Infiltrate and conquer? Showing the world what

librarians can do

Emily Allbon@lawbore #BIALL2015

A sad story…

• Law Librarian for 14 yrs

• City University London

• Great relationship with the law school

• Lots of recognition for my work

• Freedom to develop a very varied role

but…• Arrival of new

Director of Library• Felt I was too

involved with law school

• Sought to dilute and cut my role

“not a team player”

Going onto the dark side…

What?!! And you want me to listen to you after that???

A successful, collaboration-rich library and information service will:

• be part of the shift to open-access scholarly communication

• be entrepreneurial and mutate services, take risks, and learn from (regular) failures to confront disruptive technologies

• collaborate within and outside our professional and institutional boundaries, working as part of multi-service teams and with organizations and businesses outside our perceived sector walls

From: Rebecca Davies ‘The Changing Higher Education Context’ in Melling & Weaver: Collaboration in Libraries

and Learning Environments (2013), p.10-11

Benefits of collaboration with those outside libraries

• It makes new relationships possible – beneficial to all

• We are in the ‘edgeless’ era of Higher Education; convergence & holistic shared services rule.

• Need to make our value explicit as traditionally our services much more obvious.

#win

Connect & collaborate – avoid the Echo chamber

• “A situation in which information, ideas or beliefs are amplified or reinforced by transmission and repetition inside an ‘enclosed’ system”

(See more via Ned Potter and Laura Woods http://www.slideshare.net/thewikiman/echolib-newcastle-

2)

• Looking out for Calls for Papers at academic law conferences (BILETA, ALT)

• Writing articles • Tweeting and connecting

with lawyers, going to events

• Joined Editorial Board of the Law Teacher

• Entered the Routledge/ ALT Teaching Law with

Technology Prize

I muscled in by…

There’s a lot of potential support & collaborators out there!

Mrs Bennett & friends in Bath

Connect & collaborate

• I’ve worked with:

– Academics– Students– Ed Tech peeps– Students

– Alumni – Publishers – Other law librarians– Lawyers

With academics:Learnmore• Part of Lawbore

website – focus on legal skills

• Multimedia resources• Worked on Mooting

section with an academic colleague, developing resources together.

Talking Essays

• Bank of essays of varying standards in core subjects

• Written & audio feedback

With academics

Marketing videoscribe• LLM International

Business Law • Approached by

programme director to communicate with potential students in a different way

With students

Sharing experiences

• Via Learnmore (if skills related)

• Via blog Future Lawyer (if profession-focused)

• Gives them the chance to raise profile, write for fun, communicate with peers

• Helps us foster community feel & show what’s going on out there

• Peer learning – inspire others!

Collaborating with students

• Lots of potential here! • Maria Bell & Jane Secker at LSE – Student

Ambassadors for Digital Literacy (SADL) project

• Collaboration between the Learning, Technology & Innovation team (Lti) and Library to:

“explore the role that student ambassadors can play in developing and integrating digital and information literacy into the curriculum” See: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsesadl/

With alumniSharing experiences online…

• Interviews, articles

…and in person• Bringing them in for mooting

workshops, careers talks • Creating opportunities for our

current students (e.g. UKHRB)

With publishers

Anatomy of a law report

• Helping students understand the layout of a case within a law report

• Audio hotspots narrated by Paul Magrath from ICLR

*Also Halsbury’s Laws of England – what is it for? with Lexis for the blog.

Summer collaboration plans

• Research resources around a virtual brief – videos, animation (with academic colleague) to support BPTC students

• Induction week exercise around Legal Writing & legal landmarks (with help of Academic Support team) for first year undergraduates

• Creation of snappy video resources for new law students (with alumni)

Other experiences

• Martin O’Connor – UCC Library • Collaboration on an exhibition (July-

Sep 2014) about an iconic bar and nightclub in Cork, Sir Henry’s.

More on Sir Henry’s collaboration…

• Initial spark from a tweet• Collaboration between a librarian, a

DJ/Promoter and an academic but also the massive Sir Henry’s community

• Collaboration encouraged via social media (Twitter, fb & a project blog)

• Benefit to library – national media coverage, brought those to UCC who had never been, connections with town.

Other egs

• Uni-wide collaborative Learning Spaces projects involving Facilities, IT, Library, Student Services, Students Union, Schools – Campus Hub: University of Victoria, Wellington NZ– Saltire Centre, Glasgow Caledonian– Information Commons, SheffieldCollaboration between academic & support departments key to success.

• Collaborative Data projects across many universities– Library Impact Data Project stemming from

University of Huddersfield.

Barriers• Existing attitudes • History • Different cultures• Communication• Autonomy

See Cook & Lewis (2007) Student and Academic Affairs Collaboration: the divine comity, National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA)

What do we have to offer ‘outsiders’?

Lots to offer eg. 1Nicola

Roles in library world:

Researcher at The Guardian, Researcher at Lehman Brothers

Current role: Director, Anti-Money Laundering, Deutsche Bank

Skills still utilised: 1. Ability to organise the work of the team to ensure that we can find the information again if required to produce it to senior management, the regulator or law enforcement. The information collated is varied and may include correspondence, interview records, bank account data and management information. Producing information for any of these requestors can be required within short deadlines so having an effective system for organising information is essential.

2. Knowing how to find information and leveraging the knowledge of colleagues and peers is undoubtedly important when conducting an investigation

Lots to offer eg. 2Chris

Roles in library world:

Law Librarian, Cardiff University, Director of Library & Information Services (Library, Learning Tech, IT), BPP

Current role: Head of Student Technology & Learning Resources at Pearson College (more of a CIO role – listening to business, works out what business needs & then articulates to tech team)

Skills still utilised: 1. Good at translating business needs into technology needs

2. Working out relative value of things3. Conversing with techies (explaining needs &

listening to technical restraints)4. Management – budgets, staff, contracts

Lots to offer eg. 3Vanessa

Roles in library world:

Library Assistant, BPP, Collection Development Librarian, BPP, Law Librarian, Kings College London

Current role: Ebook Sales Specialist, Proquest – soon to be Director of International Sales, Geoscience World. Involves presenting at conferences & selling different ebook acquisition strategies like pda, dealing with consortia & completing tenders in order to broaden reach.

Skills still utilised: 1. Library induction talks really helped me become more comfortable presenting.

2. Knowledge of how library budgets work helped me sell more efficiently to libraries (just knowing what a MARC record is gave me huge advnatage over other sales people)

3. Dealing with difficult law students at enquiry desk.

Lots to offer eg. 4Lisa

Roles in library world:

Information Officer for Telecoms, Media & Tech group, Freshfields (research, current awareness & managing ‘info bank’ of legal precedents.Information Officer, FSA (managing e-resources, enquiry desk work on legal/business research, bit of cataloguing)

Current role: Senior Knowledge Manager for Global Corporate Finance Business, KPMG (work with country leaders in the business to help define a knowledge strategy for their business, looking at size/focus of business & short/long-term priorities

Skills still utilised: Help people articulate what they need – making sense of an immediate requirement, understanding a situation – fleshing it out and predicting what might be needed in the future. Ability to get to grips with complex ideas. Communications skills.

Lots to offer eg. 5Rebecca

Roles in library world:

Library Assistant, Norton Rose, Librarian, Addleshaw Booth & Co, Information Officer & Senior Information Officer, Norton Rose (research/enquiry work, cataloguing, current awareness & training)

Current role: FreelancerIndexer at Thomson Reuters & OUP. Abstracting & indexing legal and regulatory journal articles for Westlaw LJI. Creating electronic records for domestic & international legislation and cases to enrich content on their databases.

Skills still utilised: Abstracting/writingIndexingCataloguing/records management

Lots to offer eg. 6Susanna

Roles in library world:

Research Librarian, Trainer, Library Manager at Slaughters, Dentons and Baker & McKenzie

Current role: CSR Manager at Baker & McKenzie. Manage charitable partnerships and staff volunteering. Help coordinate pro bono programme. Coordinate sustainability activities. Also manage some of the social mobility work experience programmes.

Skills still utilised: Clarifying needs - dealing with approaches from charities etc, working out where to direct, what to focus on. Analysing needs of enquirer. Being a "hub"...as librarian built role as point of contact, place to come with queries, problems. Become a connector within organisation. V useful when pulling together groups of volunteers. Research skills...benchmarking, what are other organisations doing? Have helped refine search strings for CSR news alerts!

Librarians are:

• Superb at needs analysis• Ace organisers• Great at networking – knowing who to go to for that

specific bit of info• Tenacious – never giving up in our hunt for information• Understanding tech• Managers • Teachers• The ‘hub’ within an organisation – connecting people

…on top of all the traditional skills!

Need some extra ammo to encourage people to work with you? Skilling up?

• ITIL – IT service management methodology (service requests, change management, incident, problem, capacity management, service improvement)

• HEA Fellowship – Fellow/Senior/Principal• Introductory Certificate /PG cert/MA in

Academic Practice

What makes a collaboration work?

• Enthused committed team members• Individuals who each offer something

different to the project• Schedule & deadlines – a timeline with

a little flexibility worked in• Everyone needs to get something out

of it• Willingness to compromise to find a

solution

How do we get people on board?

• Talk about the benefits

• Use something visual to convince them

• Use examples of things done elsewhere

• Align to vision & strategy

Not

rocket

science

!

Get out there and collaborate like

crazy…

Thanks for listening!

• https://uklibchat.wordpress.com/2015/03/31/feature-23-a-recent-interview-with-a-librarian-and-his-experience-of-collaborating-outside-libraries/ (UCC exhibition)

• Maria Bell & Jane Secker, ‘Transitions from School to Higher Education: Understanding the Needs of Undergraduates at LSE’ Information Literacy, Lifelong Learning and Digital Citizens – Second European Conference, ECIL 2014, Croatia, October 20-23, 2014, p.309-318

Slides

available

!

Slideshare.n

et/lawbore

Image credits

• Sad face: 11th May 2009 by Jaina https://www.flickr.com/photos/pizzagirl/3522509847

• Bricks: Brick wall by Lars Thomsen https://www.flickr.com/photos/solarflare/4632635380/

• Rocket: Crazy rides rockets by Brandon Doran https://www.flickr.com/photos/brandondoran/5311343572

• Social Media Marketing Madness http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/23861/10-Social-Media-Cartoons-Guaranteed-to-Make-You-Smile.aspx

All others purchased from istockphoto