IFLA Presentation Notes

My Hi, I’m Sue Lawson, I’m a Service Development Coordinator for Manchester Libraries and I am very lucky to work at Manchester’s newly opened Central Library. I’ve worked for in libraries since 1993 and in my spare time I organise LibraryCamp UK - an annual unconference for people passionate about libraries. I am going to show you how I was given the freedom to develop innovative partnerships in Manchester’s tech community, starting at Madlab to help turn the library into a creative hub, not just somewhere to borrow books.

For the past few years part of my job description has been to reach new audiences both virtual.and physical. I work for a forward thing library service. We had ebooks, a mobile app, a collaborative community website, were social media early adopters. Now 14000 follow us on Facebook and Twitter. I want to demonstrate how leaving the library and investi Investing in building relationships with your communities can revitalise library services and make your library spaces and much more useful, sustainable and relevant.

A few years ago I was asked to create a Wordpress blog for Manchester Libraries. As I’d not used WP before I got a book from the library and asked on Twitter where else I could get help. I was directed to the MAnchester User Wordpress Group and met them one night in the Lass O'Gowrie pub. That night I met Dave Mee and Hwa Young Jung, the co-founders of the Manchester Laboratory (Madlab). Madlab is a community led hack/makerspace operating from a former skate shop in the NQ. It’s the product of uber networked and proactive users and a driving grassroots passion. Today more than 60 independent groups meet at Madlab. User groups are co-directors and directors are users. Conversations happen everyday about the direction of the project. I knew right away this was a project libraries couldn’t ignore. In fact I felt so strongly that this was the direction libraries should be moving in that I got involved. Initially we set up a micro library at MadLab. Then I started attending a few meetings.

This led to the Get Wisdom Flickr gallery featuring 700+ photos by Manchester photographers of Central Library in the weeks before the library closed for refurbishment.

Next we established a SF book club. The members chose the books they wanted to read and the library bought them 20 copies a month. After the meeting the books went back into the library system meaning we have a pretty eclectic, radical and patron driven SF collection across all our libraries.

The library also crowdsourced a new touring collection of 50 SF books to try and lure readers into the word of SF. Books had qr codes leading back to the book clubs website. So not only was I a librarian embedded in the community we also embedded a bit of the MadLab community into the library via our own version patron driven acquisition. When a person walks into a library they should be able to easily see how they can improve or collaborate with that service It is the community’s library, after all, not the librarian’s library.

Through more MadLab events I met developer Alan Holding. Manchester Libraries has 80,000 historical images of the city on our website - if you know where to find it - and once you’ve found it you have to navigate an ugly interface to find all the gems. Alan loved our collection but was very irritated by the CMS so he scraped it one weekend and built his own!

I think you’ll agree Alan’s version looks a lot better. It’s also easier to search. This is why leaving the library is so important. n an increasingly open source society libraries need friends like Alan. How many geeks or developers do you have working at your library? We took Alan’s project to a Pi and Mash library tech unconference and the first LibraryCamp where someone gave me a copy of programme or be programmed by Douglas Rushkoff. I went back to Madlab and got involved with Young Rewired State.

Young Rewired State is a collaborative hacking event for under 18s bringing together young developers to build web and mobile applications that attempt to solve real world problems. Every year Young Rewired State holds a national hackathon where attendees across the UK take part in a competition to make an application that includes at least one piece of open government data. At the end of the week the contestants present their creations to a panel of judges and they can win prizes in a variety of categories.

The Library’s Archives now understood the benefits of increasing access to their collections they gave the young hackers access to our image collection for the YRS national summer hackathon. This online geolocation web application from 16 year old Jack Hill won a best in show.

Since 2010 Archives have also added over 14,000 images to Flickr. Volunteers curate the community’s own memories into galleries which are themed and all the images are open for comments, corrections and can also be geolocated. We also recently launched a new website - GM Lives which lets you share our images to your social networks and credits us too!

Social media surgeries are a national project. They run across the UK, though not many run yet in librarie. They are an informal gathering of people who want to learn how to use the web to communicate, campaign or collaborate. Surgeries are deliberately relaxed and you can sit next to someone who understands good ways to use the internet, someone who will listen to what you do, and then show you free, useful tools. If you like what you see they can also help you setup your blog, Facebook page or Twitter account. Most social media surgeries have an event every few weeks, so you can keep coming back for help. Slide 13 If you want help - a chance to talk to someone - then register for your nearest surgery. If you want to offer help please do the same.

Through MadLab I have met a bunch of incredibly talented and generous people including Sam Bail Manchester Girl Geeks. Manchester Girl Geeks is a not-for-profit group which organises networking events, talks and hands-on workshops for women and girls with an interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). The group initially started as part of the Girl Geek Dinners movement, which currently has more than 60 groups in over 20 countries. These events provide a great opportunity for women working in STEM to get together in a relaxed environment, network and meet like-minded people. There have been several successful Girl Geek Dinners in Manchester (UK), working with partners such as the Manchester Science Festival and Barclays Capital.

Same was studying for a PhD in Computer Science. We were both aware that there weren’t many girls involved in YRS, nor were many girls learning programming or computer studies at school so we set up Coding for Girls sessions in libraries to try and address this.

It's great to see so many girls come along. I know that not all of them will go away and become top programmers, but just having a general understanding of how things work I think is already quite helpful in dealing with technology in general.

Good programmers are hard to find. But most industries will be looking for IT professionals with coding skills for years to come. The girls at the Girl Geek's workshop might have taken their first step towards controlling their own computing future. and they started at the library.

Code Clubs This has led to our involvement with Code Clubs - a nationwide network of volunteer- led after school coding clubs for children aged 9-11. We will be starting the first after school library code club in Manchester in the Media Lounge in Central Library in October.

Mini makerspace We’re lucky in Manchester that we already have a dynamic Maker/hacker space in the city centre plus a Fab Lab so there’s no real need for the library to replicate this BUT it’s still important to work with your local makerspace. Slide 20 By working in partnership and offering a taste of making and tinkering you are creating a space in the library where people can get involved in all types of activities. The library is becoming an active learning aoce, its not just about reading it's also about play, experimentation, collaboration and creativity.

we can use the library network to open up the ideas of a hack/makerspaces to a broader public. Our mini makerspace, robotics, coding and arduino events are informal introduction to this type of stuff.

Another successful collaboration that came directly from working at and with Madlab was Digital Skills for Women. Taking place in taking place in five libraries from January to July 2013, the courses aimed to equip women with the tools they need in today’s workplace. With this project, we reached over 100 women in Greater Manchester who were currently not in employment to help them on their way. There were four courses available: Basic IT Skills, Social Media, Introduction to Web Development and Introduction to Programming. Leading industry figures were the teachers including Liz Hardwick and Darren Jenkinson from Digi Enable, Mike Little, co- founder of WordPress and Dave Mee from MadLab and TanDot. Digital Skills for Women in Manchester was a collaboration between the Manchester Digital Laboratory,Manchester Libraries, and Manchester Girl Geeks. The project is funded by the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) and the European Social Fund (ESF).

By running these type of new classes and creating active learning zones around technology we were changing perceptions of what you can do in a library. This encouraged more organisations to come to us and deliver new learning opportunities in our libraries. Robogirls told us they would have never approached a library if they hadn’t seen that story and what we were doing. Robogals is an international, student- run organisation that aims to increase female participation in Engineering, Science and Technology through fun and educational initiatives aimed at girls in primary and secondary school.

In the workshops, girls construct and program LEGO NXT robotics kits, which includes a central CPU brick that is programmed using a simple, visual interface to use components such as light sensors, colour sensors, sound sensors, motors, sound outputs, etc. The lessons have been designed to engage students in a range of engineering topics in a way that is fun and creative. As well as building and programming the robots, the workshop includes a brief introduction to the different types of engineering, and how engineers impact our daily lives.

We also ran a self publishing workshop.

Self publishing is very popular and seem an ideal way for libraries to help people take part in the web content creation boom. Plus they are a good way to connect with local writers in your communities. Even my dad has self published a book and had more than 2000 downloads!

Drive By Studios beta tested a 12 week video game development course in the Central Library Media Lounge. A free course for under 16s, attendees didn’t need any coding experience. During the course they created characters for an online platform game set in Central Library.

FC United of Manchester is a community football club owned and democratically run by its members. FCUM approached North CIty Library in Harpurhey after seeing the success of the Digital Skills for women course. They hadn’t thought of using a library as a venue before. We have now run 10 Radio Production Workshops - a 12 week course that leads to a PERL qualification.

In March 2014 Central Library opened after a massive 4 year refurbishment. Innovative partnerships plus a culture of making and doing is an integral part of the new library. This picture is Archives . This used to be miles of book stacks and that whole space was closed to the public. Now it’s home to this purpose-built digital exhibition which is attracting new audiences to libraries and archives.

The Henry Watson Music Library is unique. Not because it has a massive collection of manuscripts and a fantastic music collection - it’s unique because you can do stuff there that you can’t do anywhere else. You can play the drums, there are 2 public pianos, 2 vocoders, a mixing deck and there’s Sibelius software in 2 Apple iMac that you can use to compose.

Once you’ve formed your band and written the music you can play live and loud in the library in the dedicated Performance Space. Slide 33 You could film your performance on our suite of 10 imacs using library equipment that is part of the BDUK demonstrator suite and then edit it in the media lounge all with the latest creative software. You can use the m for free for 3 hours a day and if you are working on a project or as a group you can book the space for out for one day a week for the length of your project.

LibraryLive is a brand new cultural programme at Central Library. Alongside the traditional library activities: author readings, talks, writer workshops, Central Library plays host to gigs, film nights, live performances, open-mic evenings and creative courses.

In November Everything Everything will be taking over the library for a week-long residency of artist explorations and experiments that will be played out in full public view. Collaborating with artists fo test out the new spaces of Central Library, but also test the limits of what a 21st century library can be via a mix of installations and performances in every space in the library.

I hope I’ve demonstrated how strong partnerships can lead to some really innovative programmes in the library. This can create a snowball effect that increases the social and cultural capital of your library. You can also build a handy network of knowledge and expertise and raise the profile of libraries unexpected places. It’s not just about going out to the community it s about becoming part of the community - whether it’s techy, or health, sporty, arty, business or your local community. I was watching presentation by Eli Neiburger and he asked “What would our libraries look like if we spent half as much on creative programming as we do on collections?”.