Mae'n meddylch i'r myfyrdd i gael i Isabelle Hunter ar gyfer libris ymlaen. Mae'r llibris ymlaen yn gweithio. Mae'r llibris yn gweithio ar gyfer libris ymlaen i Gymraeg a Conagiau UK. Mae'n gweithio at y brifatwch cymryd cyflogol ar gyfer hwn. Mae'n gweithio i gael ar gyfer gyfer y gweithio ar gyfer gyfer y gweithydd a phobl. Mae'n gweithio ar gyfer gyfer hwn ar gyfer y gweithio. Mae oedd Isabelle. Rwy'n gwybod i'n gweithio, Achim. Efallai, gwaith i'r adnodd gronfa'r seysig. Roeddodd fel p'r eich sempio. You cloakwm o'r pryd但 a'r femeid. Fe wnaeth hynny多 brifysgol am y Llywodraeth i ym Mhwngoromol. Wrth gweld iawn, eich bod y rherwydd yn naerbyn mewn bobl cysyllt yn y Llywodraeth yn y Llywodraeth. Mae'r Llywodraeth yn y Llywodraeth yn y Llywodraeth. Felly, we're also funded by Arts Council, so we're the sector support organisation for Public Libraries. Public library is a really vast sector, there's about 350,000 library branches, 15,000 staff, and in 2019, there were 26 million library visits and 171 million books borrowed, so it's a service that reaches across all communities a'r amserio a'r llai o gyrfa cyfnod a yn 2019, 34% o'r popolau yn ymgyrch yn ymgyrch. Felly, rydym chi'n meddwl i'r papur, rydw i'n mynd i ddim yn rhan fwyaf. Rydw i'r tham o'r ffordd o'i hoffio ar hyn o'r byd o'r byd, ond mae'r byd yn ymgyrch yn ymgyrch yn ymgyrch yn ymgyrch yn ymgyrch, rydw i'n mynd i'n meddwl ymgyrch yn ymgyrch yn ymgyrch yn ymgyrch. But libraries have remained really focused on serving their users and their communities. For me it's been really humbling to see the dedication and the innovation and the determination of staff really keen to keep their services running, whatever the challenge is. I think it's also really shown that it's the people, it's the library staff with the lifeblood of the service, yes, libraries are all about the space and the resources and the books and so on, but so many of the comments that have read from users has been about how they've appreciated ac mae'r cyfnodd arfermwysgrifwyd yn gweithio ar gyfer y dyfyrdd y staff, os ym mwyn o ffynnolau personal oherwydd iawn i'r gweithio. Mae'n mynd i ddweud o'r ysgrifennu'r gweithio. Mae'n gweithio'n ei gweithio ar gyfer y dyfyrdd ac mae'n falch arall y mlynedd yn ei gweithio. Mae'n gweithio ar y dyfyrdd yng nghymru. Mae'r gweithio ar gyfer y dyfyrdd yn gweithio ar gyfer y ddechrau'r llyfrnodol a'r staff yn ymlaen. Ond diwrnodd Lleidwyr yn gweithio gweithio'r ddeithasol yn y cyfrifwyr digital, wedi bod yn gweithio'r gyrwyr cofeithio cyfrifwyr, ac mae'r cyfrifwyr newydd yw gydag yw'r cyfrifwyr. Rwy'n dweud y pryd yn yr unig bod ymweld y cyfrifwyr ymlaenodd Lleidwyr. Felly, yn y ffwrdd ymlaenodd Lleidwyr, byddai 25% o gweithio Lleidwyr yn gweithio cyfrifwyr i gael gwybod i gael gwybrhau, yn gweithio'r ddydd ymddangosol, people running community help lines, even working in crematoriale, and it was said skills in organization, working with people and knowing that community, those skills that they honed in the library were so eagerly sought out in redeployments and in the terrible emergency and that they faced. Of what libraries delivered in that first lockdown was staggering and thats been revealed by research both by libraries connected and also by the Carnegie UK Trust. So, staff had to be sent home—the doors had to be locked to the public— but what followed was an incredible surge of creativity driven by that determination of the staff wanting to keep the services going. Many libraries delivered keeping touch calls. So this was about really keeping the, what public libraries often call the, the librarianess going. So we think over 130,000 keeping touch calls were delivered, where staff phoned older or shielding or vulnerable residents. Felly, mae'r bwysig iawn yn ymddi'ch rhaglen, mae'r ffordd o'r rhaglen o'r swyddfaeth i'ch ddweud mae'r llwyfio cyllideb i'w meddwl yn ychydig. Ond mae'r bwysig yn y cyflwydoedd yn ymgyrch. Mae'r bwysig yn ymddi'ch gyflwydoedd o'r gyflwydoedd wedi'u'r gweithio yn ffwrdd i fynd i'u bwysig i'r Llyfr, mae'r ddweud yn gweithio i'r gweithio i'w pwysig i'r gweithio i'r ddweud. maen nhw'r chaft wedi'u chael i'r tîl Llein Mothau yn gyflawn i'r ymddangos, ond i'r Llyfrgell Llyfrgell yn y gyflawn. Rwy'n feddwl y cyflawn i'r llwyddiadau o'r llwyddau a'r trefyn yn gyblodau. Mae Cyflawn Llyfrgell yma yn 10000 ar y cyfrifloedd yn y ddweud. Mae'n ddweud yma i'r llwyddiadau ar y cyfrifloedd, ond mae'r llwyddol yn ddweud yn y cyfrifloedd, ond rydyn ni'n cael ei fod yn ysgawdd. felly yturllwyr wedi bod yn cyflawn i amser lleografnod ar gyfer eu gfaith. Felly mae'r lleograff hon yn gwAH wahanol yng Ngheilgelliaeth a gweithio yng Ngheilsgol a'r ffwrdd yn ystafell i gyhoedd. Mae'r lleograff yn gweithio eich lleograff yn gallu eich lleograff. Rydym wedi bod yn cyd-ferwyr ei fod yn ebook, yr i audio, mae'r magazines i gweithaf, ond o'r cyfnod wrthwyng sy'n intermedi yn ymddun i gyflawn. Felly, y myfyrwch yn ymgyrchu cymryddiol sydd y cyflwyno yn gyfrydsiau yn myfyrwch ac yn unig iawn. Mae'r cyfrwyng sydd yn ei cyfrwyng ymlaenwyr yn 600% i gyd yn ymweld y cwestiynau hynny, a hwn yn ymweld yn ymweld yn myfyrwch yn cyfrwyng y myfyrwch. Mae Llywodraeth yn baen i ddadrw i'r dyfodol yn ymweld, a'r cyfrwng yn ymweld yn ymweld. Yw'r cyfrwng yn ymweld yn ymweld yn ymweld, it will stay at a much higher level than previously. And there is also been notable growth in things like children's books, parents had previously been quite reluctant to encourage their kids to have even more screen time. But in lockdown they were desperate for titles to educate the children and to keep them entertained. What was interesting as well is that libraries looked at moving their regular events and activities online. So they started with things that were a bit simpler to do and sort of a one why performance, or fusel ond ac mae'r wybod fawr yn cael ei wasliad, yn gallu bwysig sydd yn ei fawr yn cael ei wasliad, bobl yw pwyntol sydd wedi cefnodol. Felly oherwydd, oherwydd, mae'r bwysig yn rhan o'r llun oedd ynMeltyd, yr unig o'r iawn a'r flade ar gyfer hynny, a'r drwyniad yn unig oedd i'r llun o'r llun o'r rhan o'r llun o'r llun o'r llun o'r putamen o'r cyfridd, they started to appear too. Some online events have regularly achieved audiences of a thousand people. Some in the early days especially reached over 20,000 which was staggering. But again it was just that appetite. Families wanted structure in the day and found the attending a library rhyme time was a sort of positive point in the day. It also supported their baby's language development and adults were keen to attend these events because they ease the tedium and loneliness of lockdown and shielding. Online events have reached new people who haven't used the library before and also kept existing users connected in new ways. For some residents they were the hook to encourage them to use Zoom or FaceTime with support from library staff to help them understand how to work their laptop and how to use Zoom. Libraries also looked at innovations in how they could get books into people's hands. So after the first lockdown was lifted, libraries rushed to deliver order and collect services. Now these took varied forms and that was partly determined by the availability of bookstuff stock. There was loads and loads of stuff was still out on loan. Libraries had given people extended loan periods so that books were still in people's houses have not been returned. They were also in locked libraries because not all branches have been able to open. So some libraries offered a service where readers could choose and reserve what they like from the catalogue, but others offered what they called a ready read service where they had packs of preselected books chosen by theme or age brackets. And there were some libraries offered a sort of personal shopper version. So they looked at what the readers borrowing record was understood what they like and then they chose things from the available stock. So it's really interesting actually because ready read and the personal shopper thing, the things that were developed because bookstuff was limited, but they actually proved a really surprising hit. Parents said their children got really excited to open up the packs of books at home. It was a bit like Christmas looking at what was in there and they enjoyed being introduced to all sorts of new books they wouldn't have tried before. I think some adults found it a bit like one of those food services like Hello Fresh where it all comes nicely packed and you're introduced to a whole load of new flavours you wouldn't have tried. And library stuff also said it was a really good experience for them. They had to really think about selection and reader preferences. So it's a fresh chance to use those library skills to step into reader's shoes. So it's a service that many libraries would love to continue for the long term resources permitting. Libraries also did some really surprising things that were outside their usual remit things you wouldn't expect them to do and a lovely example was a Gateshead library where they've got a maker space with 3D printers and laser cutters. So they turn these on and started creating visors and PPE equipment in that period when local care homes and GPs just couldn't get hold of supplies and that terrible early study of lockdown. When the library van arrived at one care home, the staff had lined the car park to applaud it and some of them were in tears. They were so desperate and so thankful for the supplies that the library was able to provide. So it really is incredible to look back at March 2020 and to think how much libraries have innovated overnight really and now doing things that seemed unimaginable or impossible. Those things are now routine. What was also significant was that the government recognized two things about public libraries. Firstly, that libraries provide a complex mix of services. Sometimes I describe public libraries a bit like a Swiss army pen knife rather than a single tool. There's all sorts of things inside a small package. The second thing the government recognized was that libraries were essential to their communities and this was enshrined in lockdown regulations. So libraries were granted really quite significant exemptions to run some of the services even in the complete lockdown. So they were able to provide PC access, home library service, order and collect and a number of other things and library staff were also formally recognized as essential workers. And this recognition by central government of how essential libraries were that was massively powerful at the local level and within the councils where libraries belong. Now that we're hopefully, hopefully, finally emerging from this pandemic, I think we really need to keep hold of that belief in the flexibility and innovation of libraries and their staff and the confidence that comes from it. We've dealt with everything that pandemic has thrown at us. We can really face the future with determination. So I'm just going to quickly look at a couple of things about the next 12 months and beyond and look at what are the priorities for library works and what channels will they need to deliver that work through. So as you've seen, public libraries have really proved their worth to their communities so they're now well placed to play a vital role in recovery and we all know that recovery is going to be a really extended process. We're not going to bounce back overnight. So last autumn, libraries connected published an advocacy report called libraries and essential part of recovery. And this set out the key priority areas that will face local authorities and communities and pandemic recovery and highlighted the contributions that libraries can make to these. So we published that report back in September, but since then these factors have been thrown into even sharper relief. You know, every week there is more reports and evidence coming out about how serious these issues are. So the priorities we identified are economic recovery and sporting people back into work. So businesses have been shattered, unemployment has surged and will probably surge even further once further completely ends. But libraries have got strong track record in providing advice and support to new businesses and to help people seeking work. Second priority is educational support and closing the disadvantage gap. So libraries have a vital role in providing access to resources and activities and study space. They can play a strong role in helping close the yawning gap that's emerged. So we're looking forward to the summer reading challenge and that's going to be especially important this year. That's going to be a way of using that six week holiday to keep children reading and to help them to catch up with what they've missed. Third priority is around isolation mitigation and so many people's mental health has taken a real battering after months of isolation and limited social contact. But libraries can bring people back together through events, provide a friendly space for them to visit and use targeted support such as books on prescription, reading friend schemes and bereavement groups. Another priority is digital inclusion with some reports stating that about 20% of the population is digitally excluded. They lack the skills, they lack device, they lack data and connectivity. So the people's network that's in every library, the internet, computers and Wi-Fi will have a massive role to play that normally provides over 26 million hours of internet access a year. But there are some new schemes at libraries developing to get devices and connectivity into people's homes and to help them develop the skills and confidence they need. And we're also working with Jess on looking at can we roll edge around out into public libraries to support students and academic staff when they're off campus. And the final priority support for the local cultural sector. So libraries will be really key local venues, they're safe, they're accessible. So they can provide access to smaller scale performances and exhibitions at the time when larger venues may still not be able to open. And some people may not feel safe to visit them. So libraries already deliver against all of these priorities and have got tried and tested approaches. But what may be different for libraries in the overhead is the choices on which services to prioritize. Obviously the balance of need in every community will be different. But it also for some libraries may mean a really hard choice between delivering the traditional universal service that a library provides or a more targeted one. So the second thing I want to look at is how will libraries deliver, what shape will their services be. And I think the experience of the pandemic has shown that libraries are being robust and resilient because they've delivered through different channels and been able to ramp those up or down as lockdowns come and gone. So it's really clear and that for the challenges ahead we need to continue to deliver what we're calling the three channel library service with delivery through three channels. So onsite and physical, it's really important we get our buildings open. We get people to come back in to come together again to access face to face service and all the physical resources that libraries provide. The second channel is digital. So we need to continue to expand our digital offer. We need to keep hold of the new digital users who have come to libraries, but also to expand libraries digital assistance to help bridge terrible digital divide. And the final channel is outside the walls. So again, we can build on the proven success of home library service, which was a vital lifeline for so many during the lockdown. We can also continue to grow more partnerships. So again, it was really successful work with charities and food banks during the pandemic. The dot library service out to those who need it. And we can also experiment with bringing libraries into locations deep into communities. So again, none of this is new libraries have been operating across those three fronts for a long time. But again, it's the balance between these three will need to change and then also be need for some specific investment or development in them. So in terms of immediate priorities over the next 12 months, there are some very clear things facing libraries. So firstly, get the physical libraries open again to support job seekers to support students to put vulnerable people and local businesses and encourage people back over the threshold to feel safe and to enjoy themselves and to feel at home again in the library. We need to restore events and activities. So at the moment there's a particular focus on getting events back for early years and that pressing need to support babies and young children, speech and language development. We need to develop the digital offer. So there's a lot of work to do to work with publishers to improve the availability of elicencies so that libraries can develop a much richer selection of online books. We need to develop the existing people's network and develop more digital inclusion programs that get outside libraries and get devices into people's hands. And finally, outside the walls, I think there's going to be some really interesting work happening this year with outdoor events, things like story walks in parks and gazebos for events and activities, and all of this driven by new partnerships to really reach deep into communities. So the last 50 months has been absolutely terrible in so many ways. But it's also been a year when public libraries have proved their worth again and again and library stuff have been allowed to innovate and take the lead in developing services because they're the ones who know their users, they interact with them every day. So as we move out of the pandemic, the overhead may be equally daunting, but I hope it can be a period when staff can continue to feel they're the lifeblood of the service and that they're encouraged to grow new ideas and experiment. Thank you. Thank you very much, Isabel, for an incredibly informative and, if I may say so, very moving presentation. I think I think I speak for everyone here when I say that I think we all owe an enormous debt of gratitude to public library staff, public library staff around the country for what they've done in their day jobs, beyond their day jobs, and when seconded into other roles as well, I think it's been absolutely incredible. So thank you very much for that. I look forward to you rejoining us for the Q&A at the end. So if we move on to our second presentation today, this is the no barriers approach making the inclusive archive of reality and that's from James Ranahan and Joanna Terry from Archives West Midlands. Archives West Midlands supports members within the region. It builds relationships with key stakeholders and ensures that archive services have confidence and a robust framework. Sorry, my video turned off for no reason there. A robust framework to tackle professional priorities. James and Joanna will talk to us today about the no barriers approach making inclusive archives a reality are hand over to them now. Okay, so good morning everyone. I'm Joanna Terry. I'm Head of Archives and Heritage at Staffordshire County Council, and I'm also one of Archives West Midlands trustees. I'm here with Jim Ranahan, who's a cataloging archivist at Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and who is also a trustee and our secretary for Archives West Midlands. We're going to talk to you about our project called no barriers and how we are supporting archive services to become more inclusive. Sorry, I was having trouble making the slide move. So just a bit about Archives West Midlands. We're a charitable incorporated organisation which launched five years ago in 2016. I can't believe it. It was actually this month and I cannot believe how time has flown. We have 16 subscribed members from across the West Midlands. These include local authorities, universities, charities, cathedrals, business archives and specialist collections. And what AWM is about is working together and forging a collective identity and providing a coherent and confident voice for the region's archives. We were supported by the National Archives to establish our organisation and we've also been fortunate enough to receive additional funding from them to deliver regional projects. And we feel that in times of financial constraint and also particularly during the last year of the pandemic, the collaboration is more important than ever. Sharing our knowledge and expertise makes us collectively stronger and creates new opportunities for exciting joint projects. One strand of work we identified as a priority in the last, well more than a year ago now, is around diversity and inclusion. We're all aware of the need to take this work and some of the challenges that face services about taking the right approach to this area. So we developed the no barriers project to address this and that's what we're going to talk to you about this morning. We're just talking a bit about how we do, how our collaborative approach works and how Archives West Midlands works. So our approach really is that we support members and tackle some of the challenges that we face in the sector. An example is our first priority which was around digital preservation. This was our clear early first priority as an organisation which members raised with us that they were struggling to progress this, through lack of confidence, skills or knowing where to start. So what we did was a readiness assessment which we did through a survey and we found out what the difficulties were. Then on the back of that we delivered two funded projects. Through these projects we developed multiple policies and procedures that would assist our members which we shared on our website. Then we followed this with a series of training sessions and what we were able to do was bring in the digital preservation coalition, bring them in to deliver training in our region at an affordable rate for members and it was really important to get together in Birmingham to experience the training. We continued to support our members with training on this area and we have a regular check-in at our member meetings which is to track progress on digital preservation. Members have welcomed this incremental approach and the ability to learn together as a cohort and to share their experiences with other services. So way back in 2019 of 2020 we were looking at our year ahead, it was towards the end of 2019 and we identified another challenging priority for members which was hard to diversify our workforce to be more representative of the communities that we cover. We had as trustees a really lengthy discussion, I can remember it, in fact I think we had more than one discussion about how to do this and what was the right approach to take. I think in quite a brave decision we committed some of our own money, we are a member subscription organisation so we committed some of our own funds on an issue that really people can shy away from as it can be quite challenging to get it right. At the time the National Archives Network funding stream was available and this was an ideal opportunity for us to develop a project to recruit a trainee from a diverse background who could be supported by our services and develop the outline for a project which we would then deliver with further funding and then we would continue to mentor the trainee by people from our member services. In developing our application we appealed to our members who applied to be host service, we were initially looking for one host service but we had a really good response and so based on the experience of services we selected to date to be a birthplace trust as our main host and then Wolverhampton Archives and local studies will be within the 12 months an additional mini placement. Just as we heard that our application has been successful in March 2020 as you are all aware the country went into the first national lockdown. All services were suspended and for the state to be a birthplace trust many of their staff were actually on furlough delay us rolling out the project. But what we did during 2020 was we took some time to have really good discussion with the National Archives including Lucy Davis and Rachel Minot to take their advice and confirm who we were targeting placement at which is actually A level or undergraduate and to really take advice on how to deliver an inclusive recruitment process. We also developed job description and person specification and the adverse and then once services were recovering we discussed the project with HR team at Shakespeare Birthplace Trust to ensure that our recruitment process would be inclusive and appropriate for the candidates a supportive process and that we would widely advertise it to reach our target market. We also developed host agreement which we have in place between Archives West Midlands and Shakespeare Birthplace Trust which has clear accountabilities for the respective elements of the project. It's already been a learning experience for us and our host services and what I'm going to do now is hand you over to Jim and he's going to talk to you about the progress of the project. Thank you Joanna and hello to everyone. So, of course I'm a bit of a fraud today because I should be here reporting back on the success of the 12 month project, whereas as Joanna explained with the delay through the COVID situation, we're just at the point where we're recruiting a trainee placement and we're just about to launch the project. So please bear with me as I tell you what we will be doing and I hope to get invited back next year to report on progress. So the key elements that we're focusing on to try to reduce exclusion and increase diversity within the archive sector is to look at the workforce and also the user base. You'll be aware from previous presentations earlier DCDC that the archive sector is recognised as being 90% white within a multicultural diverse community and society. So we need to look at ways to increase the representation of our workforce. And also to present an inclusive face back out to the diverse communities that we're we're intending to serve. So the placements, which is a 12 month placement, but part of a commitment by archive West Midlands to long term development to make sure that diversity and diversity and inclusion practices and procedures are really, really embedded within the sector. This placement is really focused on working out in partnership with communities, what the barriers to those communities seeking careers within the archive sector and using and engaging with archive services to identify those barriers. So the first step was to look at how we could increase how we could bring in roots into the profession for people that wouldn't otherwise think automatically about archives as a career. And the title of this slide from the recruitment pipeline through to the career pathway is really about us thinking about the push pull factors, what attracts or dissuade people from entering the archive sector and what can be done to increase our attractiveness. The slide on screen is courtesy of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. It shows Willard White as a fellow in the 1989 production in Stratford and Emma Kellan as Iago. I've included it just because in 1989 it was deemed completely appropriate to have a black actor playing a black character rather than white actor blacked up, which had been the previous practice. But in 2021 we would really want to be asking Willard White whether he wanted to be cast as a fellow or if he would prefer to be cast as Iago. And I have to say I'm not speaking on Willard's behalf at any point in this, but it's just to flag up that there are different ways of looking at processes which we feel comfortable with and which we need sometimes to have an alternative perspective given to us. So the case study that we've chosen to take the recruitment process for No Barriers as a case study, we needed the employer to be supportive and thankfully Shakespeare Birthplace Trust has embraced what we're doing because we're asking the employer to embark on a recruitment process. To look at how we can widen the recruitment pipeline that we normally use. You'll be aware that there's the 90% white presence within the archive workforce that I mentioned earlier. We've worked really hard with our employers to get to a point where we've had 58 applicants, 35 of whom were clusters white UK and 21 of which were clusters non-white UK. Two of which preferred not to say. Now that gives us a strike rate, if you like, of 60% recruitment from the white UK population, 36% from non-white or non-white UK. Now that translated into a short list of five white UK, three non-white UK and that really is for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust looking at its recruitment profile. And we are looking more closely at the profile for other members within Archives West Midlands. That is an improvement on our success rate and we want to drill down to understand what the reasons for that are. What our research has shown is that where we were targeting to recruit from A level or equivalent, we were less successful and we continued to attract three quarters of the total applications from first degree or higher. So we attracted 14 A level or equivalent and 44 first degree or higher. Now that was interesting in its own right and it's given us access to very interesting and mixed and well placed pool of people to recruit from. But it does throw up the fact that our recruitment pipeline, despite our earlier targeting as a positive action activity, is still embedded in the traditional recruitment pool. And that's a lesson for us to take forward. We have learned, I think, from this activity that we need to be even stronger than we were on product placement to place our recruitment adverts within a wide range of locations. And to use a wide range of different networks to promote the opportunity. We need to widen that pool of talent that we're drawing from. And we need to really draw out the strengths of career pathways that can be supported by initiatives such as this placement. Thank you. And Joanna, could I have the next slide please? Thank you. And this image is from the Dutch photographic collection at the Library of Birmingham. And this is where we need to be focusing now. We've got the training placement and we're going to be working with the different, through the different hosts. To link with different communities and to seek out collections that can be used as activities to really build respect and confidence in the archive services as we're going forward. We mentioned that we will be looking at research and we will be providing a feedback loop for services and communities based on the experience that the training placement has in engaging with communities. Archives West Midlands will be providing ongoing mentoring to the training placement to ensure that the career pathway idea is supported and is supported beyond the period of the 12 months. And drawing on the experience of digital preservation coalition and their tremendous rapid assessment model. We are looking to have, we've been inspired by that rapid assessment model and we want to develop our own and use that as the basis to move forward in building confidence within our member services. In terms of engaging with issues around exclusion and tackling inequality within society but through our collections. Thank you Joanna, the next slide please. And then finally, we want to be drawing together our work on the recruitment or understanding of the workplace together with our work with the community aspects of the collections, so that we can move together towards an inclusive archive. It's an evolving process, it won't be just 12 months. We will be learning from this and we will be moving forward. The rapid assessment model will be developed and it will be promoted and it will be communicated with colleagues through training sessions. The first bridge has already happened. It was in May of this year and this focused on spreading existing examples of good practice and we heard from Professor Corin Fowler of the University of Leicester on the colonial countryside project. And the application of that project approach to work in archives and just to take the big example of landed estate papers that are so common in archive services. The rapid assessment model will be the foundations of it will be laid over the next 12 months and it will be refined in the coming years and we will be sharing that model with colleagues through our own events and hopefully in partnership with DCDC in years to come. Thank you very much. Thank you very much to Jim and to Joanna for that. And if I may, I think we're going to move straight on. We'll pick up some really interesting issues from that I'm sure during the Q&A at the end. If we can move straight on to the next presentation, the third presentation today. And we have Joanna Green and Bob McLean from the University of Glasgow. Sorry my camera keeps turning off so I apologize if you can't see me. So Joanna is a lecturer in information studies at Glasgow and co director of the Glasgow wide digital cultural heritage arts lab. She has particular interests in how public audiences access written heritage and how emerging digital tools might allow for a more immersive sensory and digital hands on experience that has traditionally been possible. And in 2020 Joanna was one of a core group of staff who worked to develop best practice in remote object based learning and teaching with the university's archives and special collections with using their virtual collections classroom technology. And that was installed to assist with with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. And then Bob is a book librarian in University of Glasgow archives and special collections and a member of the engagement team there and leads on teaching and learning and engagement. So I'll hand over to Joanna and Bob now for that for their paper, which is item handling in lockdown presenting the virtual collections classroom. Great, thank you. OK, so a fundamental role of University in Glasgow archives and special collections and a core part of our business and service model is the use of our collections in teaching and learning. In normal times each academic year would see over 150 hours of object based teaching delivered to up to 100 classes and 1500 students. Now the pandemic and its implications for in person teaching obviously jeopardize this. So come May of 2020, we began to research and plan out possible technological solutions to permit continued support for collections teaching remotely by a video conference. We used informal informal contacts to begin to research suitable cameras and technologies, while simultaneously building a business case for investment by consulting our regular academic collaborators to demonstrate demand. And so in informal informal contacts, what I mean by that is we reached out on social media. We sent emails to people who use the technology and the formal contacts were largely through our own IT department at the university. And here just a quick shout out to one of our key collaborators, Joe Tynclar, who is the university's learning space technology specialist in the IT department. Now when we actually explained the problem that we had to Joe and described our future needs and ideas, he explored lots of different options, came back with recommendations, articulated that the pros and cons of different technologies to us, and then incomplete partnership with us, designed a costed specification for refitting our teaching seminar room to deliver remote collections teaching access. So we've been really incredibly lucky to have Joe. Now a key feature of the new audio visual refit of our teaching base is a perfect ceiling mounted document camera, a wolf vision I 14, which can focus in on large objects so as wide as two meters, or tiny objects just a few centimetres across. The over the shoulder perspective which you're seeing here allows the viewer from the comfort and safety of their bedroom living room or kitchen to vicariously experienced that same view as the person turning the pages. We've named the new ceiling camera teaching service, the virtual collections classroom. The parameters and protocols of the service to a good while to establish with plenty of headscratches, to allow live streamed or pre recorded object handling so it fitted neatly into the online teaching and learning model being offered by the University of Glasgow during the 2020-21 session. We've named the new ceiling camera teaching service, the virtual collections classroom. The parameters and protocols of the service to a good while to establish with plenty of headscratching discussion and input from all parts of the team. Now using this camera tech to deliver online teaching we quickly realize was quite quite different from traditional in person class visits, and so the rules and delivery delivery rather had to change to reflect this. In person classes might see 12 to 15 students in the seminar room viewing and handling up to maybe 10 different items so that's early printed books, manuscripts, photo albums, that type of thing. Pre class assessments would usually take place where members of the engagement team, the team in which I am a part of, supported by our conservation and preservation colleagues would identify vulnerabilities in different items, and then bespoke handling advice read for each of the items. That would mean some might be deemed completely safe for students to handle and look through carefully. Some might be safe for use, provided certain parts of the book are avoided. Now others then again would be strictly look but don't touch. And then customarily a member of ASC staff that's archives and special collection staff would be present throughout the class to help invigilate the session, offer information and advice and ensure collection safety. So in coming up with a new model, any new online only teaching model using this overhead camera, we realize would imply entirely different levels of risk. Now that is person to person risk and person to object risk, and also different implications for support. Now, for example, one thing with no students in the room handling the objects, the implied collection risk we decided was lower. Provided the academic leading the session was competent and safer handling and properly advised of specific object vulnerabilities. There was in fact no reason for an ASC member of staff to be present in the room during the class. Indeed, given the pandemic mandating a member of staff to be present in the room during the session would arguably increase risk that would be that person to person risk to the participants. Therefore, the new service virtual collections classroom academic led with no ASC staff present in the room. Moreover, experimenting with the technology quickly led us to realize that sharing books and objects with the camera took quite a lot of time. That is time to safely set the object up time to zoom in and focus time to discuss the issues that you're wishing to discuss time to zoom back in time to turn the pages and so on and so forth. So selecting, as we would normally, 10 objects for an hour or 90 minute long class was just not really realistic. We therefore chose to limit each class to a maximum of three items and encouraged instead a different approach from practitioners, a deeper engagement maybe with each item rather than a survey approach. Now, these are just two of the ways in which the tech and the delivery method informed our service design and offer. Delivering the service throughout the pandemic has been a big challenge for us given the constant changes of public health level and the number of staff on site at any one time. So key has been designing a workflow model that explicitly outlines what needs done when and by whom, making sure sufficient time is inbuilt to allow for things to go a bit wrong. And while this VCC or Virtual Collections Classroom workflow centres on the task completed by the Ask Engagement team, the team in which I'm a part of, all Ask colleagues in fact contribute in some way from our metadata colleagues maintaining and updating the catalogue records to ensure findability right the way through to our conservation and preservation colleagues who did things like offer assessment advice to my team through Zoom and desktop visualisers, given that we were all distributed in different places. The immediate future is problem solving again. The new academic session will, we hope, see a return to in person small group teaching, yet the physical distancing requirements will likely imply that our collections teaching classes will have to be hybrid or blended sessions in some way rather than just in person only. So we've been busy considering what further tech investments might be required to support that form of teaching and what changes to our protocols and procedures might be required to deliver that form of teaching safely and sustainably. In the longer term, we're considering the range of additional services that we might offer based on this new technology from a teaching point of view, which is what I'm mostly interested in. The most exciting, I think, is that, well, once students are able to return to lecture theatre certainly is a thought that we can share handling sessions to upwards of 500 first year undergraduates at any one time, something that's simply been unthinkable in the past for large class sizes. So that form of encounter, you know, primary source encounter for students at such an early stage in their academic journey might even have long lasting implications for the development of research skills and other skills like that. So thank you. That's the end of my bit. I'm going to now hand over to Joanna to keep going. So Joanna. Thank you so much, Bob. Hello everybody. And to follow on from what Bob's just said, I'm now going to provide a user case study perspective as one of the aforementioned academics who uses technology in their teaching during the past academic year. To provide some context, I'm a lecturer based within information studies at the University of Glasgow. Bob, could you click the next slide for me, please? Where all of our taught programmes using archives and special collections in their teaching, and where all are professionally accredited, firstly by Sylip across the board, and secondly by Aura in the case of our professional MSc in information management and preservation. This presented us early on in the pandemic with a number of challenges. One, how we might continue collections access for subject teaching and student research. And two, how we might be able to provide item handling training given our students will be without physical access to our collections during the academic year. To give an idea of scale, in a typical year our MSc information management students would receive an hours item handling experience every single week for 12 weeks across one of their core courses. This combined with our professional accreditation meant that this access couldn't easily be removed without having a profound effect on the nature of what and how we teach our subject, and the development of those core professional skills are accreditation requires of us. The adoption of the wolf vision camera came as an enormous relief, but it also provided a brilliant opportunity to further develop the ways in which we enable collections access and support meaningful and engaging learning and teaching within our discipline. So given that context, let me focus a little further on a central problem for delivering my core course to our information management students, a course called records and evidence, which in 2020 2021 had a nearly 50 that's five zero students enrolled. Given our investment in this wolf vision technology, a key consideration for me as an academic was not just that I now had virtual access brilliant as that was, but how exactly I could use the technology in a meaningful way to support student engagement, autonomous learning and active student participation. A big motivation for me is how we communicate the materiality of our collections digitally. And this came to the fore during this last academic year. I very much lean in to the sensory engagement we all have when we physically encounter and handle material objects in our collections. It's a brilliantly easy way for me to spark engagement from my students in the materials we encounter. When this experience is removed and at a distance, I was faced with that challenge of active engagement. Great as the technology is, which you can see here on screen. I could very easily simply just use it to deliver a lecture style class, where I'm the one talking through the items on display, and the students are simply watching and listening over zoom. And I really didn't want to do that, though that delivery absolutely has its place in our teaching, in terms of teaching item handling. It's not particularly inspiring, and it certainly doesn't promote active learning, curiosity and skills development, which to me are crucial for students training to be accredited professionals. As you might be able to see from the comments on screen here, early use of the camera revealed that the technology was a huge hit with students in terms of the visual access it provided with students commenting that they'd never seen papyrus so close up before. How exploring the item digitally was much better in terms of equity of visual access than physical handling might provide. In other words, we could see more detail using the digital zoom than our human eye might in person with that object. And finally, how this material detail allowed them to consider more closely why the material object that our records exist on in our collections hold evidential value, a key concern for the course. While this was extremely pleasing to hear, it didn't solve the issue of delivering handling training in a student centered way. In short, I wanted to deliver item handling in a way that put them in control of what we saw, how we handled items and what we explored that have held our professional skills training and accreditation that spoke to the handling needs of individual objects in a way that embraced the materiality of that object. And finally, the prioritized the conservation and handling requirements of each item. I wanted a solution that retained as much of that individual student autonomy of a face to face handling class, but in a digital and remote learning environment without risking our collections. In thinking out how I deliver these classes, I remembered those choose your own ending books that I used to read as a child. In them, you get to a certain point in the story, and you're then presented with a series of options for where you want the story to go. Having chosen your path, you then turn to the relevant page and you read on. And it put you as a reader at the center of that encounter with that story. And that's the approach I adopted with my handling classes. Using a series of pre designed zoom polls, an example of which you can see on screen here. I was able to put the students in charge of the experience. By using the poses of voting system, they chose which items they saw first. They decided which supports and weights we might use for handling each item. They directed which aspects of the item we explored and in what order. In essence, what they voted for, I did. With me based physically in our virtual collection classroom, handling the items live over zoom, my colleagues Nicole Smith and Michelle Craig released the polls on zoom for me. They engage with students reactions, questions and responses using zooms chat function and then fed them back to me verbally. This enabled me to concentrate on handling prioritizing the conservation needs of the item while allowing the students to feel in charge of the experience and to learn not just by watching, but by doing. If students voted for a handling method I felt was inappropriate for an item, we talked through why that was and why another approach would be preferable. And then I would demonstrate. This helps students to learn to respond to the individual needs of each item we encountered and to trust their own growing professional intuition in regards to quote unquote correct handling practice. At the end of each class, I followed up this live experience with access to 2D images, both professionally digitized images organized by the library and those taken by me on a smartphone, as well as pre recorded handling videos. And the recordings of the live handling classes so that students could revisit items and explore them again digitally on their own terms and in their own time. The students feedback was overwhelmingly positive. They commented on the benefits of not having to physically crowd around each item, as we might have had to do in person. They felt that they were in control of what we did in class, even though it was at a physical distance. In a year when more students across the UK went without physical hands on access to collections, we were able to create meaningful digital engagement with our collections and use the technology we'd invested in in new and exciting ways. We turned what might have been a passive experience into an active journey of discovery personalized to the students interests. Rather than me prioritizing what I wanted to deliver, I prioritized what the students wanted to explore, which led to more meaningful engagement evidenced in their assessment performance, as well as their feedback. Perhaps the most rewarding of all, the students nominated me in our university's annual teaching awards. I'm very pleased to say this led to my being awarded best practice in online learning for this teaching innovation, which has to be a career highlight. So what are the issues going forward for us into a new academic year once again filled with uncertainty. For me, it's how we learn from and adapt these approaches for future groups of students, larger groups of students, external users, and how we begin to use this technology, not just to deliver remote access, but to enhance face to face classes as well. What we've shown today is that, while we might have missed out on collections handling in person this year, digital access can be equally meaningful, engaging and empowering when we place the user's needs at the centre. It's simply a case of working together with our colleagues in archives and special collections and our student users to co create new methods of engagement with these technologies. Thank you. Thank you very much, Joanna and Bob for for that right. So I think we want to get some questions in that was a great presentation, but we want to get on to the questions and so if I can ask the other panellists to just pop their cameras on if they can, and we will we will get going. So, I'm going to come to you first, Isabel, and before I ask the question, I just want to acknowledge a couple of questions that are perhaps more like comments. So one from George Dukes and also from Maria Gayton and Maria talking about the experience in Dorset, and really talking about the importance of human contact and the role that the public library services have had as more than just places to get books, but really about that human contact and acknowledging that and acknowledging that that's happening and that public libraries have tightened their connections with people. So, but the question I'm going to take the one from Catherine Short at DMU who says regarding the keeping in touch calls, what emotional support is being given to library staff who've been making those calls such as bereavement counselling, et cetera. I mean, that's what they sound like. They sound like bereavement counselling in many cases. And I'd add to that, do you think there's a long term kind of impact on morale within public library staff? Yeah, this is a really, really important question. And the answer is, I think the support varies because of course libraries are run as separate services. In England there's 150 separate library services. Most of them still embedded as part of a local authority. Some of them run as been out separately. So the support available does vary. But I think that the task of bringing things back together, rebuilding morale, supporting each individual, that is the daunting one that's facing heads of service. And I'm so sorry, you might be getting some background noise because my washing machine has chosen to go and spin at this very moment. Sorry, I could see you looking a bit puzzled. So we ran a heads of service webinar about this recently and we had a really, really powerful presentation from somebody from Batley Library. So Batley Library had a horrendous experience a while ago when the MP Joe Cox was murdered just outside the library. And she usually held her surgery in the library, so she was known to library staff. The chap who committed this terrible deed was, did use the library at times. It was very, you know, the impact on library staff was enormous. And what we learned from that presentation was how different people react at different times. How so for some individuals there may be no visible sign, but there's an awful lot of mental and emotional trauma underneath that may come out at different times. So I think on reflecting on the pandemic, we're aware that every individual's experience has been different. Library staff were redeployed to all sorts of different jobs, some of them continued doing familiar library work. Others, some library staff were sent home with no IT, weren't really able to do anything. So the experience for them was potentially frustrating, boring, difficult. And of course everyone had different experiences in their personal and family lives. So I think it's an enormous task to bring people back together to get them focused positively on the future, to deal with people's exhaustion, emotional exhaustion and physical exhaustion and to forge a clear path forward in what's still very uncertain times. So the services where they're lucky enough to have good emotional and mental health support within their authority. I know they've been sort of drawing on that, but I think there's, you know, it's not going to be a quick fix. I think it's something that supporting library staff to return to the library. They won't be returning to how jobs were before either things, things will continue to be different. So I think that's going to be one of the main challenges facing those leading and managing libraries over the next six months, over the next year, over the next two years and longer. Absolutely. Thank you Isabel, a wonderful answer to that. And yeah, I agree. It's a varied pattern and I think there's a one size fits all problem and it's not going to be a one size fits all solution. So so I want to move on and ask a question which has come from Mary Mackenzie and that's to to Jim and Joanna. And there are Mary's asking what is the most important advice that you would give to other organisations wanting to develop a similar project to no barriers. I don't know which of you wants to take that. I'm a life star and him can follow up if I've missed anything. And I think I mentioned at the beginning we had a long discussion about it and we sort of looked around the pros and cons and the and the services talked about the difficulties that they face in the past. I think having a having a really long having a long discussion was quite useful in highlighting what the issues would be. But then I think we were able to sort of come to an agreement about about the vision that we wanted for the project and that early commitment see it through the end. So we talked about a lot of projects where the theme work happened and then it stopped and nothing had followed through. So it was about us really committing as an organisation to support the trainee who will be working with us. That's really important to think about your plan in that longer term. Who wants to add anything else? Thank you Joanna. The only thing I'd add is that in hindsight we probably fell into the trap collectively of being a little bit too timid about the nature of the subject that we're trying to. We're trying to tackle and so intellectually we all understand the landscape, the political and social landscape in which we're engaging. But my personal view is that we fell into the trap of being timid archivists and whilst we were brave for ourselves in hindsight I would urge us to be braver in moving forward. An example of this would be the language to be used around positive action, engagement, positive action traineeships so that we are engaging in sometimes controversial, sometimes sensitive areas. We did use officially sanctioned language that is legally correct and legally appropriate but there is another range of vocabulary to go alongside that that is also legally correct and legally appropriate. So that's what I would be feeding into the findings of the case study of the way of developing around the whole recruitment and selection process. Thank you both. So having a vision and then really being bold about it, overcoming perhaps the natural timidity of the archivist although I'm sure we're rarely accused of that. So thank you, that's fantastic. I've got a couple of questions that have come through for Joanna and Bob on the Glasgow presentation. Caroline Sampson, thank you for taking the words out of my mouth on this one. Asking how you assess the competence of academic staff to handle documents without Bob's alodding already, without the presence of your staff and have you found academics and senior managers resist this and would prefer to rely on their credentials and reputation rather than something like a skills audit? When you put it like that, it sounds quite sensitive. To be quite honest, the first thing to say is that the vast majority of academics, I have to say this with Joanna, handle very, very well. They're usually experienced researchers and it's not really a problem at all. The other thing I suppose then is to say that the approach that we've taken is very much a team approach. So everything that we were doing, it was not just the engagement team, it was our conservation and preservation colleagues. By going through and actually taking, leading from the items and working on what the vulnerabilities are and what the potential risks are, you can immediately work out what sort of handling reminders or advice needs to get passed on. Then when I actually came to delivering the sessions, there would be that kind of reminder to the academic. There would usually be a chance for them to come in and mark up their books with acid-free slips, that type of thing, before the session. At that point, you could have that discussion about, OK, this one has got fragile friable paper at the back. It's got soft paper, historic mould damage, that kind of thing, and talk about each item. By doing that, you can then talk about the best way of handling to actually limit and mitigate any damage. That way, you're not really having a discussion about, OK, show me how to handle this, and I'm going to critique you. It becomes more of a kind of an object-led one. That said, in trying to kind of review this sort of process before the start of the new semester, we are also considering having a kind of mandatory reminder session with everyone. If anyone who books in asks them to come in and actually just go through some of this stuff with them, just because I think no matter how experienced you are, and I include myself in this, if a conservator critiques my handling or looks at my handling, they'll see different things that I may be doing wrong, even though I've worked for 20 odd years with this material. So that's the kind of approach we've taken so far, if that helps. Oh, and on pushback from that, no, we've had none actually, and everyone's very, we've got good relationships with all of our academic colleagues. Great, that's really excellent to hear. And just one more for Glasgow before I move on to others, which is from Neil Stewart at LSE. I'm wondering if there are plans to offer services to researchers to allow this type of virtual access, so an extension from the teaching environment into a sort of a wider research environment? Yeah, completely. Again, I didn't really have time to touch on the longer term plans, but yes, we see the application for this for researchers as well, for things like comparing two similar items in different places, that type of thing. So yes, this is something we will allow people to book in. We've also already used it for things like conference presentations, that type of thing, where people have used the tech to actually live present an object rather than slides of an object. So there are all sorts of longer term applications for this that are non teaching as well as well. So yes, hopefully. So I want to move on to ask to ask you all actually the same question, but obviously you've all got different audiences. So you're going to mean a very different context. So obviously the pandemic has been an enormous challenge for everybody, but necessity can be the mother of invention. And I think we've seen some really incredible examples of people rising to the challenges. So I wanted to ask each of you, you know, in terms of in terms of the of how we might overcome the challenges that our audiences face with that's a access to collections challenge or access to the work to getting into the workforce challenge, or the kind of the huge kind of disadvantage gap that Isabel spoke about. What are your hopes for the future. And if I can go to you first perhaps Jim and Joanna. What do you what what are your hopes for the future. I suppose I think I hope that the real growth of the digital access and online will bring in people from different different disciplines, different areas to approach archives that might not have ordinarily got involved. And, and I really hope that the, you know, I think we're all aware that the online conversations that we have certainly, particularly last year that really started a challenge those preconceptions that I can continue. And we can continue to push in down those barriers to make our sector a much more attractive and viable career path for people regardless of the background that it's CCB, you know, that that sort of thing that gets in the way. Great. Thank you very much. Jim, did you want to add anything? Yes, I support Joanna on that and I suppose the silver lining for the Navarra's project is that we've been forced into making it an online presence only so the amount of onsite engagement for the trainee is going to be minimal that forces both the hosts and the trainee to work online and to study what is currently available online and how is it presented and then through that hopefully to allow us all to remove, well, reduce and hopefully remove the barriers of bad description or insensitive description and increase the range of online resources. And so there is an opportunity, a definite opportunity now. Thank you, Jim. And then if I can say the same question then to Joanna and Bob, hopes for the future. I'll go first. I think from a teaching point of view, one of my big hopes for the future is to think about how we deliver collections access to really large student groups which Bob alluded to. It's always been something that we've been really keen to do, but managing those student numbers is obviously extremely difficult when you're handling individual items. So the technology really opens up the ways in which we can develop those skills from first year onwards which they, you know, in a Scottish degree system, four year degree system, they might not have got until third year and fourth year. And I think we'll see a huge impact on the level of their skills and their engagement with our collections and the research that comes out of that once we start to initiate that at level one. So that would be a big hope for me, Bob. Right. I think I'm interested to see where this technology takes us to be quite honest. It's important to actually be realistic and say that this is not, this is not going to supplant or replace traditional in person encounters with books, whether it's teaching or research. However, it can offer something complementary, something different. We can learn things from the different encounters. We can learn things through using these digital technologies, this visualiser technology that we couldn't necessarily in person. So we've already been thinking about some of the different possible uses for this in the longer term. But what I'm really excited about is just continuing to share this with academic colleagues and with different stakeholder groups and really seeing what ideas they've got for this. A more user-centred approach for this and just see what other new services we can design around this to help support our users. Great. Thank you both for that. And then same question, Isabel. Obviously an incredibly challenging year for public libraries, but some grounds for hope. Absolutely. I think libraries have really proved their worth, but one thing that I'd really, really like to see is that that trust in staff letting them experiment and innovate. So a lot of the red tape was thrown away in the earlier lockdown. I mean, a lot of it's come back with a vengeance, but I think that's why we saw innovations. And listening to the other presentations today, the innovation and change is driven by the staff because they are the people who work with library users every day. Know their communities, know their needs. You know, that's really, really where you can get great innovation coming from. So I really hope that in all types of libraries we can continue to empower staff to make those changes to come up with great ideas and to think of experiment rather than controlling risk. So let's experiment. We'll get some things wrong every time we get something wrong, we learn something and hopefully we'll get some great new stuff happening.


Lovely. Thank you. Like Siobhan, I'm very much not your traditional librarian in fact. Libraries came to me in the middle of my career. So I'm currently a senior information management consultant with a company that specialises in purely data and information management problem solving. So the way that I got here was that even though I have library qualifications and information science qualifications and I've always had those, I actually started my career working with records and records management. So learning about the information life cycle and how that can be applied, helping government organisations manage the extended information stores that they have, in a manner that provided productivity and efficiency and enabled people to have the right information at the right time to make decisions that they needed to. I worked across government sector in both records and in the web management role and in this role I used those library skills to actually develop information architectures to look at the accessibility of websites. And this is where I actually started to gather a lot of metadata. So at this point in time I was assigning and writing metadata models for large scale government websites. I was developing information architectures for multiple domain sites, looking at navigation schemes and the way that people actually used the content. And I suppose that's what was a little bit different about my web management in that I came from it from the information perspective and not from the technical perspective. So I used to drive the techos mad because I'd say, right well I need this piece of information, I need to save it in one place and it needs to be surfaced in multiple times and it needs to be viewed by multiple people and look different for each of them. So I used to lay down the challenge but they were always underlined by a basic information management principle. I then moved into the library sector and I worked in the university area particularly in academic libraries and not for a long time I must say that I did actually go to the library there in the middle of my time before moving into research data. And I spent a couple of years working with purely research data management and looking at establishing, well I did establish a national metadata exchange framework for science data. I was involved in the development of a data discovery portal for the terrestrial ecosystem research network, otherwise known as Tern. Purely the sharing of science data across Australia to improve decisions about our biodiversity. Following on from that I actually worked with the Biodiversity Climate Change Virtual Laboratory which is another, it's a virtual laboratory that enabled scientists and researchers to go in, use data that was open and available to them in formats that was consumable and actually run experiments in a virtual environment. And this was all based on the accessibility of the information, the quality of the information, the metadata behind the information and looking at new scientific discoveries. So those few years in my life were actually really, really productive and really influential. And at that time I was quite involved with ANS and to this day still remain on the ANS RIFCS advisory board in that metadata role. Since that time I've actually moved into the consulting field and this has put me in the private sector for the first time in a career that spans over 25 years. The attraction to me was not so much the consulting component but it was the broad diversity and range of experiences that were available with the company that I worked with. And that's a company that specialises purely in information and data management. So for me the attraction was to get in here and to get involved in information and data scenarios that maybe throughout my career even though I've worked across records, I've worked across web, libraries and with research data quite extensively I may not have experienced. So it was a rounding out of my career really. So here I am, the company that I'm working for although this is irrelevant to today's presentation it hones in on exactly why I'm here. The company has four practices, one for business which I don't work in at all. I work across the practices of information, data and also collaboration and productivity which for us is really looking at structuring information so that it can be exchanged and shared sort of nationally really. So I work across those three spaces. This is a company whose pure existence is to solve business problems through information and data. So my role here uses all of the skills that I've gathered throughout my career. It uses and they're all founded in basic information science. There's no rocket science to what I do. It takes some critical thinking, a lot of analytical skills using basic IN foundational skills and that's really what it is. Me in my past six months of experience just to share with you the types of things that I'm working across now. These are 12 engagements that I've actually lived. So I do quite a bit of project management in this role and I'll run you through each of these so you can share with me the diversity of the types of work I'm doing. I've done many information privacy assessments so that's helping people who are looking at transitioning to software as a service type models where they're transferring their information offshore and they need to ensure that they are following privacy legislation that they're predicting the identities of their clients or their information of the people that they hold. I've established data quality schools for large government agencies. So a way for them to measure the quality of their data looking at all of the dimensions of data and I've set up processes for them to do that. I've developed internet information architectures for in the utility sector sorry for large service delivery organisations and that involved a lot of collaboration and information sharing spaces it included multiple uses of information so single source multiple times I've developed data quality frameworks again in New South Wales it's time for New South Wales government looking at a whole framework for measuring data quality so not just scores in this instance but taking into account all of their structured, unstructured data and actually looking at raising the quality of that and scoring in that component was just one of the things we looked at. I've run open data environmental scans so for particular topics identifying what open data is available assessing the quality of that, assigning metadata to that and putting that forward for one of the local universities to use in one of their science research projects I've developed knowledge management blueprints that enable people to share the information that they have but also to capture knowledge from personnel as they come and go and to keep that within the organisation and build on that I've prepared information audits for ASX listed companies both in Australia and overseas so that's a great company looking at what information do we actually have what format is it in, where is it, how do we access it why have we got 10 copies of it, all that sort of stuff I've looked at all of developed information asset registers again this one in the government sector looking at recording the high value information assets looking at how they're being used how use of those could be improved over time I've done many an information management policy review particularly for university I've been involved recently in leading a large data analytics project looking at developing insights that haven't been I suppose recognised previously until such time as we sat down and we analysed some very large data sets and started to visualise some outcomes and provide alternate options and different insights back to that organisation which enables them to change their policy to make new decisions, to do things in a different way because they've got this level of predictive analysis from their data that they've never actually had before I'm currently working on an engagement to develop a business intelligence roadmap which is looking at actually using data across a large organisation in a much more intelligent way data warehousing, looking at data maps and using data cubes for performance reporting all of that sort of stuff and I've developed which is a bit of a staple I've developed quite a few data management plans over my time and again working in this company as a senior consultant we do work with both private and public sector organisations that do use data management plans even if they're not in the university sector and so that's a really comforting thing so that's me out of six months I've actually been consulting in this industry now for about 18 months I just have so much diversity of experience working in this environment that it's really, really valuable and I suppose that's the one thing that keeps me here the challenges for me managing time, cost, quality and scope I do lead these engagements so you're dealing with a client you're delivering to a deadline you're keeping it within their cost you've got to deliver high quality because that's what this company is based on and you have to obviously manage your scope for anyone who's done project management you know that those things don't always come easy so that's a constant battle I struggle with work-life balance that seems to travel with me though I think that's more of an issue of me than the job but particularly when I'm working to a deadline I definitely have problems with that it's always a challenge to maintain and develop skills I'm currently in a position where I provide advice to organisations and therefore you need to know that the advice that you're providing is based on sound practices and principles that it can be backed up and that it is fit for purpose for the organisation that you're dealing with there's quite a bit of research involved in finding out what the position of that organisation is before you can actually provide advice and I find keeping abreast of industry trends and developments is quite challenging because I'm working across such a diversity of areas there's a lot of areas that don't need to be covered in a nutshell that's how I got here the challenges I face and the type of work I do all of this is based on my skills in managing information and I suppose for anyone else that was interested in looking outside of a library my advice would be to never limit yourself these skills form the basis of so many problem-solving activities and if people knew how to manage their information better there would be better decisions in a more timely manner based on much more accurate information Keeping up to date for me is that struggle on forever reading, on forever doing extra courses reading blogs, looking at webinars collaborating with colleagues on continually doing some form of study so it is a constant but all in all it's very rewarding so that's it in a nutshell