I was on Council for several years after the merger and we did receive
reports on membership numbers but can't recall if it was at every
meeting. Unfortunately, I shredded all of the documents I had a year
after I came off Council and deleted what electronic versions I had so
can't directly help. But the reports must be somewhere in CILIP as part
of the record of what was presented to and discussed at Council. A pity
we can't do an FoI, as I've said before.
Karen
On 20/08/2014 10:16 AM, Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) wrote:
> A recent blog post by Barbara Band, the CILIP President, highlighted the
> importance of data about CILIP’s membership numbers. In a discussion
> about an apparent decline in membership numbers over recent years
> Barbara point out [1] that:
>
> “The problem I have is with the statement about CILIP membership being
> at its lowest … the person stating this has selected the year 2010 as
> the benchmark. Why? Why not 2007 or 2004? Why not take the year that
> CILIP was last the LA and use those figures?”
>
> I agree with Barbara, there is a need to provide easy access to such
> information, so that discussions about trends in membership numbers can
> be based on facts.
>
> Back in May I gave a talk an on “/Editing Wikipedia: Why You Should and
> How You Can Support Your Users/
> <http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/events/cilip-wales-2014-editing-wikipedia/>”
> at the CILIP Wales 2014 conference. I showed the CILIP Wikipedia
> article [2] and suggested that the page could be improved, including
> providing up-to-date information on CILIP membership numbers.
>
> I have subsequently tried to find CILIP membership figures since CILIP
> was founded in 2002 in order that the article can be updated. However
> I’m finding it difficult to obtain figures prior to 2010. Note that I
> appreciate that the figures for 2002, after the merger of two
> professional bodies led to the creation of CILIP may well have
> represented the peak membership, but the full set of figures are need in
> order to detect trends.
>
> Can anyone help?
>
> Note that Barbara has commented [3] that:
>
> “I suspect (and I don't know for sure) that the reason older information
> is not online is because it is not available. As this information was
> produced and either kept or destroyed prior to the existing council and
> senior management team, then you cannot blame CILIP (ie: the current
> trustees and SMT) for it not being available .... the blame for the
> supposed lack of records should surely lie with those who were CILIP
> trustees at that time and did not ensure that membership information was
> kept.”
>
> However even if CILIP do not have access to such information it may be
> that CILIP members (and former members) have the information in their
> personal records.
>
> Note a blog post about the approaches I’ve taken to finding this
> information and making it readily available is available at
>
> http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2014/08/19/wikipedia-librarians-and-cilip/
>
> Thanks
>
> Brian Kelly
>
> References
>
> 1. CILIP Governance Review, Library Stuff, Barbara Band,
> http://barbara567band.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/cilip-governance-review.html?showComment=1405892715714#c3576691175875931563
>
> 2. CILIP, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CILIP
>
> 3. CILIP Governance Review, Library Stuff, Barbara Band,
> http://barbara567band.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/cilip-governance-review.html?showComment=1408489381407#c8835230958271483327
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Brian Kelly, Innovation Advocate, Cetis, University of Bolton, UK
>
> Email: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>
> Twitter: @briankelly
>
> Blog: http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/
>
> Cetis web site: http://www.cetis.ac.uk/
>
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