CILIPS in 2016 – A look back at another busy year
Category: Blog
CILIP in Scotland delivers services to just over 10% of the total UK CILIP membership community. That’s a membership community of around 1390 working across the library and information sector.
Here are some of the highlights of our work for and with the membership during 2016.
In the lead up to the Scottish Parliamentary elections we
- Set up a Holyrood Election Campaign Taskforce;
- Produced a cross sectoral campaign strategy, ‘Inspiration for the Nation’;
- Published a Manifesto for Libraries;
- Engaged with all political parties on the Manifesto;
- Coordinated a series of regular guest blog posts for the website;
- Organised a Twitter ‘Thunderclap’ campaign;
- Developed a range of online content to support member advocacy activity in the run up to the election.
We responded to consultations called by:
- Edinburgh Council;
- Argyll and Bute Council;
- Culture North Lanarkshire; and
- The Scottish Government.
As part of our ongoing support for members in the school library sector we:
- Coordinated activity, meetings and a project plan for school library advocacy;
- Prepared an advocacy and briefing document for Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Education, John Swinney;
- Delivered a letter of support for the school libraries petition to the Scottish Parliament; and
- Contributed a response to the Scottish Government Education Governance Review.
We delivered a series of training events on:
- Professional Registration
- Mentoring Exchange of Experience
- Mentor training
- Reflective writing
- Portfolio Building
- Library privacy in liaison with Scottish PEN
- Professional Careers Skills Training (in liaison with IRMS)
- A national two day conference ‘Making Connections’
- A one day Autumn Gathering event followed by a Liteature and Libraries Reception
We also
- disbursed over £5,000 to 15 members who applied to our Professional Development Fund;
- Used Twitter as a strategic engagement tool to deliver news and learning to over 3,000 followers;
- Introduced a new CILIP in Scotland LinkedIn Group;
- Awarded 5 Honorary Memberships to Jeanette Castle, Jenny Des Fountain, Paulette Hill, Ruth Lyle and Val Walker (pictured above);
- Launched a new website delivering news, advocacy material and event information to our members; and
- Published 10 issues of the member e-newsletter.
Our President, award winning children’s author, Theresa Breslin:
- Adopted a high profile role in the fight to retain professional librarians in Argyll and Bute schools;
- Undertook a series of ‘Meet the President’ events around the country;
- Travelled to Wales for the CILIP CYMRU Conference, to Ireland for the CILIP Ireland Conference and to Brighton for the CILIP Conference;
- Worked with the staff team to plan, programme and host our own sell out national conference held in Dundee last June
Our Branches and Groups hosted a series of events around the country including:
- Pub quizzes;
- library visits;
- bowling evenings
- Carnegie/Greenaway celebrations;
as well as more formal learning events on professional subjects such as
- Copyright and
- linked data
In the wider Scottish context we participated in:
- SLIC National Strategy Implementation Advisory Group
- College Development Network (Libraries)
- Literature Alliance Scotland
- Scottish Information Literacy Community of Practice
- CILIP UK Policy Committee inquiries (Schools; FE):
- Glasgow Kelvin College – providing support for demonstrator project
- CILIP Professional Development Group (formerly National Offers)
- CILIP Development Team Meetings (quarterly updates)
- Scottish Book Trust
- #scotlitfest
- Education Scotland: National Literacy Network
Our Trustees worked extremely hard throughout the year to ensure that we end 2016 showing a financial surplus (which in 2017 will again be reinvested in the membership) and to guide and steer us through a long, legal process to change our charitable status to a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation with OSCR.