AUKML NEWS:
AUKML member Paul Pedley has produced a new copyright and information
law website. Courtesy of Facet Publishing the site provides 24/7 access
to authoritative, up-to-date information on all aspects of information law.
To find out more about Keeping Within the Law (KWtL): minimize your risk of legal infringement.
Online Information 2008
On 2 - 4 December librarians will convene at the Grand Hall Olympia
for an exhibition of over 230 vendors, a world-class international
conference and a comprehensive seminar programme covering: Online
Content Resources; ePublishing Solutions; Library Management Systems;
Content Management Expo; Web 2.0 Technologies and Search Solutions.
Register for free fast track entry at Online Information 2008.
AUKML members get a discount: 25% early bird and 15% thereafter.
Information Professionals' Christmas Party
It's that time of the year again when the great and the good of the
information world get dressed up (or something like that)
Look at the sort of fun you could be having.
. . . AND THE REST
Rob Levandoski, author of the "Morgue Mama Mysteries" has died aged
59. Writing under the pen name C.R. Corwin, his novels followed the
adventures of newspaper librarian Maddy Sprowls.
To read a full obituary
and the Deadline review of his first book.
More sad news as the Financial Times announces it will be making up to sixty redundancies, including a possible six librarians.
The announcement comes just weeks after the FT news editor, Robert
Shrimsley felt compelled to warn his staff, "'I read it on wikipedia'
will not play well as an excuse when confronted with a demand for a
correction."
Found yourself wondering where all the advanced search facilities have
got to? Wonder no more: Just read Slewfootsnoop's blog.
The Guardian has recently released all of its RSS Feeds as full
content,
the first major world newspaper to do so.
The opinions expressed in Deadline are not necessarily those of the AUKML.
THE AGM
22 July 2008 at the Yorkshire Grey, Langham Street WC1
This year's AGM saw us gather upstairs at the Yorkshire Grey pub for a
serious discussion of the future of the Association. The debate was
prompted by news of declining membership and funds (detailed below) and
was introduced by the Chair's report (Following on, in full).
2007 / 08 Committee
Three resignations from: Declan Kelly as Treasurer; Paul Pedley as
Magazines representative; Fiona Sanson as Marketing officer mean new
members are required. So far Gertrud Erbach has volunteered as Treasurer
and this was agreed. If anyone is interested in taking up the
remaining posts please contact our Chair of AUKML
Accounts / Finance
A talk through the accounts showed a current balance of £9,321.00.
This year's conference made a loss of £5k, compared to profits in
previous years, due to less sponsorship and fewer delegates.
Membership
Membership stands at its lowest, at 82, partially due to a purge of
non-paying members. This contrasts with the highest ever number of 209
in 2000.
Chair's report
Taken on face value, the past 12 months have been quite good year for
AUKML. Membership, while it isn't growing has remained the same and
we're not losing members. Good meetings that are always well attended,
plus attracting people from other information groups - sure sign that
we're offering something that information professionals want to go to.
There was also the Open Day, held jointly with CLSIG that always
helps to raise the profile of the group. Also raising the profile was
the launch of the Handbook for Media Librarians, edited by Katherine
Schopflin and with contributions by a number of AUKML members. On top
of this there have been various articles in the press, putting the case
for our profession and the group. Also, despite severe competition from
blogs, RSS and all the other magazines around, Deadline remains a very
good read with exclusive, well-written, content. And, as Declan has
just told us, finances are in a healthy state. I would like to thank
the committee who have ensured this success and helped in my first year
as Chair. I must also thank Frances Tait and Katherine Schopflin and
Gertrud for organising this year's AUKML conference. Despite fears at
one point that it might not take place, the Manchester conference
was a great success. Excellent, relevant talks, and great social events.
It was smaller than previous years but those that attended got a lot
out of it, judging from the feedback most of the talks offered
something of real value.
However, despite this, the past 12 months have been a very depressing
year for media librarians. This time last year we were handing out the
inaugural AUKML prize to the Glasgow Herald Library who against great
odds had carved out a niche for themselves to ensure their survival.
Well, as you will have seen in Deadline, the library was closed around
Christmas time, although apparently work is outsourced to the local
public library. This was bad enough but then a few weeks ago was the
terrible news that News International plan to close their entire
library operation and there are rumours that others are also planning
to follow suit.
It was against this depressing background that the
committee spent some time thinking about the future direction of the
group. Despite being called the Association of Media librarians, only
around half of our members actually work in a media library - we have
in many ways become the group for people - most who live in London -
who don't want to join one of the more traditional information groups.
The unique nature of news librarianship ie distinct from other branches
of information work, that gave birth to the organisation has in most
cases changed. In many ways this doesn't really matter. More important
is that the group’s membership is essentially passive with few wishing
to join the committee. This has been the case for the past few years
but we've reached a point where most of the committee members have been
doing it for years and naturally will want to step down. A larger group
would employ someone to organise things but we’re not really in a
position to do this. Of course we’ve been here before - Five years' ago
Charles Oppenheim's Justin Arundale Speech in 2003 provided a blue-print
for AUKML to re-invigorate itself - things such as lobbying and
workshops but I just don't think - at this point - we're big enough to
do this. We need to think where to go next. To borrow a phrase from
Judith Dunn's 2005 Justin Arundale lecture - If AUKML didn't exist,
would we need to invent it? And the immediate answer is Yes -
people doing similar jobs will always want to network, meet others,
exchange views; we provide a "forum for the exchange of ideas" as set
out in the constitution. However, given the size and make-up of the
group would you devise a large committee with the range of things we
attempt to do - the answer would probably be NO. There seem to be
three courses of action:
1 - Carry on as before
2 - Reduce what we do to basically meetings and Deadline; roll back
from the grander ideas eg the Award, the stand at Online. Have a smaller
committee.
3 - Join another group, eg the SLA. All groups have some common
concerns these days eg. KM, intranets, with maybe less specialised
concerns than was the case in earlier times.It was agreed unanimously
that we would, in the next year: focus on raising membership and profile,
making the best effort meantime investigate options for joining the SLA
- ie as a pressure unit if we have enough clout, or individually
monitoring the situation at a halfway point meeting around January,
before asking if we are sustainable on an independent basis.
FEATURE: What next for the AUKML?
Prompted by issues discussed at the AGM two members were asked to make
the case for one of the two key possibilities for AUKML's future. In
this edition Katharine Schopflin argues for continued independence.
Next quarter Charles Oppenheim discusses the benefits of joining a
broader organisation.
Why AUKML should remain independent
AUKML is a specialist association run by volunteers with a small,
but proportionally active membership. I think it should remain
independent for two main reasons. The first is its viability on its own.
The second is the problems which occur when joining with other groups.
There are understandable reasons why a group representing media
librarians may fear for its future. The number of information
professionals employed by media organisations is far smaller than it
was even eight years ago when I joined AUKML and redundancies,
recruitment freezes, and wholesale, consultancy-led restructures
continue. However, there is no reason to assume that a small
organisation is not viable as long as it can afford to meet the needs
of its members.
During my time on the committee, AUKML managed regularly to produce
interesting, relevant events, a newsletter, a residential conference,
an open day for new information professionals and a website; far more
than many larger organisations. This was all done with no staff and a
membership fee which remained at a low, affordable rate during the
whole period. Even if AUKML feels the need to reduce the level of its
output to reflect a smaller membership, it would remain a hugely active
organisation and one with a far higher proportion of active members
than other groups.
Moreover, it is at times of difficulty that groups like AUKML are most
needed. When media librarians were confident in their identity, working
in large units facing no immediate threats, its role was of course
important. But now members have more need than ever to discuss their
problems, see how other units work, share knowledge and develop
themselves with training events. Now they are dispersed throughout
organisations and are rarely called 'librarians', the people that
research, archive and manage the content for media organisations
need an organisation that is designed for them to provide their
identity and meet their professional needs. I feel that AUMKL's
training, networking and information-sharing activities does this
brilliantly.
also doubt whether AUKML, a flexible organisation with a very
simple constitution, could continue its record of achievement were
it part of a larger organisation. The larger, less specialised
organisations which represent information professionals charge far
higher membership fees, have staff who need paying, have complex
constitutional commitments and policy priorities which might even
conflict with activities planned by AUKML. For example, AUKML makes
its events free for its members and charges a low rate for non-members.
Most larger organisations charge even their members for attendance.
AUKML has no corporate members and a constitutional priority that full
members' professional needs should not conflict with aims of sharing
information about, for example, how we choose our suppliers. Other
organisations managing committees are in many cases run by these same
suppliers. Moreover, all organisations face difficulties in a time of
upheaval in the industry. If AUKML were to subsume its identity in a
larger organisation, it may find itself struggling to justify its
existence when that organisation has a review of sub-groups, particularly
if the criteria are based around membership numbers.
I do not suggest that AUKML should be complacent. I believe that one
of its strengths as a small organisation has been its ability to
re-invent itself. I welcome the debate about AUKML's future and I
firmly believe that acknowledging and discussing the recent series of
traumatic closures in the industry is necessary and helpful. For
example, the current range of activities may need to change or be
carried out in collaboration. However I think there is no doubt
there is a much-needed role for an independent professional association
for information workers in the media and that AUKML can fulfil this role
with vigour.
If you feel strongly about what direction our Association should take,
and want to share your opinions with the rest of our readers, please email
me at:Deadline
Reviews:
The Economist historical archive/Thursday 4th September 2009
Review by Robert Parker, Assistant Librarian, GNM
On Thursday 4th September, AUKML members gathered at the Economist
Intelligence Unit, Holborn. On arrival we were kindly greeted with
a very civilised glass of wine and finger buffet. We then sat down
to hear a presentation about the launch of The Economist Historical
Archive. First of all Robin Ben, a journalist, spoke about how all
the bound issues of The Economist between 1843 - 2003 have now been
digitally scanned to be made available online.
The Economist is a unique publication and in its time has written
about anything and everything and in its way puts a unique historical
perspective on the past 160 years. He also explained how the online
archive can search maps, front covers, adverts, as well as articles to
provide a unique historical perspective on the time from which they came.
He said that the archive would be useful to many people including
academics, business researcher, and librarians; with subscription
rates priced accordingly.
Daniel Franklin then spoke about the huge logistical exercise of
digitising 160 years of bound volumes of The Economist, and a the
change in mindset that is involved when hard copy material goes
on-line. He also spoke about a new feature in The Economist
newspaper (NOTE: The Economist does not think of itself
as being a magazine!) where there is a regular look at The Economist
archive, often in reference to what is happening today. He used the
examples of an article from 1981 saying the British government were
hoping that Robert Mugabe would not be elected leader of Zimbabwe
as he held anti British views, and an article about Jesse Jackson's
campaign to be a Presidential candidate which can now be seen in a new
light as Barrack Obama bids to become the first black US President.
Finally Mark Holland from Gale Media Products spoke. A old hand at
digitisation projects his previous work includes: The
Times digital archive and the British library online newspaper
archive. He gave us a search demo, showing us that the online searching
is designed to be straight-forward for a wide range of clients, and
that the search results are reproduced in facsimile, as scholars like
to see results that way. Mark also spoke of some of the problems
encountered along the way: from issues being out of order
to the actual physical quality of the copies of the Economist being
scanned, due to the fact it is printed on cream rather than white
paper. Finally he said that some upgrades to the searching facility
are likely in the future, as and when client needs dictate.
So all in all a very enjoyable evening, and I for one look forward
to being able to search for articles from The Economist in the near
future.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Hollywood Librarian
September 25 2008, Tate Britain
Reviewed by Holly Bentley
"The first full-length documentary film to focus on the work and lives
of librarians" came to the Tate Britain for one night only. The anticipation
was palpable as the crowd of librarians took their seats.
What followed was a bit of a mixed bag. There was a wealth of librarian
footage on show, which proved a real crowd pleaser. I for one will be
tracking down a copy of the "Music Man" for its glorious rendition of
"Marian The Librarian", and I can't believe I've never seen "Party Girl"
in which the protagonist finds self worth through becoming a library
assistant and mastering the Dewey Decimal system. If the film had stuck
to its original remit, "A look at librarians through film", we could have
spent an enjoyable, if light-weight, hour exploring this rich vein of
resources.
However, this film wanted to have a message. The only problem is it
couldn't decide what that message should be. The result was a messy and
disjointed film in which a vast array of disparate subjects were touched
upon, without being properly addressed. The history of libraries,
budget cuts for public libraries, issues with privacy arising from the
Patriot Act and the role of the library in improving society are but a few
of the topics which got a look-in.
Teary-eyed close ups of people whose lives were changed by libraries
and an onslaught of librarians describing themselves as the "luckiest
people in the world" left some of us cynical Brits rolling our eyes:
which begs the question, when are we going to get cracking
on our own version?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Here are a few films to catch if, like me, you've been inspired to track
down a bit of quality librarian based drama:
Storm Center (1956)
Bette Davis plays a small-town librarian who loses her job after
refusing to remove a book on communism from her shelves.
Desk Set (1957)
The hardworking and knowledgeable staff of a TV network research
department (headed by Katherine Hepburn) are convinced that the new
computers installed in their office are going to send them all to
the unemployment office.
Music Man (1962)
Shirley Jones plays the librarian Marian Paroo, known for making
scandalous books available to the public and singing whilst she stamps
books.
Party Girl (1995)
Stars Parker Posey as a young New Yorker driven to work in a library
after her librarian godmother bails her out of jail.
The Librarian: Quest for the Spear (2004)
Noah Wyle plays talented librarian Flynn Carsen sent on a mission to
recover a historical artefact stolen from the library's special collection.
For hundreds more look no further than
“Librarians in the Movies:
An Annotated Filmography”
Please send news, reviews and letters to: deadline.
