ANALibrarYSE

Ian and Jacqui Phillips are I & J Management Services (www.ijman.com.au), a small consulting company run out of Melbourne that now specialises in consulting to public libraries. We used to work in school and vocational education, finance, community development, telecommunications, etc. but now we just do libraries. Because we think public libraries are a powerful force for improving individual and community outcomes. Strategic plans, library reviews, community surveys, benchmarking analysis - that’s what we do, all across Australia.

ANALibrarYSE started out in 2020 during COVID lockdowns as Ian’s musings on what’s happening (numbers-wise) in public libraries. Being a keen reader and statistician I would have liked to call this series Letters and Numbers, but that name has been taken*, so I opted for ANALibrarYSE. It’s a portmanteau** which seamlessly combines the two things that are central to my musings – analysis of public libraries. That is, what makes them tick, what makes them strong, what makes them vulnerable and what makes them so important to the communities they serve. I think about this stuff a lot, so I thought I’d share my ideas as part of the conversation about one of our most well-loved, well-known and misunderstood civic and cultural institutions. Please read along. And as you do I hope you find something interesting, something that makes you think. Maybe you’ll find something that makes you scream at the screen. And if you do, feel free to discuss – I’m happy to learn. I just don’t want to put you to sleep.

In 2025 ANALibrarYSE expanded to include snippets of information that Jacqui has found through her membership of 8 or 9 libraries and being a social media follower of many many more. Jacqui’s Friday Five is a weekly run-down of interesting things she has found that showcase the fantastic work that libraries do in their communities. Follow her links and you can find out more.

We have also added some content from the self-directed research projects we do from time to time, drawing on our work with public libraries and library associations. There are articles, tools and templates for people who work in libraries or just want to know more about these essential civic institutions.

* If by chance you stumble across the SBS quiz show of this name, in Season 5 Episode 81 I am the nerd who finds a 9-letter word in CSRTAUEON.

** Now there’s a word – a term first used by Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass.

Ian Phillips

Hi. My name is Ian Phillips and I have no qualifications to talk about public libraries. I am not even a library member.

And yet libraries and library associations around Australia employ me to advise them on the essential components of a 21st century library, and the course they should chart to deliver maximum value to their unique communities. Which means I get paid to hang out in libraries – to watch, to think and to discuss. How does that happen?

First, I read a lot as a kid. My Mum was a school librarian and her father was a great lover of books. Grandad’s house had thousands of books in it, covering every topic imaginable and all carefully catalogued. And when he ran out of shelf space he built an annex and filled it with more books. He was destined to write a book, and Harpoons to Harvest is an extraordinarily well-referenced narrative of the Mills brothers – whalers and early pioneers of Port Fairy and the surrounding district. Anyway, up until Grade 3 my teachers sent me out of the classroom during literacy blocks because I was a smarty-pants. I spent my time in the school library devouring anything with words. To date, my contribution to the Library of Babel includes an adolescent novella, occasional poems and a self-published 27 chapter East African travelogue from 1990.*

Second, I have an Honours degree in Science, with qualifications in Statistics and Mathematics. And an MBA, which taught me a little about a lot of things related to not much. All of the psychological tests say I am an analyst – off the chart in logical reasoning, completely useless at most other things.

Third, my first 12 years in gainful employment covered three distinct phases. I worked for the ABS as a statistician. Then I worked in the Victorian government in stats, strategic planning, policy, information systems and as Executive Officer to an industrial secretariat. Then I worked in one of the big consulting firms as a middle level flunkey accumulating billable hours on jobs I don’t remember.

So then I set up my own consulting firm – which started out as just me, grew to five people, and is now down to two (me and the wonderful J of I & J Management Services). Most of our early evaluation work was in education – schools and TAFE. We had projects in the ICT sector, in sport and recreation, OHS, environmental programs and even the fashion industry. Within three years of starting out I won my first job evaluating a program for the State Library of Victoria. A couple of years later Carol Oxley and I worked with the Victorian library sector on Libraries Building Communities, and then an internet and PC usage study, collecting annual statistics for Public Libraries Victoria, facilitating strategic planning retreats and in 2016 updating Guidelines, Standards and Outcome Measures for Australian Public Libraries for APLA/ALIA.

Twenty years later we now spend most of our working life in public libraries. Conducting service reviews, developing strategic plans, analysing statistics and assessing performance, running library surveys, doing special research projects. Our clients include the National Library in Canberra and NSLA, a couple of State/Territory Libraries, public library associations, and of course library services and Councils from Broome to Broadbeach and Brunswick.

I spend a lot of time in libraries. I see what’s great, I see what’s good, and sometimes I see some pretty ordinary practices. But I love public libraries. I love them for what they do. I love them for what they say about a community. And most importantly, I love them for the difference they make in people’s lives. So, if any of my observations make a library better for its community – then it’s a good day.

* https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1325565?lookfor=Leave%20Only%20Footprints&offset=1&max=6

Jacqui Phillips

Hello all … I am the J in I & J Management Services, the partner in crime alongside Ian.

I am a mixed bag of qualifications having a Bachelor of Science majoring in Microbiology and Biochemistry and a Graduate Diploma in Education (plus a couple of others). I worked as a secondary teacher in Kyneton for 8 years teaching mathematics, science and biology but left all of that behind when I paused to be at home with our children.

I intended on going back to teaching at some point but when Ian began I & J Management Services things took a little shift. I began working for Ian when he would ask me to do some data entry, data analysis or research while the “kids” were asleep. This soon morphed into me working more and more and the return to teaching drifted into the distance.

My first projects with I & J centred primarily around education … my area of expertise. I worked on evaluations of school-based projects for the Victorian Department of Education (and all of its naming iterations) as well as with the Catholic Education Office. It was my bread and butter and I loved it. I was proud to be helping teachers be the best they could.

The shift to libraries happened gradually but has filled me with joy. I am an avid reader and have been a library member since I was a child when my mother would take us to the library (the beautiful old Ballarat Library in Camp St) on a Friday afternoon after school when we would return our books and borrow a new collection for the week to come. My parents were not readers but were very supportive of the idea of us being exposed to stories and information. I remember my mum encouraging us with our reading and to expand our reading beyond the norms.

In 1981 my parents took my sister and I out of school for 6 months and we made the lap around Australia. We had a fruit box in the boot of the car filled with books and at each major town my father would seek out the local second-hand book exchange and we would head on in to swap our books over. It was on this journey that I discovered science fiction, biographies and books on science.

I am now a card holding library member at more than 8 different library services across Australia and am also a massive cheerleader for their use. I borrow books and visit my local library branch on a regular basis. Audiobooks are my best friend, I love eBooks, I also love holding a book in my hand.