Flowers from Scotland

I've been in Peebles most of this week for the centenary conference of CILIP in Scotland - celebrating one hundred years of professional association in Scotland - and, as I sat contemplating the glorious scenery of the Scottish Borders, three thoughts (yes, three, of course) began to form in my mind: three flowerings of thought in the Scottish sunshine. About our role as professionals, about the nature of our professionalism, and about the way we organise ourselves as a profession.

From a number of different speakers at Peebles I got the same message about our role as professionals: start with our customers (consumers, users, communities, etc) and listen to their needs; then deploy our competencies (skills, attributes, behaviours, experience, judgement, etc) to meet those needs; and be sure to evidence and articulate the consequences (effect, impact, outcomes, etc) of our actions (inputs, interventions, mediations, etc). It seems to me well worth pursuing a model for our professional role based on customers, competencies, and consequences.

That word "competency" is fundamental to the nature of our professionalism - and therefore to the core business of CILIP as our professional body and to the core contribution we make as LIS professionals in society. On Branch and Group Day at the conference as hundreds of colleagues were bussed in from all over Scotland to fill the Peebles Hotel Hydro with excited chatter (networking) and lively sessions and workshops (learning) I thought: this is the essence of what we do through our engagement (as staff or as volunteer activists) with CILIP - we help people develop the professionalism (their competencies, current awareness, continuing professional development) which shapes their contribution to their employers and to society. It seems to me well worth pursuing a model for our professionalism based on competencies, currency, and CPD.

Throughout the conference - in the sessions, in the bar, and explicitly in the Presidential Address from the impressive CILIPS President Alan Hasson - our Scottish colleagues demonstrated the sense of Scotland as a country in its own right, with its own identity, culture, achievements, and sense of nationhood. Those of us who spend most of our time in England need to hear (and heed) the clear message from across the border: Scotland is different, just as Wales and Northern Ireland (and England) are different. Future organisational structures for UK-wide bodies in all walks of life will have to recognise this reality of four distinct and different nations within a UK framework - the only way to retain the power of the union is to embrace the reality of a federation. Within LIS across the four nations of the UK we share professional values and a framework of professional regulation and the development of professional practice - but we inhabit different national contexts, and the sooner we accept federalism as the only way forward for unionism then the sooner we can speak with a stronger voice, no longer diminished by internal division and bickering.

So then: federalism as the basis for our future organisational framework; competency, currency and CPD as the basis of our future professional framework; linked with attention to customers and consequences as the framework through which to express the contribution we make in society. Three flowers from Scotland which I'll be musing on in the coming weeks. My thanks to everyone at the Peebles conference - you sent me home to think again...