Sunday 20 May 2012

Disguised as a librarian

It's been a long time...

What has now woken Ursula up from her long "winter torpor" (not true hibernation, it seems) was a presentation in Cambridge by Phil Bradley, President of CILIP (the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, and thus Aidan Baker's professional body). Phil describes himself as an "information specialist and Internet consultant" and I have been following him on Twitter for a couple of years now. As I have always maintained that writers and lecturers need to be expert users of the Internet (and Web 2.0 and social media) just as much as librarians, I duly disguised myself as a librarian and went along. And it was well worth my while!

The afternoon was divided into two parts: first Phil's presentation with questions and answers, and then two sets of discussion groups. I chose a session on Internet tools and one on networking, and when volunteer live bloggers were asked for I put my name forward. On the one occasion I've done this before, at the National Cancer Research Institute conference in Liverpool last year for the online oncology journal ecancer, it meant submitting two accounts of each day's presentations, one in mid-afternoon and the other generally approaching midnight. This time, I didn't even have the luxury of a few hours to put my thoughts together: I simply recorded them as the session proceeded, and the resulting words were recorded on the CILIP East of England blog, much as they had been written.

In the rest of this brief post, therefore, I will concentrate on Phil's own presentation. This was divided into two sections: first on CILIP and the role of the President, and then on the importance of social media for information professionals (a topic on which is is not only an expert but also something of an evangelist). In the first, he discussed the challenges and changes facing the library and information professions, and the way that CILIP's role has been changing with an increased focus on advocacy.

Phil started the second part of his presentation by defining social media as much wider than just "Facebook and Twitter", rather a whole new way of looking at the Internet: a transition from expert-generated content to user-generated content. People, rather than organisations, are now in control of what is posted, and organisations - or rather, the people in them - need to realise this and engage with this new world. It is certainly possible to opt out, but opting out has consequences. People are building their own authority as professionals using their social networks. He cited an example of an employee in the US who moved companies, taking his thousands of Twitter followers with him, and he managed to prove in law that those followers belonged to him, the individual, rather than his company. Some of the newest search engines will favour sites recommended by reputable people that the searcher engages with.

His final message was that the of the social Web is "chaos" and "anarchy" but that this provides an opportunity, rather than a threat, for librarians, who are some of the best placed people to act as guides. And lecturers and writers, perhaps?

Phil Bradley's website is worth a close look. It can be found here.


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