Future Skills and You – take part in the consultation

Last week I met with Simon Edwards (@simonedwards75), CILIP’s Director of Professional Services, who was in Scotland to discuss the Future Skills project. Simon is Project Manager of the initiative which aims to revise the Body of Professional Knowledge (BPK), review accreditation processes and develop new approaches to chartership and certification by working with employers, developing new partnership approaches and making best use of technology to support learning.

Keith Wilson, who chairs the Project Board, published a briefing in the January edition of Update which sets out the aims and objectives of the project in full and introduces members to the Project Board. More information is also available on the CILIP website including ways for members to get involved. Simon will be speaking about the project at both the CILIP CYMRU Conference in May and our own CILIPS Conference in June.
Member engagement is the key to ownership of project outcomes and Simon advised that the first stage of consultation is underway and will remain open until midnight on February 26th. The consultation asks members to consider the value of BPK and what it means to them as individual members. The survey can be accessed here. By taking a few moments to complete it you’ll be helping CILIP gain an understanding of what members, potential members, the wider sector and stakeholders want from a BPK. CILIPS is urging all members to make sure their views are known and recorded.
A second consultation will ask members to consider a new draft BPK being developed by the Project Board.

It’s public knowledge – or is it?

This week SLIC and CILIPS have been engaged in drafting a response to the Scottish Government consultation on proposals for a Freedom of Information (Amendment) (Scotland) Bill. The consultation follows an earlier exercise to determine what should be included in amendment legislation.

In common with the outgoing Scottish Information Commissioner SLIC and CILIPS argued for the inclusion of additional bodies, such as local authority trusts to be designated under FOI(S)A legislation but the latest proposal suggests only two technical amendments and not the hoped for extension of coverage of the Act.

Scotland’s Information Commissioner, Kevin Dunion,  who will demit office later this month, contends that the state of freedom of information in Scotland is still strong but acknowledges there is more to be done. His final report  is well worth a read in the context of the current consultation and what is and is not a ‘designated body’ as that is where our concerns lie.

SLIC and CILIPS will continue to advocate for extending peoples’ information rights. We would like the loop to be closed on anomalies such as that experienced by residents of one local authority who lost the legal right to ask for information about their leisure services in 2009 when leisure services was outsourced to a trust. We remain optimistic that the Scottish Government will extend our ‘right to know’ in a future parliamentary session.

National Libraries Day: In the Loop

People up and down the UK celebrated National Libraries Day on February 4th in a variety of ways from Stephen Fry’s description of them as ‘places of incredible glamour, possibility, power, excitement and pleasure’ to author Julia Donaldson’s protest poem on library closures down south.  Libraries across the nation delivered  special activities to mark the occasion while off duty librarians did their bit too.

Newspapers including the Herald and  Financial Times made the case for the value of libraries to economy and society and set the positive tone for the day ahead – a Glasgow librarithon and shoogle tour called In the Loop!.

In Glasgow, Anabel Marsh, librarian at Strathclyde University Jordanhill Campus developed an idea for a librarithon based around stops on the Glasgow Underground and floated it at a recent tweet up where it generated a lot of interest. In the run up to National Libraries Day librarians, CILIP in Scotland, Glasgow Life and Glasgow Subway all offered to support the initiative resulting in a hugely enjoyable day of fun, culture, learning, exploration and networking.

Glasgow Subways presented participants with ‘shooglebags’ to hold the books we would borrow at each library and they even sent a photographer along to record the event.  STV picked up the story and featured it on their website.

Assisted by our guide, Myra Paterson, a chartership candidate at Glasgow Life who gave up her day off to escort us around four very different service points in Glasgow, we were welcomed with coffee and proud enthusiasm from Doreen, Jo and John who showed us around Hillhead Library, library at GOMA, Partick Library and Gorbals Library on the south side of the river Clyde. Children’s author, Lynne Rickards joined us for part of the tour and for lunch in the west end of Glasgow. Anabel has blogged about the event and about ‘shoogle’ terminology while Lauren Smith, CILIP Vice President, described her experience using lots of pictures. Lynn Corrigan gave us a diary record with photos

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