...And our Professional Future is............. Biddy Fisher CILIP President 2010 ...And our Professional Future is............. More of this.... And less of that...... #cigx @bikerbid

Are cataloguing & indexing still at the heart of what Library and Information Professionals do? Essential for information retrieval for locating items for verifying authentic sources for ensuring standards for preventing clutter and chaos etc.

Is this what chaos looks like?

And yet.... Everyone can ‘google’ likes ‘google’ simplicity expects google type results thinks its easy thinks its automatic doesn’t really think about ‘it’ at all Not everyone can spell......

This is becoming the new heart of the profession

Another form of literacy? Searching the endless resources

Endlessly providing access For simplicity sake, think reductively of three categories of library material: bought, licensed and digital The systems to provide access to these three collection types probably account for the vast majority of access traffic to library collections. Lorcan Dempsey blog February 13th 2009 Endlessly providing access

Digitising can’t be achieved without creating & organising data Those who want to eliminate the ‘back room’ have no idea how this alone would endanger cultural heritage

Or understand how anyone will find anything in the future

Facing our professional future?

‘Defining our professional future’? What did we say in ‘Defining our professional future’?

90% Interpersonal skills 89% Customer service skills 85% ICT skills 73% General management skills 72% Information evaluation skills 71% Training skills 66% Information management skills

50% Teaching skills 47% Cataloguing skills 46% Classification skills 24% Indexing skills

85% ICT skills 66% Online comms skills 32% Web publishing skills 18% Database design skills

Increasingly diverse Core professional skills are overlooked by employers, society, the public Future offers more opportunities for making a difference No standard skillset

In 10 years time More Less On line comms ICT Business Marketing Information evaluation Information management Web publishing Customer service Fundraising Cataloguing Classification Indexing Database design Interpersonal Teaching Decision support Training General management

Minister Ed Vaizey IS interested in Libraries He recognizes the use of libraries for more than just books He needs information from the experts and we need to communicate with each other

Chris Keene (2 images) Eric Hackathorn Photography and images in the presentation are courtesy of Chris Keene (2 images) Eric Hackathorn Lost in Scotland, Veijo Vilva, Greenhem, See-ming Lee 李思明 SML, Jeheme, Stephano Principato, Jontintinjordan kylanicole They were traced using Creative Commons and FLICKR and are displayed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License