Current student Sophie attended the LILAC Conference - the Information Literacy Conference - in April and shares her thoughts below!
LILAC conference is THE event for the Information Literacy world – and I was lucky to be part of it this year. This was my first big library conference, so I am very grateful for the chance to have been there.
LILAC took place over three days in the law building of the University of Cambridge. I have lived in Cambridge before and I loved delving back into the atmosphere and culture of this city. With its numerous libraries, the city was the perfect setting for LILAC.
I have learned so much and met so many interesting people over the three days, I could write a whole book about it! I will try and focus on three main topics: Accessible referencing styles, decolonisation, and survival.
Accessible referencing styles
I visited three sessions that focused on referencing styles and accessibility, or both: Maria King’s keynote on accessibility in academic libraries, Fiona Watkins’ presentation of her research on referencing styles as barriers to students with learning disabilities and the panel discussion on referencing styles as an oppressive information practice with Caroline Ball, Tom Peach, Diane Pennington and Ludovica Price.
Maria’s conversation with Darren Flynn opened my eyes to the barriers and drawbacks disabled students are facing, especially from academics, who want them ‘to get on with it’. Similar pushbacks are also faced by staff and often single persons advocate for accessibility in organisations. My takeaway point was that flexibility is key when it comes to accessibility. I have written an assignment on disability last term and having some of my points reflected at the conference was a confidence boost. Additionally, I hope to feed back what I learned to my workplace.
Fiona Watkins presented her research on referencing styles and dyslexia. She made us fill out a reading comprehension test, which felt a bit cruel in the morning after the conference party but it made me understand the student perspective better, a valuable insight in itself. Fiona concluded that numerical referencing styles are more suited for dyslexic students, however, these don’t work well with screen-readers. Thus, again, the conclusion was to be flexible. This presentation made me reflect on my use of referencing styles as a student and how restrictive the systems in place can be.
Another panel discussed problems with referencing more holistically. They noted that there is no mechanism to cite oral and indigenous knowledge in Western referencing styles and that disambiguation of names can be an issue. The speakers clarified that they did not aim to find solutions but wanted to raise problems. I feel inspired to possibly do more research into the use of referencing styles, similar to Fiona Watkins’.
All three sessions made me question the status quo and how I often simply accept, for example, referencing styles. For my future work as a librarian, this insight will be valuable as I will need to reflect critically on what is offered to and expected to be used by students.
Decolonisation
In the first keynote, a panel held by new professionals Naomi Cassidy, Tom Peach, Naomi Smith and Kristabelle Williams colonisation was one of the central topics. Decolonising universities would mean the death of the university as we know it. This statement was an eye-opener for me. The panel went on to discuss how empathy and responsibility are needed when librarians are liaising with researchers. This talk gave me a good understanding of decolonisation and I used the knowledge I gained when talking to Rosey Crow. She presented a zine in the poster session on colonialism and the library. This bite-sized and easy-to-understand information highlighted, vocational awe, which might prevent librarians from viewing their work critically. I found these insights so valuable that I printed a number of the zines and distributed them among colleagues at my workplace. A link to the document can be found here: https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/publications/libraries-are-not-neutral-a-pocket-sized-guide-to-libraries-and-t
Survival
Two more sessions were very interesting for me as a student. I am thinking of writing about the information practices of a selected group of people and therefore, Andy Lacey’s presentation of his dissertation on the information practices of the homeless was incredibly useful for me. Now I know about the pitfalls and benefits of the methods he used and I can’t say I have not been warned about the workload of transcribing and analysing interviews. However, I also know that this method gives the interviewees a voice.
Andy Lacey’s presentation linked well to the session on Information Literacy as a practice for survival. Andrew Whitworth, Pam McKinney, Sheila Webber, Alison Hicks, and Geoff Walton each presented how Information Literacy is (or is not!) essential for different groups of people, such as older people. I learned about the term sousveillance – and I commented on the contribution of my group on the Padlet. What an adrenaline rush!
Other highlights
The actual sessions of a conference are obviously where I learned the most. I, however, also learned by just being there. Here are some brief highlights:
Covering the Twitter account of the Information School for a part of the conference and feeding my profile was a great experience. I am normally a little social media shy and had never used Twitter before. Posting was fun and connected me to many other delegates. I will keep this up!
As previous bursary winners highlighted: librarians can dance! I have never seen a dance floor fill up so quickly! What a joy that lasted until three am!
I met a great bunch of interesting people and as a distance learning student, it was especially good to put names to faces and be at an in-person event.
Thank you to Pam McKinney for organising and guiding and just generally being great as well as Yuki Graviet for being a wonderful partner in this (let’s keep in touch!) and the organisers and volunteers of the conference.
I very much hope to be back at LILAC next year in Leeds to catch up with the friends I made, especially Lisa from London (swim buddy!) and Bastian from Zurich (German-speaking buddy!).
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