I submitted my nomination today, proposed by Gary Birkenhead, Roger Farbey, Veronica Fraser, David McMenemy, Donald MacKay, Rónán O’Beirne and Lauren Smith, though only five of those names will appear on the official literature.
This remarkably handsome photograph accompanies it, together with the following text
I ask for your vote in the 2013 elections to Council because I think CILIP needs to change. To survive, I believe we need to be more open, democratic and active. The biggest problem we face is a catastrophic loss of members. No demographic excuses can explain away the figures: we only have 13,500 members, or thereabouts. Doing something about that has to be the very first priority for Council. We have wasted too much time and too many resources on peripheral vanity projects.
One of our central professional beliefs is that information should be freely available. But we practice this at best half-heartedly in our own affairs. Where is the report, for example, of the Governance Review? You will look for it in vain on the website, though it reported to Council in March.
Campaigners for libraries, chiefly but not exclusively public libraries, are disappointed in us. They expect us to play a part in defending services against a succession of philistine governments. We need to put that right. The vote of no confidence in Ed Vaizey at the AGM was a start. We should not waste it.
If we return to performing the key functions of a professional association, and couple that with an intensive campaign to recruit and retain, then we have a chance. If we carry on as we have for the past few years, the decline will continue, to the point of extinction. I’m not so arrogant to believe that I can solve our problems on my own; but I do believe that, if you vote for me and for like-minded candidates, and if you involve yourselves in the affairs of the Institute, then we can put CILIP back on course. I blog at http://www.roper.org.uk and will be posting during the election period.
I was also asked to submit a note of my career and experience, which reads as follows:
I am currently Clinical Librarian at Brighton and Sussex NHS Library and Knowledge Service, bringing evidence, and training in the use and appraisal of that evidence, into five clinical departments. In the course of thirty-five years in the profession I have spent the majority of my time in the areas of health, medicine and veterinary medicine but I have also worked in public and further and higher education libraries as well as in the private sector and for the British Council. I have been a member of CILIP since its foundation, and before that of both the Library Association and the Institute of Information Scientists. I have held office in groups and branches, notably as Chair of the Health Libraries Group and of CILIP’s Health Strategy Group. I have also been Chair of the Animal Health Information Specialists (UK & Ireland) and the European Veterinary Librarians Group. I am a member of the Voices for the Library, a founder and life member of the Library Campaign and an active member of Unison.
What next? We will know soon if more than four nominations have been received, in which case an election will be necessary. There are to be hustings on Thursday 24 October at CILIP, time to be announced, but in the evening,