On October 6th, the LAICDG held its second AGM in the now familiar Rathmines Public Library. We started off with the nitty-gritty of the AGM, with Laura Connaughton (Chairperson) and Bryan Whelan (acting Secretary) speaking about the nature of the LAICDG, who the different members of the Committee are as well as how we communicate as a group. As we feel that events are our raison-d’etre, we spoke about the events that we held through the year. If you’re interested, you can read about the Interview Skills Workshop, Library Camp and Writing for Academic Publication on our blog (just follow those links). An important point raised during the list of events we carried out was that without groups like the Academic and Special Libraries (particularly in reference to the Library Camp event), the activities of the LAICDG would be somewhat curtailed. Lara Musto, LAICDG Treasurer, also spoke about the current finances of the LAICDG. Again, the point was made that the LAICDG is currently relying on the very generous nature of groups such as the AS&L, but without sufficient funding, the quality of our events may be lessened in the future. This is due to various high costs, such as Event Brite (used for booking event tickets) and the rent fee of venues for our events. In addition to this, the group is still willing to continue offering tickets at a lower price than other LAI groups, considering our audience involves newly professionals and unemployed.
Roy Murray‘s talk was one of the highlights of the LibCamp 2014, so we were delighted that he agreed to give his workshop on social media. We all know that the information profession has changed incredibly over the last decade or so, and none more so than in the world of social media. The vast majority of libraries – regardless of what field they operate in – have realised the importance of social media in forwarding awareness of their collection as well as connecting to existing and potential users. There are many examples of libraries who have done wonders with their social media (for example, the NLI twitter feed is always a joy to read) and, of course, some that we may politely describe as a wasted opportunity. The difficulty is that what works for one organisation may be completely innapropriate for your own. With that in mind, Roy presented a very interesting workshop which got everyone discussing this. A key element of Roy’s talk was the need to understand exactly what your organisation is, what its message is, and what it wants to actually do with social media. Particularly beneficial was that regardless of how you operate social media (amateur, pro or somewhere in between) the workshop was perfectly tailored to appeal to everyone. There was a lively discussion before we wrapped everything up and there was a healthy attendance in Mother Reilly’s afterwards.
An AGM can be a good point to start anew and introduce fresh thinking. With that in mind, over the past few months we made numerous calls through many different avenues for expressions of interest in working as Committee members in the LAICDG. The LAICDG would like to thank all those previous members who stood down after the AGM, as well as welcome all the new members. Being a Committee member can be a wonderful opportunity to help others in your field, as well as engage with your peers.
As always, we were tweeting throughout the event on #laicdgagm14. If you couldn’t make it to the event, you can follow all those tweets here.
Finally, we would like to thank all of those who attended, as well as the representatives of the LAI (who also helped out with some issues that we may have experienced regarding AGM protocol), to the staff of Rathmines Public Library and, of course, to Roy Murray.
LAI CDG 