Professionals in
Information and Documentation

President 2009 of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) - UK

Mr. Griffiths, Could you please tell our readers a little about yourself?

Until 2008 I was the Head of Information at the Home Office, which is the United Kingdom government department that deals with crime, policing, immigration, drugs and terrorism. Before that I worked in the Department of Health, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and a public library near London where I started my career. Now I am a writer and consultant. During the time I worked at the Home Office I was responsible for information services, knowledge management and libraries, but also for other services like the intranet and Internet web site.

What is CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) and what are their goals? What is your role as President?

CILIP is the United Kingdom’s professional association for librarians and information professionals. This is how it describes its goals:

• To set, maintain, monitor and promote standards of excellence in the creation, management, exploitation and sharing of information and knowledge resources;
• To support the principle of equality of access to information, ideas and works of the imagination which it affirms is fundamental to a thriving economy, democracy, culture and civilisation; and
• To enable its Members to achieve and maintain the highest professional standards in all aspects of delivering an information service, both for the professional and the public good.

That means that CILIP sets standards for professional librarians and information managers, and it awards its qualifications to people who meet the standards. It comments on issues involving libraries and information, particularly where the government is proposing new policies or public bodies are consulting about new ideas. And CILIP supports its members with advice, publications, education and so on.

My role as President is quite complex. Of course I attend various events, often conferences or annual meetings of CILIP’s branches and groups, and speak about the profession. I have some particular issues that I am interested in, which include working with other professional associations to make sure that information and knowledge management are recognised by government and the public. I’m also working on a project in government that started before I left the Home Office, to develop a knowledge and information management strategy for government departments and agencies, but now I represent CILIP and the help it can provide on professional skills, and on showing how good information management in government can reduce costs. But I also have to act as a kind of judge when required, to make sure that CILIP’s Trustees (they’re the people who are legally responsible for how CILIP is managed, not the people who work for CILIP) act responsibly and ethically, and there are a number of committees that report to me – for example the team that manages the annual elections to CILIP’s Council of Trustees.

You have a great carreer in Information Sciences, what qualities should a good "information professional" posses?

There are three things, and two of them are mentioned in the title of “information professional” – first, you need to be constantly on top of the world of information and knowledge, which means knowing your subject and keeping yourself up to date with the literature and by talking to colleagues; second, you must be professional, which means being active in your association, and maintaining standards in your work and helping your colleagues to do the same. The third thing, which isn’t mentioned, is your customer. You cannot be a good information professional unless you are constantly listening to what your customers want, and working with them to provide it. Sometimes the real customers, the people who rely on your service and are probably other professionals like researchers, scientists or lawyers, have to support you to get proper resources from the money managers, so I think there’s also a quality of being a politician, someone who knows their way round their organisation but also knows how to work with rather than against the very senior managers in order to get the job done. If you can’t deal with the most senior people in an organisation as an equal, then your information unit will never have the status it deserves.

Some people think that the New Technologies could replace the information professionals, because their participation wouldn't be necessary as intermediary between the user and information. What is your opinion? What are the opportunities and challenges for information professionals in the twenty-first century?

I gave a paper on this at the London Online conference in 1997 and my views haven’t changed since, even though Google and all kinds of other search tools have been invented in the meantime. Yes, users can find a lot of material for themselves, and they may even be better placed to judge it than the intermediaries if they are more expert on a specialist subject. But many users don’t understand that they haven’t got access to the whole of knowledge on the Internet, just a bit of it, and they don’t know how to tell good websites from bad or false information from truth. They need to come to information professionals to help them learn how to judge, and even if they are in a university with huge electronic journal resources, they still need to come to libraries for other publications. But all this is a good thing, as long as we can get our message about information literacy to our users, because it gives us the time and resources to devote to new kinds of value added work as information professionals. We are working on knowledge management, on information assurance and security, on new ideas like fusion centres which they are now building in the United States to analyse information that can prevent crimes and terrorism. Our real problem is that we need to go on doing a lot of the things we’ve always done, and we’re a small profession. If we don’t apply our skills in these new areas other people will, and will do the work less well than we are able to do it. That’s a loss for everyone – ourselves and our customers, and our society too. So the problem isn’t being replaced by technology, it’s that there are so many opportunities that need our skills, and not enough people who have the professional skills to take those opportunities.

Today everybody talk of e-book and how it could replace the traditional book. In your opinion, what is the future of the book and the libraries?

It will be a long time before we see the end of print on paper. E-books have a lot of good features and for some users they are an excellent idea – students for example who can download key texts and keep them in one place. But they have disadvantages too, and the technology must be improved greatly before there is any real possibility that e-books can take from printed ones. Libraries however must look at whether it is possible to use e-books, just as they must constantly watch all other technologies. And because libraries are not just about books but about information, and most of all about the skills of librarians, I don’t have any concerns about their future.

But how is digitization affecting physical library space?

I’m very impressed by the way that libraries are adapting and using the physical space that is being released as journals become electronic, and how they are adapting to the needs of their users. The Information Commons, like the one in Sheffield (in the north of England) is an excellent way to combine new technology and more traditional materials. I like the way that all types of user and all types of learning style can be accommodated. The biggest problem that I see is in corporate libraries, where planners think that everything in a library can be digitized, so they plan new libraries with no space for users or books, and take space away from existing libraries without understanding either the cost of digitization or questions like licensing that affect what can be turned from paper to electronic version.

If you had to name a single most important technology to libraries today, what would it be?

That’s really difficult, but I think it would be something to do with the web. The potential to combine information, what’s being called Web 2.0, or 3.0, or even 4.0, with the user and the library, is really powerful. In future people will be able to access not just published information but the knowledge of their peers and other subject experts across the world, and it will be the library that is at the centre of the hub, facilitating all these exchanges.

A growing number of professionals worldwide are joining to associations. Why this boom?

Because with the increasing pace of change, professionals realise they will be out of touch with new developments unless they join at least one association. They see the benefits, and also understand that with more members the associations have a stronger voice in talking to policy makers in government. They see the possibility of making connections to other professionals to develop their knowledge and to make contacts in new areas of work. But the associations need to listen to their members, and make changes if needed. We need to make room for the new information professions as well as the traditional ones.

What impression do you have of Spaniards information professionals? Are there any differences with British professionals?

I don’t think we know enough about you here! I have the impression that Spanish professionals have many similarities with us in Britain, and that we face many similar challenges and questions. I’m sure we are all concerned about budgets, marketing, new technology, and many other topics that affect us all. We can get together at conferences like IFLA to share experiences but we need to find ways to stay aware of what colleagues in other countries are doing between those big annual meetings. There are articles in the journals of professional associations that are well worth knowing about – and reading if you know the language, or getting an abstract. I’m sure we can all learn from each other.

Finally, what do you usually read? The book that awoke your passion for reading?

I don’t read much fiction – I’ve always liked books that teach me something, or tell me about new places or people or ideas. I like books that make me laugh. I don’t think there was one single book that gave me a passion for reading. I just like to read something interesting and instructive or amusing if it’s in a language I can read!

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