Organising a SCONUL staff development event
Prepared by the SCONUL Advisory Committee on Staffing
Would you find it useful to get together with colleagues to consider an aspect of academic library service and its relation to teaching and learning?
Maybe SCONUL can help you.
How?
SCONUL works to promote librarianship in the national and university libraries in Britain and Ireland.
SCONUL provides a regular forum at which Chief Librarians, or their representatives, can exchange working experience and at which they can formulate advice on common problems and joint responses to national initiatives.
We also encourage a wide dissemination of information on good practice and matters of general professional interest. To do this we actively involve colleagues from SCONUL libraries in making responses to national initiatives, writing position papers and serving on working groups. This is a matter of philosophy and of sensible practice, it helps SCONUL's work and provides staff development opportunities for our colleagues. Another of the specific ways SCONUL seeks to fulfil its responsibilities is by underwriting staff development and training events through its Advisory Committee on staffing.
How does this work in practice?
SCONUL will meet some or all of the travelling costs incurred by a steering group in setting up your first event.
It will underwrite your first one or two events against loss provided you have discussed costing with our Treasurer (who may also be able to do the invoicing and bill payment on your behalf and prepare a final balance sheet).
We can help you find premises, speakers and delegates.
We have a checklist which helps you with the administration of your event.
We can help you publicise your event. The SCONUL Newsletter will always carry advance notices of forthcoming events and we maintain mailing lists on adhesive labels, which cover:
- University and national Chief Librarians
- Librarians responsible for staff training and development in the Universities
- College Libraries
We can suggest ways of evaluating your event.
We will help to publicise the outcome of your event by means of printing a report in the SCONUL Newsletter, assisting helping with the preparation of conference proceedings, (possibly even publishing them as a SCONUL paper) and by helping you to place reports in the press and with interested individuals.
Does it work?
Several groups and one-off events have been supported in this way.
Groups have included the National Acquisitions Group, the Interloans Group, the Architecture Librarians Group and the Humanities Librarians Group.
What's the catch?
The catches are that in return for this support we ask you to:
- indicate on your brochure that this is a joint event run by your group and SCONUL while we are underwriting you;
- construct a budget for the event which we can discuss with you, that, at least, aims to break even;
- report in writing on your events and activities through the SCONUL Newsletter. The Newsletter is published in January, May and September. The Editor should be informed in advance that a report is forthcoming and s/he will advise on copy date (generally in the month preceding publication). No limit is placed on the length of a conference report but 1500 words can be used as a rough guide. Staff at the SCONUL office will be able to give you the name and address of the Newsletter editor.
If you are interested, please contact:
- The current Chair of the SCONUL Advisory Group on Staffing (available on
the SCONUL web site) or via the SCONUL Office.
- Any member of the SCONUL Advisory Group on staffing (members listed on the SCONUL web site)
The forthcoming SCONUL working paper, Organising a staff development event, will give further help and guidance to staff involved in organising training events. This is due to published in early 2002.