Skip to main content

Reflections on CILIP Conference 2023

Librarianship student Lottie shares her thoughts about this year's CILIP conference.

This year I was lucky enough to receive an iSchool bursary to attend the 2023 CILIP conference in Birmingham. The annual CILIP conference is the UK’s leading event for library and information professionals and felt like a good first conference for a new professional to visit given the breadth of topics explored and job diversity of the delegates attending. I was also curious about the theme of this year’s event which centred around issues of leadership, emerging talent and wellbeing.

Day one conference timetable and my badge!

This was my first conference post-pandemic and my first event in the library and information professional sphere. I was apprehensive about attending as an MA student but once I arrived and began chatting to fellow delegates, any anxiety I had about my professional status was quickly dissipated. In fact, I would go as far as to say that these informal connections that were forged in the exhibition hall, over lunch or while refilling my coffee cup were the most valuable part of the conference. The way the event was planned meant that there was plenty of time between talks to reflect with others on what we had just heard, swap our thoughts about emerging themes and even share predictions on the upcoming Women’s World Cup! I found this to be hugely beneficial in boosting my confidence and made me realise just how much I had missed this type of human connection in the years since March 2020. It is something to seriously consider in an increasingly hybrid world of work and I myself will definitely look to ensure I can visit my future workplace in person at least a few days a week.

iSchool alumnus Sam Wiggins talking attracting, retaining and developing talent

Of the talks themselves, I tried to go to a range of topics relevant to my recent months of study and future areas of interest. These included keynotes about leadership innovation and the future of academic libraries, as well as sessions on emerging library leaders, EDI and green libraries. It was also great to recognise some of the speakers as people who had spoken so passionately about these issues as part of the Academic and Workplace Libraries module such as Masud Khokhar, Nick Woolley and Sheffield iSchool alumnus Sam Wiggins. I came away from sessions full of inspiration and new ideas and look forward to taking my new found confidence as an aspiring librarian into the world of work. You can find all the conference presentations here.

Dissertation-relevant themes and supervisor namecheck!


Masud Khokhar explaining how academic libraries must own the transition from information to imagination

Lottie Needham
MA Librarianship
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

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
Post a Comment
Read more

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.
Post a Comment
Read more

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.
Post a Comment
Read more