Future Collaboration Conferences – We Want to Hear from You!

It’s time for you to tell us more about what you want from future Collaboration conferences, as a member survey is launched.

As readers will be aware, the Collaboration has organised an annual conference every year since 2017 onward.[1] Following the success of this year’s Adaptation and Growth in Times of Adversity event in September, the Conference Group are already beginning to set plans in motion for the 2022 event. However, after a number of years of events, the time is now ripe to seek some wider input into the Group’s thinking from across the Mercian Collaboration member community.

To this end, today we have launched a questionnaire which is open to all library staff based within the Mercian Collaboration member libraries. If you are lucky enough to already be a member of our general discussion list (mercian-collaboraton@jiscmail)[2], or one of our subgroups, you will already have likely seen an email about this along with a link to the online questionnaire. If you’re not a member of these or haven’t yet seen a message about this from a local colleague: please get in touch with us directly. We will only be too happy to provide you with access to the form.[3]

Because our conference has always been intended to attract staff from all sections and seniority of the library services, it is paramount we continue trying to shape it to reflect this fact. Which is why while we hope to hear from those of you have attended one or more conferences, we are even more keen to hear the thoughts of those of you, for whatever reason, have been unable or uninterested in attending past events. We would, obviously, love to create an event which is attractive to as many of our region’s library staff as possible, and this can only be achieved if we better understand what it is YOU want from future events.

All responses to the survey will be treated in confidence and no personal information identifying respondents will be shared with anyone. The survey will be open through to Friday 11th December, to provide time for it to be analysed ahead of the Conference Group’s first planning meeting of 2022.

Completing the Conference Group survey should only take a few minutes and you can rest assured you will have helped contribute to enriching and empowering future events to meet the needs and expectations of library staff like yourself. Thank you, in advance, for your time in completing it and we really look forward to seeing your comments.

>To request access to the survey, please contact Gareth J Johnson, Collaboration Officer (mercianlibrariescollaboration@gmail.com)

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Notes

• [1] One was planned for 2020, but the pandemic sadly put pay to our plans that year.
• [2] Join via the Jiscmail website, or contact the Collaboration Officer directly. Membership is limited to Collaboration member library staff only.
• [3] If you are unable to access Google Forms, for whatever reason, please contact us as above and we will provide an alternative format questionnaire for you to complete.