CILIP: The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals: Yearbook, 2007‐2008

Citation

Law, D. (2008), "CILIP: The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals: Yearbook, 2007‐2008", Library Review, Vol. 57 No. 9, pp. 730-731. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530810911833

The arrival of the CILIP Yearbook is one of those ritual events marking a way‐point in the year. The volume arrives, is put on the shelf unthinkingly and occasionally referred to. It is part of the furniture which like the turning of the seasons marks one's professional life. It is then something of a shock to actually look at the Yearbook with a reviewer's eye and see how the certainty of a professional anchor point has turned into a rather dull, complacent, mindless, probably pointless and certainly self‐indulgent exercise.

The volume is divided into six sections. An unnumbered opening section has a contents page followed by the mission statement, corporate plan for 2006‐2009 and the equal opportunities and diversity statement. The complacency begins here. Why did no one proof‐read the contents page, where (quite incredibly!) CILIP is misspelt as CILP?

Part 1 then lists the organization describing its structure and staffing giving contact details. Staff are listed, helpfully, with e‐mail addresses – except in Corporate Marketing and Membership “responsible for member recruitment and retention, membership administration… .” (a much‐used service one imagines) where there is a vacancy, but no information on who to contact instead!

Part 2 on governance is a rather larger section. We are told who is on council, but not their terms of office, when or where meetings are held, or election results or when and how to nominate councillors. This section has the single, badly produced image in the whole 468 pages, a wholly unflattering grainy passport style picture which may be of the president. Why bother? Or if there are to be illustrations, why only one? Committees and panels are listed naming the chair but not the membership and with no indication of their remit and function. There is a list of past presidents and secretaries – although no explanation of why the secretary is elsewhere described as the chief executive. Then there is a solid core of documents – the charter, bye‐laws and regulations. Again a little bizarrely, the most useful index to these documents is not mentioned in the contents page and has to be stumbled on by chance, or be found in the index under “subject index”.

Part 3 has more general information, listing branches and groups, how to contact the benevolent fund, lists of honorary fellows and so on as well as a rather desultory account of facilities at Ridgmount Street. The curiosity here is that in a directory awash with contact details there are none for the members of the suppliers network

Part 4 is the largest section, being the list of members. There is a clear residual value of having a list of members – although even this is arguable given the eccentric entries and might better be published (to members and/or subscribers) in CD‐ROM format, or on a members area of the website. The members list occupies over 200 pages. Essential reference of course and fascinating to dip into, if only to discover the huge range of the profession from the slightly despairing sounding “unwaged – seeking employment”, to the coolly understated “Ch. Exec., Brit. L.” or the defiant(?) “Resident in USA” or someone working for the bewilderingly named “London Upright Centre”.

The final section has 40 pages of historical information, with short histories of the LA and IIS and lists of their past presidents, secretaries and award winners.

A reasonable working assumption might be that a website is transient whereas a yearbook is intended to act as some form of permanent record. The annual report, for example, is held on the website only for three years and is then available “on request” from a generic e‐mail address. Although there is a solid core of documents and contact details in the Yearbook, there is no obvious strategy on what is included and what is excluded. Where are the annual report, the financial report, a review of the year – perhaps also in this case a report of the governance review which proposed radical changes, a report of the AGM, statements from the president and/or chief executive reporting highlights of the year – or even progress against targets in the strategic plan? There is no indication where these are to be found and the Yearbook cannot be seen in any way as a volume of record. And so we are left with a publication which is inadequate as a record of the year, but incomplete as a guide to or directory of the institute.

The reviewer is left with a whole series of unanswered questions – not without answers but unanswered. Why does it cover 2007‐2008 and not the calendar year? Easy to guess the answer, but not stated. What is the relationship with the website? There is no statement of where to look for what. Some material is duplicated, some not, in an apparently random way. We discover how to nominate individuals or bodies for prizes but not for honorary fellowship, for example. The major problem is that there is no identifiable relationship with the website. A yearbook is defined as an annual compendium of facts and statistics. Well this certainly has a rag‐bag of facts, if no statistics.

The Yearbook seems to exist in a vacuum, reproducing itself by some form of parthenogenesis unrelated to the rest of CILIP, and certainly not part of a coherent communication strategy to the membership. To exist as if in a vacuum – separate from CILIP's major policy and governance decisions, from their website, from any marketing strategy, from any analysis of membership trends and from any statistical and financial analysis – is really quite astonishing. And so we are left with an introspective anachronism. But it has a pretty cover.