The pack provides the foundation for an Inspire handbook for registered libraries and also includes staff training and support material including two PowerPoint presentations.

All these pages and the power point presentations can be tailored to reflect local circumstances and local needs. There are also some examples of marketing materials which may be of interest.

http://www.inspire.gov.uk/documentation.php

A brief update on progress of INSPIRE:

Over 100 library authorities and other organisations have registered with Inspire in 2005. This is in addition to those which joined during 2004 such as the public and academic libraries in the West Midlands.

The awareness raising leaflet for library staff is proving very popular. preview it at the top of this web page: http://www.inspire.gov.uk/documentation.php ).

The Inspire Information Pack, which is a briefing pack for all libraries registering with Inspire including materials for staff development is now available on the Inspire website at: http://www.inspire.gov.uk/documentation.php

It has been created with open documents (Word and PowerPoint) so that each region, sub-region or individual library can tailor the pages to suit their own needs. It can be downloaded as a complete file or on a page by page basis to allow for the updates it will have.

Cornucopia, the database which will hold all the information on libraries joining Inspire, has had a major overhaul and is now ready for Inspire data to be added. We will be seeking to arrange training sessions for library staff early in 2006 wherever there are enough libraries ready to start adding information about their subject strengths and collections.

Importantly for the West Midlands, Wolverhampton University has funded a project to upload data from all the libraries within the City of Wolverhampton itself and all the HE Libraries in the West Midlands onto Cornucopia. This work is largely complete and the project officer, Peter Kargbo, will write a brief report through which he will share the benefits of his experience in doing this work. This will be useful to other libraries in the West Midlands and in the rest of the country.

Finally, our new public facing website is under construction and is looking very promising.