Well it's now official - Andrew Eynon, Grŵp Library & ILT Manager has handed me the baton to take on the Chair role for CILIP Cymru Wales Committee following our AGM on 3rd December 2020.
I'd personally like to thank Andrew for all his valued contributions. We will miss him on the committee but after 10 years, I think he deserves a bit of time off from us! I'd also like to take a moment to thank all our past and current committee members who have been truly inspirational and vital in helping us continue to support our Welsh community. I'm really looking forward to 2021 (like many of us!), please feel free to get in touch.
For the past two years I've thoroughly enjoyed my committee role, getting to know my fellow committee members and hearing first hand about the challenges facing libraries and library teams in Wales and beyond. Sure I am not a librarian or worked in a library, but I have worked with library teams all over the world for the past 20 years and I have also worked for, and do work with in my company now, library service providers. I bring a diverse and unique range of skills to the Chair role which I hope will prove crucial to the community we serve and my colleagues on the committee. If you want to find out more about my experience check out my LinkedIn profile - https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisepeck/
I feel very passionately about libraries, what the people behind them do and how we need to support the survival of libraries in a sustainable way. By taking time to volunteer in the community that means so much, I'm also able to help those I work closely with (publishers, intermediaries, societies and other stakeholders) to have a better understanding of libraries.
At our 2020 AGM, I led an interactive session to find out from attendees what is most important to them, what can we do better and how can we make a difference to them. As a committee, we'll be meeting to ensure we review all the feedback and apply to our 2020-2022 strategy. It was a fascinating session and we'll be sharing the output in our next CILIP Cymru Wales newsletter - make sure you sign up.
I'm delighted that Alan Vaughan Hughes, Head of Special Collections at Cardiff University, will be taking my place as Vice Chair. If you'd like to see all our awesome committee members, check out the CILIP Cymru Wales web pages - https://www.cilip.org.uk/members/group_content_view.asp?group=200145&id=744725.
Interested in joining our committee? Get in touch with Amy Staniforth - CILIP Cymru Wales Relationship Manager about how to apply, we'd love to hear from you.
Should you want to give any feedback, talk in confidence, just have a chat - then please get in touch.