Since 2004 the Journal of Liberal History has been the guardian of what, although I say it myself, is now becoming a uniquely interesting party archive – a set of CDs and audio-cassette tapes of in-depth interviews I have conducted with leading Liberal Democrats of the last decade. The collection spans the years 2002-2011 and each interview is now available for listening from the Journal Archive.

The collection includes the very last media interview given by Roy Jenkins, the very first UK interview given by Paddy Ashdown after his return from four years in Bosnia, interviews with the Federal Party Presidents and Welsh and Scottish leaders and London Mayoral candidates of the past ten years and, most recently, interviews with Nick Clegg and all the Liberal Democrat Secretaries or Ministers of State in the Coalition Government. I have also retained separately from this Archive taped interviews with all the new Liberal Democrat MPs of the 2005 and 2010 intakes.

In the summer of 2002 when, for my own interest, I interviewed former Liberal leadership contender John Pardoe, I never thought that this would become the first in a nine-year series of similar talks with other significant Liberal Democrats. Before 2002 the party had had no spoken record of how its leading members viewed their political past, their earlier party experiences, the more dramatic events that shaped their political lives or their current views of the party and its prospects.

All my write-ups of these interviews have subsequently been published in the Journal or Liberal Democrat News but inevitably they are in abbreviated form. Only the Journal Archive has the full, unexpurgated, recorded versions.

The list features all the most familiar Liberal Democrat names in today’s party, but there is also an interview with one significant name from the past, Ludovic Kennedy, and a 2006 interview with a beleaguered Russian Liberal, Grigory Yavlinsky, leader of Yablokov, the Russian Democratic Party., who addressed the Lib Dem Conference of 2006.

Now many of the original earlier recordings have been transferred from tape to CD and the Achive has been substantially expanded, exclusively on CD, to include more interviews conducted between 2006 and 2011. Readers of the Journal or any others interested can, for example, now listen on CD to any or all of the recordings of my 2011 interviews with a the Liberal Democrat Secretaries and Ministers of State in the Coalition or my three full length interviews with Nick Clegg in 2009, 2010 and 2011.

For a unique insight into the thoughts and motivations of all those above, enthusiasts for Liberal/Liberal Democrat History may now borrow these CDs and tapes from the Journal, to copy and listen to at home (subject to certain conditions) for a token fee of £3 per CD or £2 per tape. If you are interested, ask Mark Pack for a copy of the full interview list, summary content details, conditions of use and application form.

If you are one of those but aren’t yet being included, you can email .

* Mark Pack is Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and writes a monthly newsletter about the Liberal Democrats.

An incongruous pair, you may think. But one thing will bring them together in 2012: social media.

Jonathan Ross, back in January 2009, played a major role in taking Twitter from the geeky niche into the mainstream tool it is now – not only used by many but popping up every week in one form or another in the mass media outlets. It was Jonathan Ross’s comeback show, with Twitter-fan Stephen Fry as a guest, which triggered a flood of extra interest and members. In fact, all through that period of sharp growth it was the adoption of the tool by non-technical celebrities which attracted a much bigger, and different, audience to the social networking tool.

Which is where Usain Bolt comes in. His speed and style makes him a sporting figure who appeals well beyond the die-hard fans of sprinting. His stage this summer will be the Olympics, a global stage that appeals well beyond even general sporting fans. And this will be the first Olympics in which social media plays a dominant role in the coverage and the buzz between spectators, fans and participants.

Whether it is the Tour de France or the Super Bowl, other recent high profile sporting events have shown what a difference social media can make. Except they are minnows compared to the reach of the Olympics.

Which means just as Jonathan Ross talking Twitter on a national TV show brought in a whole range of new and different people to that social media network, Usain Bolt and colleagues this summer will bring social media to a whole new and different audience too.

Whatever you use of social media at the moment, expect your actual or potential audiences to be much bigger and more diverse by the end of the Olympics.

It is short, clear and designed around getting people to take simple, quick but effective actions. It even adds a little bit of glitter but promising a “sneak preview”.

Good work Tim and co.

Here’s the email:

Subject: Sneak Peak

It is a good short film, though it is a bit of a missed opportunity not to follow-up on the Simon Hughes email, such as by having the closing caption urging people to go sign the petition.

For more about what the Liberal Democrats are achieving in government, see my daily posting over on Facebook.

I’ve been scratching my head trying to work out what Derek Draper is up to with the new LabourList site – and I think the answer lies with daytime TV.

I start from the view that (a) it is clearly a major part of Labour’s online strategy, and therefore of interest to anyone interested in politics and the internet, (b) some of the other people involved are people whose skills I rate, even if their political views are a little misguided (!), and (c) Derek Draper has plenty experience of politics and so, all in all, one should have an open mind about whether there’s a sensible strategy behind it all.

That open mind has taken a bit of a battering since Derek Draper has launched a sort of anti-charm offensive, berating other political bloggers in numerous comments around the place – and in terms which include other Labour Party bloggers in his criticisms.

Take, for example, this outing on Dizzy Think’s website:

Boy, the British blogosphere! What an introduction I have had. Never have I experienced such a self-important, self-regarding, self-obsessed group in my life. No wonder the British Blogosphere is such a tiny, tiny, tiny ghetto. Don’t any of you realise that I don’t care what you think? Why would I? Why should I?

“British blogosphere”? Ah, that’d be a bunch of Labour bloggers too who he is describing as “self-important, self-regarding, self-obsessed”. A curious approach to internet outreach, which I think I won’t be copying…

Derek Draper has also coined the phrase that he is building a site aimed at the 60 million people, not 60 bloggers. It’s a neat turn of phrase and I think it reveals perhaps a method to his apparent madness (winding up other people all over the place just after beta launch), but also a fundamental flaw that could sink the whole project.

The method? It reminds me of the Tony Blair media strategy, c.2005: fed up with political journalists, he and his team deliberately tried to side-step them and reach out to the public without having to go through the filter of political hacks and lobby correspondents. The answer? A media drive that saw Tony Blair more frequently interviewed on daytime TV than on heavy political shows.

So perhaps there is a deliberate attempt here to imitate that strategy, and by-pass political bloggers in a similar way. Which brings us to the flaw.

There are plenty of successful or large audience political blogs around the world, but I struggle to think of any which are based on this approach. The ones commonly quoted – such as ConservativeHome, DailyKos, MyDD, Guido Fawkes – all very much interact with at least parts of the wider blogging community rather than trying to cut themselves off from it. There is also a strain of blogs which do tend to be fairly isolated, usually hanging off the back of a traditional media outlet. But – despite the advantage of this media tie-up – they frequently have audiences smaller than those in the first group. And neither group reach audiences of the sort of mass Derek Draper is talking about.

So whilst there may be a method to this strategy of disdaining even Labour bloggers, it is a very tough call to try to achieve something that no-one has managed before. Especially when, as to be fair Derek Draper says himself, he’s rather new and inexperienced when it comes to all this blogging stuff.

That doesn’t exactly sound like a recipe for success. Far more likely is that somewhere along the line this strategy of antagonising other bloggers will quietly get dropped and instead LabourList will try to plough the conventional blogger outreach strategy that is a tried and tested route to a different sort of success.

Today’s Campaign Corner question: I work in marketing for the day job, where measuring impact and altering our plans as a result is the norm. In the evenings when I become a Lib Dem campaigner however, measuring seems to go out the window and we just do what we always did. Surely we can do better than that?

A very good question! The short answer is ‘yes’. I’ve talked before about some of the online numbers that should be tracked (The two crucial email numbers I didn’t mention), so here are three offline figures:

1. Delivery network coverage: what percentage of your ward is covered by local helpers, excluding your key activists? A good delivery network (complete with good delivery slips) is vital for getting our messages out all year round. A genuinely local network which does not rely on one or two super-activists doing masses on their own is also much more sustainable. It can cope with events such as one of them falling ill, becoming a councillor or getting a new, busy job.
2. Canvass data: the sibling figure is how many residents do you have voting intention data for? It is a particularly useful number to track as people often neglect canvassing relative to other campaigning activities.
3. Money raised: having a good broad base of fundraising makes the local campaign finances much more robust than if you are reliant on just a few key activists stumping up the cash at election time. It also makes for a healthier party with stronger local roots – and there is always something more you can sensibly spend money on.

Got any other tips? Please do share them in the comment thread below.

Want to know more about local campaigning? Campaigning In Your Community by myself and Shaun Roberts should be right up your street. It’s available for only £4 from ALDC and you can read an extract for free here.

Previous Campaign Corners have included:

• How do we get more leaflet deliverers?
• What to do on the doorstep
• How to make Focus leaflets looks better

* Mark Pack is Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and writes a monthly newsletter about the Liberal Democrats.

One touch I really liked was the emphasis on asking people for their email address. In fact everyone I got into conversation with was happy to give me their email address.

A good tip – and one that means the local team get much more long term value from the doorstep conversations as they can then easily, cheaply and quickly get in touch with these people in the future.

Chris Richards and the team are also experimenting with putting QR codes on leaflets.

As they are very easy (and free) to generate, and you can then track how many website visits they generate, it’s a good subject for experimentation, measuring and learning.

And finally… an impressively quick thank you email came over later in the day from Cllr Paul Braithwaite.

Simple, straight forward, often forgotten but greatly appreciated when it’s done.

One person running the board, a team of people shuttling between board and doorsteps and the best informed of us on local issues going up to join the conversation when we found someone in.

Group canvassing like this keeps everyone moving – useful on a cold day! – and makes it much more fun. On other occasions having a candidate, MP etc. be the extra person who joins in conversations on the doorstep works very well too.

Fun local history fact for anyone wondering if they want to go to Dollis Hill to help the campaign: Bletchley Park’s famous code-breaking computer, the Colossus, was built at the Post Office Research Station in Dollis Hill.