Tag Archives: Communication

35 day of City Expo – Management Skills and Learning Opportunities

How do you manage during a 35 day long city fair which is the result of a 3 year long innovation journey? And what skills do you need to have in order to manage this?

In a previous blog post, Tina Haglund has described the H22 City Expo of Helsingborg Sweden. https://blogs.ifla.org/cpdwl/2022/06/14/h22-city-expo-helsingborg-sweden/

In this blog post I follow up on this and reflect on the management skills needed and the learning opportunities the City Expo gave.

During the past years, all departments and employees of in the city of Helsingborg have had the opportunity to explore and apply for funding to test new ideas and innovations. The public library of Helsingborg has for example been working with co-creating together with citizens to find out the needs and ideas in a new (and rebuilt) library in 2026 https://innovation.helsingborg.se/en/initiative/development-and-rebuilding-of-the-city-library/. Also the library has a project collaborating with the University of Lund, on “The sustainable/resilient workplace” https://innovation.helsingborg.se/en/initiative/sustainable-workplace-a-collaboration-and-research-project/. Digidel 2.0, exploring how to develop the digital competence center of the library is another example of the work https://innovation.helsingborg.se/en/initiative/digidel-2-0/. And many other innovations and development initiatives have been put in place.

The results of the innovation work so far was presented during various talks and presentations during the 35 days. This meant that at the same time as keeping business running as usual, the library staff also were involved in many different activities. At the same time employees could work as volunteers during the H22.

Of course this affected both the employeeship as well as leadership and management skills. All managers of the city of Helsingborg have, during the last three years, gone through a management skill program called “Samspel Helsingborg” (= interplay/interaction Helsingborg). This program has given us the skills needed in moving from New Public Management (NPM) into a Trust Based Management model and has been key to the success of the innovative movement.

The Trust Based Management model is something which have been worked on at the national level through a research based work “The Swedish Delegation of Trust”. The guiding principles in Trust Based Management is according to The Swedish Delegation of Trust:

  • Focus on the Citizen – their experience and knowledge, understand what is needed
  • Comprehensive/holistic view – everyone take responsibility for the whole
  • Space for action – delegate powers and mandates, welcome co-decisions
  • Support – closely as part of the core business (rather than central)
  • Knowledge – reward continuous learning
  • Openness – share information, welcome dissent and respect criticism

My reflections on some management skills that were of importance before, during and after this period of innovation and City Expo are:

  • Involvement in strategy and business plan – involve all staff in the strategical planning as well as the operational planning of the library business. Make real use of all the knowledge within the organization and ensure that everyone knows where we are heading. Follow up together with the staff, so that everyone see how the work proceeds.
  • A culture of participation – ensure to build a culture where both staff and users gets involved and participate in the development work.
  • Trust – really manage by trust and let go of control. Let the employees use their skills and solve different situations using their full potential and experience. Keep the written routines and rules to an absolute minimum as it is impossible to foresee what will happen and there is a risk that every situation makes you write a new routine instead of focusing on doing the job and solving the situation.
  • Brave – be brave and have the courage to let go of things. Delegate a lot and let others solve the issues in their way, using their skills and expertise. Be sure to enjoy when things turn up in another way than you expected.
  • Make mistakes and learn from them – ensure a culture where it’s really ok to make mistakes. A culture where you don’t try to avoid making mistakes or try to find who did the mistake and blame them. Instead celebrate the mistake and learn from it. Most important as a manager here is to really walk the talk and do the same thing as you say.
  • Communicative skills – keep the communication open and transparent in all directions so that everyone knows where to find the information needed and communicate when things needs to be acted on. Listen (don’t just hear) what people are communicating and act. Also use communication as a learning tool so that every day gives a learning experience.
  • Together – we do this together. This is really of utmost importance as no one can have all the skills, expertise, know the solutions and work on complex issues alone. No one has the answer by themselves. Especially the manager does not know everything in the complex world we are living in. Those working close to the library users usually are the ones with the best solution and they need to get the mandate and tools to act. Other businesses and organizations have skills within their areas. Find those, collaborate and network and make them flourish. We need to do it together.

For us at Helsingborg City Libraires it was also important to use the City Expo so that everyone within the staff could get the opportunity to learn new things from everything going on during the expo. We therefor decided that all staff could use up till 8 hours each, to take part and participate in different events to improve their skills and to get inspired by what others do. Often you can get new ideas for your library business by talking and listening to other kinds of services and see how they meet different challenges. We used this as a learning opportunity. And importantly, we did not ask for details on what the staff did, we trusted that they used this time to learn for their and the libraries’ future.

Further information on the H22 City Expo is available at: www.h22cityexpo.se

Information on different innovations we have worked on in the city can be found at: https://innovation.helsingborg.se/en/


by Catharina Isberg, Library Director, Helsingborg Sweden

What collaborating with others at IFLA mean?

CPDWL Section has written in its Action Plan what specific subjects we want to cover and work on within the next two years (2022-2023). We must review the Action Plan every six months and update the tasks, challenges, working group members, and timetables. It’s a decision of our Section made long ago that every standing committee member has to work in at least one of the working groups.

As our tasks are widely distributed across topics such as continuing professional development, workplace learning, life long learning, work-life-balance, etc., there are many connections with other IFLA Sections and Special Interest Groups. Sometimes we approach others to cooperate, and occasionally Sections ask us for collaboration. Some may be unsure what such cooperation means. And always we are looking for interested and experienced colleagues in the Section to become part of the working groups.

It is always different and isn’t easy to describe.

We have some projects and cooperations that are limited by time—for example, working with another Section to prepare a satellite meeting connected with the WLIC. It depends on how many colleagues are involved in the working group and what you must do. It might be very time-consuming for a while until the conference takes place. Or your duties are quickly accomplished because you have to book the venue or find the speakers etc.

Other working groups have been together for years, for example, the IFLA Coaching Initiative by CPDWL and Marketing & Management section. This group started working together in 2018! The group meets regularly every second month via Zoom, and we always brainstorming what to do next. We hope to continue as long as there is a demand for coaching in the IFLA family.

Every standing committee member is encouraged to actively publish their contributions on this blog, Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. We are happy to receive articles or statements about national, regional, or local projects that might interest the worldwide community, book reviews, announcements for engaging webinars, conferences, or summaries of these events.

We look forward to publishing not only in English but in your native language, too (but please with an English summary).

IFLA supports the collaboration of sections and special interest groups, so we have some requests for cooperation right now. Usually, Section chairs or officers will have the first contact, and we’ll send the request to our SC list. Most of the time, we can’t say what is planned in detail because the project will only develop through the participants. But if you are interested in the topic, you should contact us. Even if you realize in the working process that you can not participate as intensively as desired, you can still be an essential source of inspiration at the beginning.

Be sure that every cooperation in a working group with other sections will also expand your horizon and might be helpful for your daily work. In addition, it also might be beneficial in solving problems, sharing sources, and sharing your knowledge. It is also wonderful to meet people from around the world with a different view on a subject you think you know very well.

We look forward to your comments and feedback and hope we were able to dispel some uncertainties.

Meet your CPDWL officer

CPDWL will try a new format, to keep the connections of the standing committee members and advisory group members more tight.

As a result of the breakout room sessions during the mid-term meeting of CPDWL in February 2022, we are planning to have zoom meetings every month without an agenda, just to chat and talk about the ongoing projects, questions raised by the participants or information from IFLA and its bodies. And we hope to gain some new ideas for programmes as well.

We’ll start by invitation, but might open up these meetings for interested colleagues from around the world later.

Let’s see, if it will be successful or the hosting officer will be just on her/his own?

Happy for your comments and ideas to make this format successful.

Take care and kind regards

Ulrike, Almuth, Alan and Edward

CPDWL and M&M Online Coaching during WLIC 2021

Need assistance in achieving your goals or expand your professional development or career? Would you like to tackle challenging situations? Have you ever tried the business method of coaching?

The IFLA Coaching Initiative, founded by IFLA’s Continuing Professional Development and Workplace Learning (CPDWL) and Management & Marketing (M&M) Sections, invites colleagues registered for WLIC 2021 without any additional costs to take part in an online coaching session.

Coaching is currently available in the following languages: Bosnian, Cantonese/Mandarin, Croatian, Dutch, English, German, Hindi, Italian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Serbian, Spanish and Swedish.

To prepare for the session as a coachee please visit the Coachee Information and Preparation page: https://lnkd.in/dup8pMn

Book with an individual coach in your time zone at https://lnkd.in/d5YnCyi .

Available Dates: August 9 – 13 & 23 – 27, 2021

For further information please contact ulrike@lang-site.de

 

ISSN for scientific blogs

In Germany we have right now a discussion to assigned ISSN (International Standard Serial Number) for scientific blogs.

Typically ISSN are used for continuous publications that appear numbered or dated. But also scientific blogs or databases of general interest can be registered. In the allocation, only the formal criteria are examined. A substantive examination or evaluation of the quality of the contributions published therein does not take place.

The international ISSN Centre in Paris coordinates the work of the national centres. The international ISSN database https://portal.issn.org/  now more then two million ISSN with their titles and short bibliographical descriptions is constantly growing.

What are the arguments to register for a ISSN if you are publishing a blog?

  1. Better visibility. For ex. with an ISSN in Germany you will be listed in the Zeitschriftendatenbank (ZBD) https://zdb-katalog.de/index.xhtml
  2. Long-term citation through long-term archiving. National libraries will archive blogs if they have a ISSN in the automated webharvesting.

As the awarding of the ISSN is free of charge I would recommend to register the CPDWL blog.

Sources:

Michael Knoche: Warum ISSN für Blogs?, in: Aus der Forschungsbibliothek https://biblio.hypotheses.org/2080

Mareike König ISSN für für Blogs bei de.hypotheses – praktische Hinweise 

Webarchivierung der DNB 

 

 

What do publishers want librarians to know?

A little research project from the UK linked to the full anonymised dataset of messages from publishers to librarians.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1pSsgShb5Dj6gwjT3V7ZHHWqSLn_a6U_j

The author Bernie Folan:

“I carried out a similar project (collecting messages from librarians to
publishers) a couple of years ago and that data can be found here
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B1bAnTSVq-LkcnVGUUtTVklMYlE as well as summarised in this
Insights article http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.390
Please share within your organisation and encourage relevant departments and
senior management to read the messages so they can ensure they hear what
their partners and customers are saying, in a low-effort way.
Results of all research are made available openly and completely anonymously
with no mention of organisations or names. The objective of these research
projects has been to increase understanding and improve communication within
the scholarly communication environment, without any commercial objective. “

How to Host a Virtual Poster Session

The Instruction Committee of the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) Distance Learning Section (DLS) hosted its first virtual poster session April 1st-5th 2019. The committee sent out a call for proposals to a variety of listservs including ILI, DLS, and RUSA in January of 2019 and accepted a total of 38 posters that related to teaching and learning online. Committee members worked together to develop the call for proposals, select the poster platform, advertise the event, and create an evaluation survey for participants and presenters to submit feedback.

The committee investigated several platforms for hosting the event including Canvas, LibGuides, Padlet, Moodle, and Google Sites, but ultimately decided to host the posters on the Distance Learning Section’s own website which is hosted on WordPress. The DLS website was chosen to bring more visibility to the section and because participants could view and comment on posters without creating an account.

The poster presenters were asked to actively monitor their posters during the first week of April and to respond to any comments or questions that were posed. From April 1st-5th there were 19,609 page views, 1,853 visitors (including repeat visitors), and 298 comments (including a few trackbacks). Though the poster presenters are no longer actively monitoring and responding to the comments on their posters, an archive of the event is freely available on the DLS Website at https://acrl.ala.org/DLS/2019-virtual-poster-session/

Thanks to Michelle Keba, Associate Librarian for Reference, Warren Library, Palm Beach Atlantic University and
Jennifer Shimada, Library Director, Relay Graduate School of Education for this blog post.