Minutes of the cpd25 Steering Group

25th November 2009, 2.45pm

LSE Library: Room 300b

In attendance: Robert Atkinson, Judith Cattermole, David Gee, Claire Hackshall (Administrator), Mary Nixon (Chair), Catherine Phillpotts. 

1. Apologies:

MN reported that HA has resigned as the Chair of Task Group 5 due to the fact that her new position is with the NHS and not HE. MN would be holding a meeting with Task Group 5 members in January 2010 to discuss next steps and the events that they are currently arranging. 

2. Minutes of the previous meeting:

Accepted as an accurate record.

3. Matters arising:

N/A

4. Financial update:

CH reported that the first three events of the 2009-10 programme will all make a small surplus, although she is unable to send out invoices to attendees at the moment  due to the fact that the M25 Treasurer has been advised to close down the old cpd25 bank account first of all and this cannot be done until all monies are collected from last year’s cpd25 events.

5. Reports from Task Groups:

5.1 DG, Chair of Task Group 1, reported that the first two sessions of the 2009/10 Professional Qualifications Workshops Series had now taken place and had gone very well. Eighteen people were booked in for the whole series, with a few additional individual-session bookings having been received as well. DG also reported that the one-day conference on Applying to Study Library and Information Science had been run on 30th October and that it too had gone very well. Future events being organised by the group included a Career Progression Day for Library Assistants due to take place in May and two discussion forums for SDO’s in March and June. It was suggested by the Steering Group that Task Group 1 could organise a visit to Westminster Public Reference Library instead of the London Library, as Task Group 2 was already organising a visit there.

5.2 RA, Chair of Task Group 2, reported that the following events were currently being organised: Contract and Supplier Management, Employment Law, Basic Copyright (the task group envisage running variations of this topic over the next few years), Managing Management Information, Quality Standards, Making Libraries More Accessible and Assistive Technology. Visits being organised include: the Hornimann Museum, the Society of Antiquaries, British Film Institute, The London Library, Wandsworth Prison, The Law Society, Middle Temple Library, Imperial College Library and the Freemasons’ Library. The Group had met the previous week and had set their next meeting date for 27th January 2010, after which they would be having their annual lunch.

5.3 CP, Chair of Task Group 3, reported that since the last Steering Group meeting two meetings of Task Group 3 have been held in order to keep abreast of the various events being planned and that a third meeting was going to be held the following day. CP reported that the plans for the Collection Development workshop, set to take place on 20th January 2010, were going very well and that the programme was almost ready for releasing and advertising. Other events and visits are all progressing, but firm dates have yet to be fixed for these. These are: Customer service, Library Access for non-traditional learners, Working patterns, 24/7, Business Process Re-engineering (MN recommended that this particular event should be run over a full day and that it should be advertised quite widely), Digitising collections, Copyright [operational aspects], a visit to NMRC and a visit to SOAS. The Steering Group suggested that the copyright events being organised by the different task groups should be advertised all as one to show their differences.

5.4 JC, Chair of Task Group 4,  reported that Jacky Camroux was retiring in December and so would be leaving Task Group 4 after giving many years of work and support. MN agreed to write and thank her for all her hard work. It was also reported that Donald Lickley would be leaving the group in March as he is taking voluntarily severance. JC and CH reported that the second Managing Budgets course had taken place last week and that it had gone very well. Two Coping at the Counter sessions and two Coping Even Better sessions had been organised for 2009/10 and the group were running a new Leadership Development Programme for experienced managers in February and March. Places on this had been totally booked-up within a few days of advertising. There was some discussion by the Steering Group that an event needed to be run for new managers and JC agreed to look into this. JC reported that other events being organised for 2009/10 were: Time Management, Emotional Intelligence, Transferable Skills, Marketing, Writing for the Web, Senior Library Assistants Conference (MN recommended that this year more time was spent on the visits as people found these particularly valuable), a visit to Westminster School, a visit to the House of Commons, a visit to the Kubrick Archive and a visit to Kew.

6. Report from Chair on the recent M25 Steering Group Meeting:

MN had nothing to report on this.

7. Report from Chair on National Occupational Standards:

MN outlined how the Government Scheme on National Occupational Standards worked and explained that it was part of the skills agenda, aimed at recording the various skills needed to perform jobs.

8. Report from Chair on new expenses claim procedure for Task Group annual lunches:

MN reported that the new procedure for the payment of task group annual lunches was that the Chair would pay at the time for the lunch and then send a claim form together with the original receipt to the M25 Treasurer. CH was asked to send each Chair a copy of the new expenses form.

9. Any Other Business:

JC suggested that under ‘Forthcoming Events’ on the cpd25 website, the events for the Professional Qualifications Series should be marked to differentiate them from other events being run. JC also suggested that each event title should show its ‘unique event reference number’ which has been agreed for invoicing purposes, as this would show which task group was organising which events. CH agreed to implement these changes as soon as possible.

10. Date of next meeting:

It was agreed that CH would organise this for February 2010, with the cpd25 Planning Day due to take place in May 2010.