We are publishing a copy/pasted version of our Themes-page from our wiki, which is used to manage the Cycling for libraries -project. By publishing the draft programme as it is, we wanted to have your feedback on the topics during our bicycle ride. Thank you for your opinions!

Here we go:

Preliminary plan is to provide a different theme each day. So there will be a total of about 8 to10 themes.

Themes should be challenging and they could somehow also reflect the idea of “crossing the borders”. Themes could be planned starting from “problems” and “challenges” towards “the need for innovation” and finally to “visions” and “future”. This could be a kind of framework for bringing up and discussing about the most important subjects and themes.

Also, because the Cycling for libraries wants to contribute to the local libraries, any feedback from the libraries on the route (the stops are at Copenhagen, Greve, Præstø, Stubbekøbing, Nykøbing, Rostock, Güstrow, Waren, Fürstenberg and Berlin), should be given serious priority.

Some suggestions and questions:

• Open data
  • first of all: what data do we have? We have MARC records, but what else?
  • what happens/who benefits if the catalogues are opened
  • we don’t know how to properly utilize our catalogs
  • we don’t know the value of our catalogues
  • some/many National Libraries are selling metadata, but everybody wants the metadata to be freely available
  • risk assessment: what do we lose if we go Open Data?
• How to communicate with customers / library users
  • Are Twitter/FB really enough?
  • Can we “teach” or be as a information role models if we don’t know ourselves how to utilize data/information?
    • Especially the intranet’s and other information management tools that libraries themselves use should be the best imaginable in the world! Is it so? And if not, why?
    • Are we exporting information management skills, tools and methods to the outside world, outside our own profession? We should!
      • the ratio of importing/exporing information management skills/tools/methods into/out of the library profession
  • Libraries are not good in making use of the media
• Extending knowledge and skills
  • Redefining ja re-locating libraries in society – new threats and new challenges; Wikileaks, Wikis and libraries – do they belong together?
  • Out of the library: following the users, the society, demographics, advanced feedback mechanisms?
  • Out of isolation and secrecy – towards active and proactive pioneers
  • Face lift for libraries
  • Leadership in what (field)? What knowledge and skills is needed? How libraries are preparing to change / for the change?
  • The need of new competence – what is required of us in the future? (Library staff is required a wider technical knowledge – also the customers must be trained. Enough resources for this?)
  • Out of library system centrality and dependence to services
• External challenge
  • The neoliberal economics and libraries
  • Copyrights
  • The new Google generation and libraries; Horizontal information retrieval, stuck on surface?
  • What the libraries can offer to societies surrounding them; libraries’ support to the local culture?
  • When libraries are needed? Can we define this? Do we really understand our customers?
  • Why are patrons requiring more traditional services, and the librarians themselves put a lot of emphasis on changing and evolving. Why do librarians and patrons want a different thing?
• Internal challenge
  • From competitors to partners
  • The problem with old-fashionedness and tradition?
  • The capacity and willingness to change
  • Out of “hushing” and silence
  • Need for change of library education?
  • Building a library communities for a local or a larger and wider international collaboration on the net
• What kind of leaders libraries need?
  • Separating the role of a director (leader) from that of a manager (paper work)
  • The missing ability of strategic planning and strategic leadership
• Library as a public place
• The role of libraries in rural areas – providing media, information, social contact space, meeting opportunities
• Library as an export product
  • Can we describe and capsulate our library as an “export product”, even as a thought experiment? If we (Denmark, Germany, Finland, etc.) were to export our library as a product to a new market, f.ex. China, Indonesia, Africa etc., how would we do it? What would we be exporting?
  • IFLA has material on this, f.ex. on exporting library associations

Where does this path lead?

Time to open the discussion and decide on the programme! It will be ready and prepared by the time the registration starts in February.

Feel free to comment here on the site, or if you prefer, on the Facebook (there’s both a page and an event), on Twitter with hashtag #cyc4lib or you can email us directly at cyclingforlibraries (AT) welho.com.