Women’s Institute say ‘Save our libraries!’

Annie Mauger's address in Wordle form (c/o wordle.net)

I’m a little late to the party, but there was some very welcome good news this week for supporters of public libraries.  And also, I might add, if you have been keen to see CILIP become more vocal in advocating for public libraries.  Yes, the WI voted at their recent AGM to throw their very considerable weight behind the campaign to save libraries.  What a fantastic organisation to have on your side in a scrap.  If anything should put the fear of whatever into Vaizey and co it should be the sight of the WI joining the fight against a policy of library closures that the DCMS is stealthily supporting (maybe not so stealthily).  And as for the level of support from the WI, well:

And the vote on libraries is in, 98% of members at the AGM have voted to campaign in support of local libraries #theWI_AGM #savelibraries—
Women's Institute (@WomensInstitute) June 08, 2011

That says it all really doesn’t it?  Local campaigns across the country deserve a huge amount of credit for working with the WI and raising awareness of this issue.  Without them, this resolution would never have passed.

As you can see above, I created a little Wordle using the text of Annie Mauger’s address in support of the resolution.  My favourite thing about the Wordle?  The fact that across the middle are the words ‘library’, ‘help’ and ‘people’.  Sure, it’s not entirely grammatically correct, but it is a nice little reminder.

In terms of the role of CILIP, I am pleased that Annie presented the case at the AGM.  One of the reasons I was reluctant to join the organisation was its lack of visibility and failure to really make themselves heard in the media.  Whilst we are still some way off CILIP dominating the media coverage of libraries (a recent edition of Newsnight again looked outside the profession for a defence of libraries), there has been a noticeable increase in the amount of coverage CILIP has received.  This has got to be a good thing.

So, having decided to give CILIP membership a trial run, what is my initial assessment on the direction in which it is heading?  Well, I am very encouraged.  Continue to engage at all times with the media and national organisations such as the WI, and I see no reason why I shouldn’t continue to pay my sub come next April.  Although April is a long way off so let’s not jump to any conclusions just yet!

What do libraries mean to you?

Last week I asked a question on both Facebook and Twitter:

What three words would you use to describe what libraries mean to you?

I had been thinking for a long time that the number of followers for both the Voices for the Library Facebook Page and Twitter account would mean that gathering their thoughts on what libraries are about might be an interesting exercise and, hopefully, draw a wide range of response.  So it turned out to be with over 50 people contributing in excess of 150 words.  The product of this process was an interesting (well, I think so anyway) word cloud:

What do libraries mean to you?

Before going any further, it may be worth pointing out something about the contributions themselves.  The question was asked, as I said, on both Facebook and Twitter.  Whereas it is fair to say that responses on Facebook would have come solely from people who have signed up to ‘like’ the Voices for the Library page (meaning they are possibly more likely to be library workers or library supporters), Twitter was an altogether different proposition.  As Twitter is ‘open’, more people were exposed to the question and consequently, this potentially led to a more varied response from a greater range of people (beyond the usual librarian/library user responses).  In short, basically this wasn’t just a collection of responses from librarians or library workers, it was far broader than that, which is why some of the responses are interesting.

Note, for example, that although several words imply a relationship with books (‘reading’ and ‘literacy’ for example), ‘books’ itself is barely noticeable (it is just under the ‘c’ of ‘community’).  Compare that with words such as ‘knowledge’, ‘community’, ‘freedom’ and ‘information’, all of which feature prominently (word clouds size the words according to the frequency with which they are used – small for rarely used words, large for commonly used words) .  So what does this tell us about how people view libraries in this admittedly limited experiment?  It seems that the most important aspects of the service are the provision of information and the access to knowledge, in all its forms.  So whilst books are important, does it not also suggest that anything that is considered ‘information’ or that imparts ‘knowledge’ should be considered central to the library service?  It would appear so.

It is also interesting to note that the ‘community’ aspect is considered vital.  For many people, community spaces have rapidly diminished.  There are few places left for groups of people to come together and create that sense of community.  Some might argue that that is no longer important as technology has plugged the gap, but I would argue that communities still need that social space.  Who knows, maybe this lack of communal space has helped to exacerbate the individualistic nature of modern society.  He says writing on his blog.

There does appear to be a paradox at play here though.  Whilst it is easier than ever to build connections with people in distance lands, connections closer to home appear more distant than ever.  Although the growth of the Internet has broadened our horizons, has it also blurred the foreground?  That said, are the recent events in the Middle East proof that this is not the case?  Do the uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya indicate that communal bonds have been strengthened to such an extent that they can tear down (or at least attempt to) repressive regimes that attempted to keep communities from uniting?

Well, this was supposed to be a post about the word cloud created from a simple question about libraries.  That little diversion was not supposed to happen.  Ah well.

The other thing I found interesting from collecting this data (and interesting in a fairly minor way), was the difference in responses from people on Facebook and Twitter.  Whereas there was limited interaction from the ‘followers’ on Facebook, there was a continuous flow from Twitter.  It rather suggested to me that Facebook users are a little more passive than Twitter users who prefer to engage and discuss rather than simply observe.  But then I guess that reflects the type of person attracted to Twitter, it is not exactly well suited to observation and passive engagement – which is perhaps why many people who try out Twitter for the first time find it hard to get into.

Anyway, getting back to the central driver behind this post (the word cloud remember?!), I’d be interested to hear what thoughts others have as to why words such as ‘community’, ‘knowledge’, ‘information’ and ‘freedom’ took precedence.  Why are these more common responses than ‘books’?  What do this mean for libraries?