Of course they must be, and the more I think of it the more likely they are in Annual reports, finance reports, reports to council and so forth etc.

It would be quite slap dash and inappropriate if a MEMBERSHIP organisation did not have records of numbers, categories, group membership and trends

But I hope it isn't like an Academic library I worked at once, yonks ago. I was asked to do an analysis of journals etc., bound and so forth. My figures came out way below the one always quoted.

Further research showed they had never ever deleted records for titles they no longer held, and had only ever added on, which explained the additional shelving that was not used as the journals didn't exists!
f  



Frances Hendrix

-----Original Message-----
From: Library and Information Professionals [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Karen Blakeman
Sent: 21 August 2014 14:35
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Information on CILIP membership numbers since CILIP was founded

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/
>