Skip to main content

CILIP Conference 2019, by Librarianship student Emily Pulsford

Thanks to the iSchool bursary, in July I attended the CILIP Conference 2019, my first large professional conference. As a full-time MA Librarianship student weighing up career options, I hoped to hear about new ideas and the latest developments in my areas of interest (academic and school librarianship) within the current wider professional context.

The set-up of the conference maximised opportunities to hear about projects and to network with other delegates. All delegates could attend the thought-provoking keynotes on a range of topics, from the ethical development of artificial intelligence to the role of the book in society, and designing public library spaces, while a varied programme of parallel break-out seminars and workshops ran throughout the two days of the conference. More than once it was difficult to decide which session to attend as they all sounded so interesting. Helping on the iSchool stand during breaks also meant chatting to professionals interested in doing a Masters at Sheffield, as well as iSchool alumni who dropped by to say hello. The evening social was also was a great opportunity to network in a more informal setting, and to find out what Library Twitter’s stars are like in real life.


A major theme running through the conference was diversity and inclusion, a pressing topic considering librarianship as a profession is very much majority white and therefore not reflective of wider society or the communities that libraries serve. Issues around bias and prejudice came up in Kriti Sharma’s keynote about AI, as work needs to be done to stop existing biases being adopted by AI or machine learning programmes working with biased training data. The effects of everyday bias and microaggressions were forefronted in a candid diversity panel where LIS professionals shared their lived experiences of being marginalised in work and life.

Highlights for me from the perspective of my future career were sessions on Media and information literacy, and the Diversity, books and reading panel chaired by Reading Development and Children’s Book Consultant, Jake Hope. In the latter, Dr Melanie Bold from UCL opened with an overview of her research into BAME representation in children’s literature between 2007 and 2017, highlighting that fewer than 2% of children’s book creators (authors and illustrators) published in that time were British people of colour. She emphasised that this situation can create a vicious circle where underrepresentation, as well as other issues such as lack of financial security for authors, deters others from becoming creators, entrenching the problem. To counteract this, she described positive steps that can be taken, such as author visits to school, which have been shown to improve literacy outcomes and provide inspiration, and the increasing popularity of alternative routes into publishing such as self-publishing.

Building on this introduction, panellists from Speaking Volumes and BookTrust talked about schemes they have been involved in to increase access to BAME children’s writing and change the shape of publishing to enable more creators to be published and reach their audience. Then the audience was treated to a reading by author Sita Bramachari from some of her work on the theme of storytelling. Author Onjali Q Rauf was also a great advert for how engaging authors can be and why author visits can be powerful for schoolchildren. After the session, her book about a refugee joining a new school called The Boy at the Back of the Class was swiftly moved up my to-be-read pile. Audience members also came away with a publication summarising the research highlighted during the talk and a useful list of BAME authors and illustrators, which may be of practical use in the future if developing a library collection for young people as part of my career.

Overall, the conference provided a great combination of practical takeaways, inspiring case studies and a sense of belonging to the wider profession, all of which I will carry with me when I graduate and start my first professional librarian post (all being well). Once again, I am grateful for the opportunity to make the most of the experience!

Emily Pulsford
MA Librarianship student

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Raspberry Pi Weather Project now live

A project to create a raspberry pi weather station is currently live in the Information School.  The Sheffield Pi weather station has been created by Romilly Close, undergraduate Aerospace Engineering student at the University of Sheffield.  The project was funded by the Sheffield Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) scheme and is being supervised by Dr Jo Bates, Paula Goodale and Fred Sonnenwald from the Information School. Information about the Sheffield Pi station and how to create your own can be found on the project website .  You can also see live data from the Sheffield Pi station on Plot.ly , and further information can also be found on the Met Office Weather Observations Website .    This work compliments the School’s existing project entitled ‘The Secret Life of a Weather Datum’ which explores socio-cultural influences on weather data.  This project is funded under the AHRC’s Digital Transformations Big Data call.  It aims to pilot a new approach to im

Our Chemoinformatics Group wins Jason Farradane Award

The Information School's Chemoinformatics Research Group has been awarded the 2012 UKeiG Jason Farradane Award , in recognition of its outstanding 40 year contribution to the information field. The prize is awarded to the three current members of the group,  Professor Val Gillet , Dr John Holliday and Professor Peter Willett . The judges recognised the Group's status as one of the world's leading centres of chemoinformatics research, a major contributor to the field of information science, and an exemplar in raising the profile of the information profession. The School has a long association with the Farradane prize. Its second recipient was long time member of staff Professor Mike Lynch in 1980.

Professor Mike Thelwall gives inaugural lecture

Professor of Data Science Mike Thelwall recently gave his inaugural lecture at the University of Sheffield, entitled  How helpful are AI and bibliometrics for assessing the quality of academic research? The lecture, delivered in the University's Diamond building, was introduced by Head of the Information School Professor Briony Birdi. It covered Mike's research into whether Artificial Intelligence can inform - or replace - expert peer review in the journal article publication process and what this could look like, as well as to what extent bibliometrics and citation statistics can play a role in assessing the quality of a piece of research. Mike also discussed whether tools like ChatGPT can accurately detect research quality. The inaugural lecture was well attended by colleagues from around the University.