Government Libraries Section

Summary of the London 2002 Seminar/Workshop

Introduction

The past few days have allowed us to benefit from a wide variety of experience taken from across Europe and the world regarding best practice and projects within government libraries. I would now like to review some of the key points that I have draw from these various sessions.

OUTSIDE THE BOX - BROADENING HORIZONS

A number of skills for the future for government librarians have been mentioned during the sessions. In particular I would like to focus on four key skills, highlighted by Alison Raisin: management skills, project management skills, professional skills, and evidence-based policy development.

Management

A number of sessions identified the importance of management skills for "broadening the horizons" of Government Librarians: not just in terms of managing staff but also other resources, including financial resources, time and library resources.

Project Management

Another key skill that has been identified is that of project management. This has assumed an increasing importance, particularly when library projects, and other information activities, are increasingly project based. With key deliverables and key time scales, set within particular resource constraints, the need for librarians to be able to manage these projects efficiently, to take part in these projects as part of the Project Board, or to make a valuable contribution will become increasingly important.

Professional Skills

Our own key professional skills continue to be much valued of course, and indeed I will go on to touch upon some of these skills, especially cataloguing and indexing. However other skills continue to be used and these include our ability to purchase materials that may be in electronic format and manage the contracts, and also customer care skills that are used not only for libraries but also increasingly within Public Enquiry Units.

Evidence-based policy making

Finally, as Lena Olsson said, we are using our skills to contribute directly to the policy development process, particularly within the area of supporting evidence based policy. This has allowed us to use our skills in collecting, assessing and being able to apply information to the policy making process. During the discussions that have taken place over the last two days, it has become clear that being able to effectively appraise information effectively is one skill that has an increasingly important part to pay in the future for government librarians internationally.

But we need to broaden horizons even further. It is important for us as government librarians to think of other areas in which we can work outside of our traditionally library environment. Where better to hide a librarian in than in a library? There are other areas developing within government with which librarians will have an increasingly greater part to play, particularly in the areas of developing Internets, Freedom of Information, Data Protection and the management of internal Intranets. It is also important that in terms of broadening our horizons government librarians are aware of the continuing developments within IT and their impact upon our existing services and bringing forward new services for our user communities.

IT AND ELECTRONIC DELIVERY

The past decade or so has seen a major change in how we deliver information with the use of IT. This has resulted in us being able to provide enhanced information retrieval to our existing sources, for example Knowledge Pools, and also to provide potentially 24:7 access to our services.

In addition, we are able not only to spread our service in terms of accessibility, but also in terms of audience. IT allows us to reaching out to not only to the public but also to those people working within government who may be operating in the field, working at home or perhaps travelling abroad. In addition we are now able to provide access to a range of sources on both the Internet and the Intranet via a common web interface.

And yet the use of IT for the delivery of electronic information does bring its own pitfalls. The speed of technology change often means that there is a faster onset of redundancy in the technical solutions provided. This in turn means increasing strain upon libraries' budgets in order to upgrade both software and hardware.

The availability of the Internet on people's computer desktops is also leading increasingly to the disintermediation of librarians with users within government, as they go directly to the information they require on the web. This in itself may not be particularly effective, as search strategies are often crude and ineffective, and leads to exacerbation of the endemic problem of information overload. However, this area of activity does provide future opportunities for librarians in the role of training where they can help users to locate information, to support them when they are using new sources, and to evaluate new electronic sources on behalf of their parent organisations.

CATALOGUING AND INDEXING - AN ESSENTIAL SKILL REBORN

In the papers that have been presented during this conference it has been very pleasant to see the great renaissance there has been in the need for cataloguing and indexing skills and their use in supporting government. This has been an advantage in a number of areas.

First of all the increased use of searching the Internet has lead to a need for improved metadata searching, for free text on its own has proved ineffectual. Cataloguing and indexing has also provided useful support for resource discovery in a number of government activities ranging from Freedom of Information and Data Protection through to good records management. Within the UK cataloguing and indexing skills have been central to the effective implementation of the Information Asset Registers within Government Departments.

Awareness of the use of other types of metadata to support resource discovery has also been useful. In the UK for example, the use of the TYPE metadata within Dublin Core to support Freedom of Information publications schemas has been a good example of this. Finally, the use of cataloguing and indexing has been essential for implementing the UK the e-government metadata standard, which is mandatory for all government departments.

A downside to the increased need to catalogue or index material is the feeling that other people will start to take over this particular area of activity and will lack the necessary training and discipline to make this effective and useful for information retrieval. A further consideration is that conventional practice is being challenged: full AACR2 cataloguing may be viewed as an overhead compared to the more permissive form of the Dublin core metadata, and this is an area that will require further discussion and refinement in the future. Finally we are increasingly faced with offerings from the IT industry for automated indexing, and this inevitably is resulting in variable results from the point of view of good information retrieval.

MANAGEMENT - SHIFTING UP A GEAR

This has been an interesting area of discussion in the last two days and we see librarians increasingly forming policy within government not merely supporting this. In particular one can see librarians' contributions to policy from regulation in areas of copyright, acceptable use policies, Freedom of Information, and Knowledge Management.

In addition librarians are facilitating cross-boundary working and looking to develop joined up services for the public. As part of this widening role, librarians are also working in multi-disciplinary teams covering not just library staff but also officials from policy and other administrative support teams within government departments.

Some words of caution however do need to be sounded. There is an increased need for librarians to form strategic alliances with key groups within government, for example within finance and communications. There is also the issue of resourcing information work at a pan-government level, and this was referred to in Christine Wellems's talk on indexing government material with regard to the maintenance of a government thesaurus in Germany.

Finally, and possibly most importantly, if librarians are to shift up a gear there is a need for them to develop a far better self-image. No one should ever say: "I'm just a librarian".

Conclusion

The last two days have been extremely useful, and I am most grateful for IFLA, and particularly Suzanne Burge and the Government Libraries Group, for arranging this. IFLA has provided excellent forum for the exchange of good practice and (equally important) practice that as not worked so well. I have tried to encompass some of the key issues that have been covered in the last two days, and look forward to learning even more from other librarians from around the world at the main IFLA conference in Glasgow next week.

David Smith
Head of Information Division
Office of the Deputy Prime Minister
and the Department for Transport