Wednesday, December 23, 2009

5 UK Library stories of 2009

Following on from from lisnews Ten Stories That Shaped 2009, I thought I would do my 5 UK stories.

1. Cilip 2.0. This was a discussion started by Brian Kelly & Phil Bradley which looked at Cilip Bob McKee failure to take on board some of the web 2.0 technologies within CILIP. The power of the network caused Cilip to rethink there policy and have an open forum on the event in April and produce a draft paper on the subject.

2. Woodsiegirl meme on 'why i became a librarian. I like blogging because sometime one persons post can spiral into a bigger discussion (see above). Well blogger Woodsie girl discussed why she became a librarian. A few others started adding there reasons why and the wikiman made a wiki for others to enter and discuss the subject on. This was actually pretty life affirming and a great idea.

3. Many had heard that Wirral maybe closing many libraries in that area. Thankfully all 11 were saved. Many local people voiced there concern on the closures, making politicans back down (for the moment).

4. Most stupid idea of the year? Culture minister Margaret Hodge's suggestion that libraries should link up with internet bookseller Amazon. Um, people go to libraries so they don't have to pay and store it. A library and a bookseller are two divergent markets and its not possible for one to be the other without major changes in the organisation (read money).

5. UK mashup still going strong. It was good to see many librarians meet this year for two mashups in Huddersfield and Birmingham. I went to the Huddersfield one and was really great to see a profession working to help our users experience (and learn something to).

Anyhow, thats my top 5? Anybody have any others?

1 comment:

woodsiegirl said...

Glad you enjoyed my "library routes" post - that was probably my favourite one to write so far! I'm not sure I could pick my "favourite moments in blogging" for this year - there's so much excellent writing out there, it's hard to pick what had the most impact on me. Would definitely agree with you over Phil Bradley's "CILIP: Epic Fail" post though - I think that was a wake up call for a lot of people (and not just within CILIP) that actually, this Web 2.0 thing can impact on the "real world"!