Report from the SHINE facilitated meeting
Abstract
This report describes two viewpoints from one meeting, the SHINE Regional Meeting in Glasgow on 18th November 2003. These reports provide an insight into the discussions that took place as well as the authors own views. These will strike a chord with those that were at the Regional Meetings as well as inform the members who were unable to attend.
Malcolm Dobson
Rhona Arthur from SLIC (& CILIPS) kicked off the meeting with an explanation of what SLIC’s role is - briefly, to work at an organisational level and to lobby government, contrasted with CILIP, which works more at a personal level, and NES, working inside government, at an organisational level and a personal level. However, as SLIC is also looking at developing e-learning for librarians, the organisational v. personal division is not perhaps quite so sharp as presented.
Gillian Strachan, the consultant who was facilitating the discussions on SHINEs future, explained the format of the day and what was intended to come out of the discussions. Concrete answers weren’t expected at this stage; she would take the results of the discussions from all the meetings and prepare a report for the SHINE committee; they would then discuss this, with others involved, and come up with recommendations.
The first stage looked at what SHINE did and what was important to us - first individually and then group discussion, rating them on a scale of 1 (lowest rating) to 5 (highest). This proved rather difficult, as most of us gave most of the activities 5, or at the least 4. Gillian, in summing up this session, was a bit more ruthless and forced us to rate some at 3, but I think that was the lowest we were prepared to go! We then looked at what other organisations were involved in or related to what SHINE does - a very long list - and where they overlapped with SHINE, what gaps in provision there were, and which SHINE could / should work more closely with.
In the final session we came up with ideas for the continuation of SHINE and how it could develop in the future, ranging from specific activities to more general. We also discussed, briefly, the voting system, if any changes were necessary and if so, what (the group I was in, ironically, ran out of time). The general view was that there was no need for change - not a view I would necessarily concur with, obviously!
The discussions in the group I was part of were all very positive - as were those in the other groups. There can be no doubt that everybody values SHINE and believes it still has a role, despite the number of organisations covering the same area. Possibly the major plus point is that SHINE is inclusive - possibly no other organisation covers everyone in the same way - and independent. I think there was a strong desire to keep it that way.
The meeting was very well attended, which shows how important we all think SHINE is, and that we are interested in its future and continuance. The fact that we managed to keep awake and (reasonably) alert after an excellent lunch and in increasingly hot and stuffy room also attests to our commitment!
Ron Carrick
As someone who has used SHINE services for some time, but never really got involved in its workings, I was curious to see what revelations might be forthcoming. In particular I thought “the political, economic, technological and legal factors that impact on the organisation” could throw up some intriguing comments, given recent events and tensions.
Once everything seemed to be in order (everyone had found the coffee and biscuits) Rhona Arthur of SLIC (Scottish Library and Information Council) explained that traffic problems had delayed our Chair, Margaret Forrest, and that she herself had spent a fair part of the morning “parked in the middle lane of the M8”.
Rhona filled in like a true pro, giving an overview of SLIC’s activities in relation to the health sector. She explained that SLIC was cross-sectoral like SHINE, but broader in its scope, and that it was distinguished from CILIPS (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland) in having organisational rather than individual membership. She described the partnership with NES (NHS Education Scotland), which she said was “going through a huge developmental curve at the moment”. I think that rang bells all round the room, along with her reference to “initiative overload” and the lack of a golden pot of central funding for development plans. Rhona stressed the importance of change management in all sectors, but more so in health than any others.
I thought I detected an emerging food theme when she summed this up by saying “you can’t eat an elephant in one bite, and it’s a huge elephant you guys have got”. She followed up by telling us about SLIC’s information handling skills course, which contains 23 generic learning objects, or “bites”. And it was still over an hour and a half till lunch.
Rhona also talked about training needs analysis and continuing professional development, saying that CILIPS was looking at its framework for qualifications, and that SLIC wants to fit in with this.
At this point Margaret arrived, looking cool and unflustered as usual, not blaming the M8 carpark but saying it was all Scotrail’s fault. She expressed her satisfaction at the turnout of more than 40 delegates, adding that overall the regional meetings had attracted more than 50% of SHINE members.
It was time for the main event, and Margaret introduced Gillian Strachan, our facilitator for the day. Gillian does have previous NHS experience, which may partly explain why she is now into facilitating.
Gillian outlined the objectives of our sessions: to consider SHINE’s aims and purpose; which of its functions/services are most/least valued; the relationship between SHINE and other organisations providing services/support to health libraries and their staff, looking at any gaps, overlap, alignments; the strengths and weaknesses of SHINE and opportunities and threats it faces; and recommendations for future work of SHINE and its voting system
We all had our own formulations for what we considered SHINE’s main purpose, but were all on the same broad track. (Mine was a forum or network for co-operation between health library services and librarians.)
It was interesting that we varied in the order in which we listed SHINE’s functions and services. I had first encountered the organisation as a library assistant in 1996 when it was known as ASHSL, so top of my list was interlibrary article requests. But again we all got most of SHINE’s other activities somewhere on our lists - CPD & training, meetings to discuss issues of common interest, Interim newsletter, website, union list (directory), LIS-SHINE discussion list.
We had lively group discussions, with health and higher education representatives’ perspectives, and were still talking when Gillian told to finish. I wondered if an old national stereotype was being confirmed when I saw that two of the characteristics of SHINE given were “value for money” and “Scottish”. I was momentarily puzzled by mention of some Swedish bloke called Sven, until it was explained that it was actually SPHEN, a public health sub-group I had never heard of until now. One group came up with the snappy “roots from below and growth upwards” (I think I know what they meant).
We were doing so well that Gillian reduced our lunch hour by a half, and people were dragged back to their places clutching sticky buns.
Whether this rapid consumption of food was the cause, or a failure of the air conditioning system, the temperature in the room increased alarmingly after lunch. It was like Ice Cold in Alex, with the water and orange juice having run out, and people using their agendas as fans. The writing on the flipcharts started to slope down from left to right then petered out. The SHINE committee members were sent out in search of an oasis, and returned looking very cool and refreshed...I don’t recall anything much after that, so what follows may have a hallucinogenic quality...
We did a good old-fashioned SWOT analysis of SHINE. Strengths - inclusive; members’ commitment; independent, local and relevant. Weaknesses - solos’ voice drowned out by bigger institutions, lack of clout/influence (flip side of local?), slow decision making, low members income contributing to lack of clout, reliance on members’ commitment and the possibility of burn-out.
Opportunities - higher profile of libraries in NHS nationally, clinical governance, broker between other organisations providing services (suggestion that training could be “franchised”, so that courses at present only provided down south could be brought here), union list of books, patient involvement, increase membership in public and further education libraries (would generate more subscriptions, but accepted that these libraries would be net users of resources, and their librarians might have too many commitments to other sectoral groups to devote time to SHINE activity)
Threats - being subsumed by other, more powerful organisations, drop in funding if membership fell, a national library service, pressure on office-bearers and active members.
The thorny issue of voting was raised by a gentleman to my left (physically, if not politically). Under the present voting system, the dilemma is that by paying the same membership fee as a solo service, a large library can have up to six voting members. But if you allowed each institution only one vote, you would give small organisations the same influence as those with far bigger user bases and staffing. Various solutions were suggested, but none seemed entirely acceptable to everyone. One ingenious compromise was to give each institution two votes regardless of size, but to allow votes to individual members to reflect the greater staff numbers in some institutions.
Overall I judge these kind of events on the quality of the catering (excellent), does it finish on time (yes), sense of humour of speakers/facilitators (yes), ambient temperature, zzzzz.....what!?
Malcolm Dobson
NHS Greater Glasgow Health Board
St Vincent Street
Glasgow
Malcolm.Dobson@gghb.scot.nhs.uk