A month ago I had the amazing opportunity to attend LILAC 2024 at Leeds Beckett University through a bursary funded by the Information School.
This was my first ever conference, and I was unsure what to expect. I was very excited, quite nervous, and felt a little over my head as a distance learning student who has only been working as a health librarian for just over a year.
But those nerves were definitely unfounded! I had an amazing time and gained so much from listening to and speaking with librarians that boast years of experience across multiple sectors. As expected of a room full of passionate librarians and information researchers, everyone was so friendly and approachable, and any apprehension I had quickly dissolved after the first hour.
LILAC emblematised the power of the librarian community. I felt assured in my quest to become a qualified librarian after experiencing how everyone at the conference was so willing to share their experiences and best practices with each other. Rather than hoarding any knowledge away in competition with one another, the conference was an insight into a community that were excited to learn from one another, eager to support research and advance information literacy. There was a great, buzzing atmosphere, full of ideas and questions, and I spent most of it furiously writing as much as I could down until half of my hand was stained in ink.
So what did I learn? Below are a few of the main takeaways I got from the conference, compiled from bouncing room to room to various presentations and having the privilege of listening to the keynote speakers,
Sooo, will AI replace librarians?
AI was a major theme at LILAC 2024 and quite a few sessions were dedicated to it, including two of the keynotes. The keynotes included an AI Panel discussion with a live Q&A on Day 1, as well as an amazing talk from Maha Bali on Teaching Critical AI Literacy on Day 2. The sessions I attended whose main focus was AI included Emily Dott and Terry Charlton discussion ‘Newcastle University’s Approach to AI Literacy’, as well as Erin Nephin’s ‘Generating understanding: opportunities for institution-wide development of information literacy in an age of AI’ in the context of Leeds Beckett. AI-themed content was also peppered in amongst the other parallel sessions, so questions around AI were confronted head-on throughout the conference.
AI was presented in a variety of ways - from an optimistic view point of improving workflows and levelling the playfield, to a pessimistic skepticism worried about academic integrity, the bias inherent in AI and the potential degradation of creativity. Underpinning these clashing views was an existential question: will AI replace librarians?
Thankfully, what emerged throughout the conference was the start of an answer, cobbled together through the sharing of opinions and learning from multiple people. And - with a sigh of relief - librarians are most certainly needed in a world with AI.
A pragmatic, realistic approach was valued - AI is here to stay, and librarians can help people use the tools ethically, responsibly, and critically. Our skills are desperately needed in this area. Whilst AI might not be a librarian’s area of expertise, approaching information critically and responsibly is, and so the skills in information literacy can translate to teaching AI literacy. Different speakers mentioned the importance of tailoring AI literacy teaching, so it is context-driven and personalised to meet the learners needs. AI is also riddled with biases - from Western bias to ‘botshit’ (that got a giggle from Maha’s audience) - which librarians can help navigate through.
Maha Bali’s talk was a standout session for me and gave way to lots of thought-provoking concepts. Drawing reference from her work with Gupta et al (2024), Maha asked the audience which metaphor they would use to describe AI - and asked us to question how the way we conceived of AI affects our approach towards it. Within the audience, AI was likened to a black hole, a riddle, Pandora's box, a tool, a blank canvas…and many more. It was interesting to explore other people's perspectives, as well as interrogate biases we have. As with most things, it highlighted how AI is not black and white, which contrasted with the optimistic vs. pessimistic spectrum of the Q&A keynote from the day before.
Maha went on to describe her ‘cake’ metaphor for AI, which exemplifies the degree with which it should be used. She explained, just how in some situations it's acceptable to get a ready-made cake, or a cake you make from a box, or bake a cake from fresh, there are different degrees with which we should rely on AI for completing work. For instance, using AI to do the whole piece of work (buy a ready-made cake), to using it to brain-storm ideas (cake in a box). Where Maha drew the line for AI-use is when creating things close to the ‘heart’ - accepting that AI can be a tool for support, but not replacing ‘the heart’ in writing. This echoed concerns from the keynote the day before, where creativity was seen as potentially in danger from AI.
Other conversation points included accessibility of AI, its disruptions to research, how to engage skeptical people, how best to teach AI, and the ethics of AI from sustainability to its blatant Western bias. All of this was fascinating to hear. Whilst I don’t work in academic libraries currently, it was very interesting to hear from both Newcastle University library and Leeds Beckett on how they handled academic integrity. Both university libraries played a leading role in writing AI guidance, and support this guidance by teaching AI alongside their digital literacy training. Being confronted with questions on how far AI should have a role in academic writing and research was so interesting - if we allow spell check, why not AI to proofread work? Where is the line before work becomes plagiarism? Newcastle University Library developed an ‘AI for Students Academic Integrity Checklist’ so they can check whether they are using AI ethically and within reason in their work, which I thought was an interesting and well-designed tool.
Throughout the conference, and particularly in Maha Bali’s keynote, AI tools and guides were highlighted that went ‘beyond ChatGPT’. Here are a few that were listed that I think would be helpful to know as a budding librarian:
- Typeset.io - Has
a range of AI tools, from helping with literature searches, to summarising
articles, and generating citations.
- AI Pedagogy Project -
Resource that teaches about AI - looks at different aspects of critical AI
like generative AI, awareness of inequalities, ethical issues etc. as well
as prompt crafting/engineering.
- Research Rabbit -
Literature searching tool that promises to “reimagine research”.
- Keenious -
Also helps with literature searching - you can upload a document and see
similar research.
- Elicit -
Summarises papers, synthesis research etc.
- Goblin Tools - Can
break down goals into to-do lists, with explanations and time
suggestions.
- Autodraw - Allows you to draw anything, which it will then guess at and complete the drawing. Perfect for creating images for presentations, posters, etc.
Tips and tricks I can bring back to my work as an NHS librarian
One of the most useful sessions for me as a NHS librarian was Kathryn Aylward session ‘Decoding Doctorspeak’. She had identified a gap in information literacy in York Teaching Hospitals where she works, where those in admin/cleric roles felt anxious and unsure about medical terminology that were being used by patients and health professionals. She aimed to help from an information literacy perspective, and provided an incredibly useful session to us which broke down the 2-hour workshops she provides. This outline for the workshop was hugely beneficial, and something I have since brought to my manager with the aim to try and implement something similar at BTHFT (where I work!) in the next year, and is just one of the many tangible results I took away from the conference.
Another useful session ran by Eva Garcia Grau was ‘Accessibility 101’ which went through small ways presentations could be made more accessible. This interactive session was a useful whistle stop tour of a range of accessibility tips, such as: adding subtitles in Powerpoint, being aware of colour contrasts for accessibility, or how to make it easier for someone with a screen reader to engage with a presentation, such as having different titles for every slide.
I finished the conference attending Rebecca Mogg’s talk on ‘Student Driven enhancement of digital learning materials’ which went into how Cardiff University library managed their 350+ digital learning objects, whilst co-creating content with students. This was a great breakdown of the systematic way they ensured quality in their digital materials, and gave me practical examples I could apply in our knowledge management work at BTHFT.
Critical Librarianship
One of the sessions I was most looking forward to was ‘Information Literacy: Social Class perspective’ which felt like an incredibly relevant and under researched area. It was great to hear from the 5 speakers of the session, who talked about their experiences growing up working class and becoming librarians. The padlet they used to gather thoughts in the session is gathered here, and key reflections summarised by one of the speakers, Andrew Preater, is here. The discussions of critical librarianship and confronting classism was really refreshing, and I left feeling inspired to learn more.
Overall, LILAC 2024 was everything I hoped it would be and more. I was so impressed by its organisation, and felt grateful to have the opportunity to be part of it. I learnt a lot (my hand still felt cramped a few days after from all my furious scribblings!) and will be applying all of these learnings at my work and in my studies, so that the benefits of LILAC continue way past the few days I attended.
LILAC stores all of the presentations it has
received here so if you would like to explore
research from this year or any of the years it has run, I would definitely give
them a browse!
Jodie Reeve
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