resources?

After an interesting exploration of the experience of postgraduate Chinese students by Professor Bradley Barnes, including the recommendation that we need to educate them more before they arrive so that they are more aware of cultural differences , there was a presentation from Sigrid Gimse and Toril Sigstadstø of the Norwegian School of Management.

Toril Sigstadtso

As they discussed another great library student video , their successful embedding of information skills on the curriculum (involving a mandatory 3 hour workshop on research methodology followed by an exam) and the finding that students preferred online chat to face-to-face communication, Sigrid’s and Toril’s style was upbeat and optimistic and therefore very refreshing. Also, despite the fact that English was not their first language they impressed by managing to crack a few jokes and get some laughs. I found this perspective from beyond the UK to be a very positive thing and hope they will be the first of many European visitors to the BLA conference…

Next Time: The members sharing sessions from the final day of BLA 2011.

Brand new brand

Drum roll…. This is one of three new brand images for Information & Library Services here at Judge. When I first discussed possible options with our designers I knew I wanted images that communicated that our service is principally about the provision of electronic business information and data, after all 82% of our budget goes on databases and we spend the vast majority of our time guiding users to them and/or fulfilling data requests with them. I was also keen that our new images incorporated our new name and some eye-catching colours. So how did the designers do?

Pretty well I think, especially as I think it communicates a bit more than what I initially asked for, elements that could feasibly be described as representing the speed of our response to user enquiries and the rapidly changing nature of the business world. Plus they have impact and feel dynamic.

This is one of three designs which we’re currently frantically adding to PPTs, Word docs, video tutorials, posters and more before term. The alternative designs use different colours but are otherwise very similar. One of the designs has already been affectionally named ‘the sea-monster’ so that one might get used a bit less than the other two!

As well as making us look more professional and consistent across all of our promotional materials,  these designs should save us some positioning time and arduous explanation as to why we’re not a regular library in our hands-on inductions.

Completely in character for me to have sorted style before content but there you go…

So what do you think? Do you like it?

EBSLG Cologne 2010 – Day 1

The European Business School Librarians’ Group (EBSLG) is made up of senior librarians from the top business schools in Europe and its annual conference began today in Cologne (although the weather’s not quite as great as in the pic below).  My twitter followers will remember that I was concerned I might not get here due to ash cloud shenanigans, but thankfully it blew off into the North Sea and I flew out yesterday with no hitches. 

To be honest I was more concerned about missing out on the networking opportunities that the conference provides than the programme itself and thus far I’ve not been disappointed as we’ve begun to catch up with what we’ve each been up to since we last met. A very helpful ‘Year in Review’ document is published just before each conference to which we all contribute and this gives a rundown of news and activities in each of our libraries. Unsurprisingly (and comfortingly) this document tends to reveal that we’re all grappling with the same problems and seeking to institute many of the same initiatives and projects so talking to each other at length makes a lot of sense. This year everyone seems to creating online tutorials, engaging with Web 2.0 (particularly blogs, RSS, Library Twitter accounts and creation of Delicious collections of open web resources), dealing with physical library space moves and changes and exploring issues around repositories and open access.

The venue for the first day and the delegate hotel is the Kolpinghaus in Koln’s boutique shops district. A perfectly pleasant hotel that unfortunately has a bizarre obsession with religious iconography and, in particular, crucifixes. There’s one in every single room staring down at you. Thankfully mine (see left) is rather utilitarian and abstract so I’m ignoring it easily.

The first two presentations this morning focused on library services in Germany. First up Dr Peter Kostadt gave us an entertaining guided tour of the University of Cologne’s OPAC 2.0 which provides unified access to library resources. The presentation included lots of interesting facts and figures relating to: usage of types of resource (ejournals being more popular than databases which are in turn more popular than ebooks); slow take-up of mobile technology due to costs for students; the popularity of online chat with library staff and their ‘Ask Albot’ service. The very clean looking OPAC 2.0 can be viewed here: http://www.ub.uni-koeln.de/ and was judged favourably by EBSLG participants. Matthias Loesch from the University of Bielefield was next up. I was initially put off his presentation due to talk of ’meta-harvesting’ and some too frequently repeated statements about students just wanting to use Google and that search engines aren’t indexed, however, it picked up when he got on to his reason for being there – to talk about BASE – a multidisciplinary search engine for scientific open access documents. BASE can be viewed here: http://www.base-search.com/

Thereafter there was a presentation from Claudia Spengemann of EBSCO on their Discovery service. By all accounts Summon is doing much better than Discovery at the moment, but Claudia certainly knew what she was talking about and made a convincing argument for purchase even though most customers are currently just trialling it. You can find out about Discovery here: http://www.ebscohost.com/discovery/ Gale Cengage were next up and after covering the usual company history stuff (which I always wish every supplier would cut) they presented the results of a survey that had gathered information  through in-depth interviews on the way students searched and what sort of information they wanted. I’m hoping to get my hands on their full findings as this was in many ways the most interesting content of the morning.

After lunch at which they seemed to be serving Findus Crispy Pancakes (chicken and cheese not the sloppy horrible mince that I feared) it was time to visit the supplier stalls (which were in a room which the previous evening had housed a beerfest type event with lots of German men in good voice - I hadn’t gone in but vividly imagined something akin to ‘that’ scene in The Odessa File). Quite honestly Capital IQ I should be on commission for the lovely things I said about you and your database in there today. Perhaps we can have it for free next year? Yes? Great. Useful catch-ups as usual with Sibylle of Euromonitor and Laura of Research for Libraries and a request for info from Bill of Emerald as I currently need more evidence to convince my faculty of the value of the product.

The last business of the day was the Bazaar of Ideas for which four plucky volunteers (including yours truly) presented on a project they were engaged in. I showcased the Cam23 web 2.0 programme which start next Monday. Due to the format of the session I ended up presenting four times to groups of 4-8 people. This actually worked rather well and they responded to what I had to say and the objectives of the programme very favourably, indeed, many EBSLGers have said they will follow the programme even though they won’t be eligible for the certificate or voucher. My presentation slides are now available on SlideShare.

The evening gala dinner at the Wolkenburg was great – especially due to the company - until I had the misfortune, towards the end of the main course, to get the start of a lovely proper geometric shapes migraine which forced me to leave rather suddenly and return to the hotel by taxi. Thankfully its since evaporated. I certainly didn’t expect to be blogging about Day 1 this evening.

Today’s programme has had an interesting added dimension as it saw me tweet during a conference for the first time. I’ll blog about the positives and negatives of that in a separate post I think as I have lots to say. Tomorrow no web as we’re not here in Hotel Crucifix – so no tweets and no chance to feverishly check my email regularly like the work-obssessed freak I am. How will I survive?

Gute Nacht

What a difference 24 hours makes…

OK, so I’m a complete convert, after our misfire library induction yesterday I was feeling much less keen on the hands-on and longer session approach, but today its  a completely different story. I guess that the main change today was that  the PCs were already set-up in our portal so there was no way that the students could go wrong to start with. Also, the inclusion of the sentence ‘out of courtesy to presenters please don’t update your Facebook profile or read your email’ completely did the trick and we had an attentive audience, even in the 2pm after lunch sleep-slot! In both of today’s sessions the students listened, interacted, understood and were generally fab human beings. I could have hugged some of them for asking what, if I didn’t know any better, seemed like perfect planted questions! One more session to the fourth and final MBA stream tomorrow and I feel like I’ve finally cracked MBA induction. Only taken me 15 years.

The best thing about it is of course that  those who attended today’s sessions are as equipped as they can be information-wise at this point in the course, and as a result dbase usage, enquiries and footfall should theoretically increase. I’m a happy chappie – can you tell?! I would be happier but I now have a whole day’s worth of emails ahead of me before I go home.

Andy

That same old induction problem (after the fact)

OK, so those of you who read my post earlier today, here’s how the new hands-on and longer session style went down.

Negatives

• There were inevitable technical problems at the start of the session – students not having sourced or brought with them the passwords required to access our portal. Also some browser issues.
• My lovely powerpoint session froze for no good reason right at the start.
• The Lab we were presenting in had just been refurbished and it took us a while to work out where the dimmers were and how to up the mic volume.
• Some of the databases behaved slower than usual - THEY KNEW!
• We didn’t have hands-on for all databases due to group password and simultaneous user ssues .
• A lot of the students inevitably strayed into Facebook, email and other sites during the session.
• The students were obviously tired from having being talked at alot already today.
• Overall, it didn’t feel as professional and seamless as I’d have liked.

Positives

• We took the students straight into our portal – none of that ‘you can go in yourselves after the session’ malarkey.
• We gave them much more info than usual about our main databases.
• They asked a lot of relevant questions.
• They all came back after the coffee break!
• We felt they understood our main messages about the library service focusing on databases, business information and training and teaching rather than traditional aspects.
• The lab was a comfortable location for the audience and if they got bored they could get on with their own thing (!)
• Most of them chose to join the optional tour after the session.
• It was definitely an interactive experience.
• The debrief conversations brought us closer to the IT team!

So all in all, not too bad.  Hands-on is definitely more exhausting for the presenter, but its ticking lots of learning boxes that a straight lecture just doesn’t. I’ve got some clear ideas about how it can be improved for the next 3 streams who have the same sessions with us (most importantly logging on to the portal in advance) and we won’t be beset by new room issues next time around, so the only way is up!

Andy