17 January 2008
When Saturday came ....
My professional meetings in Newcastle were followed by a feast of football at the weekend - Sunderland v Portsmouth at the Stadium of Light on the Sunday preceded by Darlington v Bury at the Darlington Arena on the Saturday.
Why Darlo and Sunderland, you may ask? Because my good friend Patrick Conway has an association with Sunderland and I've been a lifelong supporter of Bury FC (aka the Mighty Shakers), Darlo's opponents on the Saturday.
At this point, this blog posting could go one of three ways. I could go into sports reporter mode (I could you know - I used to be a Saturday afternoon "stringer" reporting on non-league football in the Midlands many years ago) and tell you all about the two games - brilliant performance by Darlo's No. 9 in their 3-0 win, excellent performances by the Man U connection in Sunderland's 2-0 win. Or I could go all nostalgic and misty-eyed about 47 years of watching Bury ever since the Shakers barnstormed their way to the Third Division championship in 1961 - a lifelong lesson in stoicism and Kipling's If, and the only aspect of my life where the glass is forever half empty: as some of you will know, all real football fans feel like this.
Or I could write about the similarities between football and our LIS profession. And - since this is supposed to be a blog for the library and information community - that's what I'll do.
First - the similarity between a football club and a professional body like CILIP: trustees in the boardroom, staff in the backroom, professionals on the field of play, the wider community offering their views which are sometimes supportive and sometimes critical. Yes, I've heard a murmur of "You don't know what you're doing" on a couple of occasions (in the past) from the terraces of CILIP Council ...
Second - a shared social history from incorporation in the late nineteenth century to the challenges of the early twenty-first century. The history of professional football clubs like Bury and professional bodies like CILIP (and its predecessors) can be used to develop a fascinating narrative of social change in England over the last 130 or so years - fascinating to me at any rate. Perhaps I'll write about that in the blog one day (when I'm on a long train journey back from a match with not much else to do).
Third (yes, three, what did you expect?) - a common core of enduring values which bring success and sustainability. I know that the concept of values is not often associated with modern professional football but the three clubs in England which have earned the title of a genuinely "Big Club" (yes, Liverpool, Arsenal, and Man U) do demonstrate a set of common values - character, commitment, continuity and collective endeavour - although they express these values in different ways. As we draft the Corporate Objectives for CILIP in 2008 - and as we mark the 110th anniversary of CILIP's Royal Charter, awarded in 1898 - we need to demonstrate a similar set of values in our LIS profession. Do we have the collective will to become a "Big Club" in the information age - or will we find ourselves playing in the lower leagues where support is sparse, public interest is minimal, standards are low, and finance is always a struggle?
How can we work together - with character, commitment, continuity, and collectivism - to take our LIS profession into the Premiership? That's the central question to which this blog-musing on professional football and the LIS profession has led me.
I'll do the "narrative of social change" stuff on another day. And I won't mention the FA Cup in case any Canaries are reading this. What you probably don't know is that Southampton v Bury in Round Four of this year's FA Cup replicates the FA Cup Final of 1903 which Bury won 6-0, a record score which still stands today. I'm sure we'll still be ahead on aggregate after this year's game. See what I mean? Forever Bury ... and the glass forever half-empty. Up the Shakers!
