At the beginning of July I spent a couple of days in
Liverpool at CILIP Conference 2015, having been lucky enough to win a bursary
from the ARLG London & South East region. I was keen to attend the
conference, having worked in the area of Special Collections for well over ten
years, so my conference attendance had tended to be restricted to those events
that were closely connected to my specialist area.
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| Concert Hall, where the keynotes took place |
Keynotes
Perhaps what I most enjoyed about the conference were the
keynote speakers. They included R. David Lankes, Erwin James, Cory Doctorow and
Shami Chakrabarti. At previous conferences I’ve attended the keynotes have all
been very connected to the specialist conference theme, and invariably given by
someone from the library or archive world, so I had been interested to see in
advance that this wasn’t so much the case with CILIP conference keynotes. It
was great to see how engaged all the speakers were with the world of libraries
and information, and brought an interesting perspective from the outside.
Indeed, Erwin James’ account of the difference a prison library had made to his
life after his conviction, what it had meant to his rehabilitation and then to
his release had me almost in tears. R. David Lankes on ‘World domination
through librarianship’ (you can’t beat a title like that!) was more
controversial from a Special Collections perspective, as he talked about how
collections are the demon, and how you may not have one to be a librarian, as
often now they are leased or rented. But I could agree with him that librarians
are educators, even if I am educating users about our special collections!
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| Erwin James |
The sessions I attended were mostly in the ‘demonstrating
value’ stream, and I found many of the workshops particularly useful. I found
that it was helpful to have to think of real life examples, and we were
encouraged to share our ideas and processes with someone sitting near us, which
also helped break the ice. I enjoyed the practical elements of these workshops,
which provided a nice contrast to the keynotes. I also took some time out from
‘demonstrating value’ to go to the ‘digital futures’ stream and a session on
MOOCs and small-scale CPD for library and information professionals. I found
this interesting, having participated in one MOOC so far, and working towards my
second year of revalidation, always being on the lookout for different ways to
do CPD.
As I very rarely buy anything other than preservation
supplies, I hadn’t been expecting to get much out of the exhibition, but,
spurred on by a sheet to fill in with a sticker from each exhibitor, and the
possibility of winning an iPad if this was completed, I spent some time on both
days visiting each stand. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed
meeting all the exhibitors and finding out about their products. Most of them
also appeared to be interested to meet me, and I think it was a good way of
finding out about new products and services, which I can always tell colleagues
about, even if they aren’t so relevant to my own role.
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| Rather amazing surroundings for the exhibition |
Networking
Taking part in networking between sessions was one of my
main reasons for wanting to attend the conference. It proved to be very
different to networking at the smaller conference I have been used to
attending, as with 600 people there and no delegate list in advance, it was
hard to work out who I would like to meet with once there. I found that manning
the ARLG stall during one of the breaks helped, as people then came up to talk
to me and found out about ARLG, and I did manage to arrange to meet up with a
few people by using social media in advance of the conference. I think this was
something of a missed opportunity though, as with a delegate list in advance
and people’s Twitter details, for instance, it would have been a lot easier to
arrange a meet up. It was possible to register as an event attendee on the conference app in advance, which I did, but very few people did this.
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| ARLG stand |
What now?
So, what next? The conference was an intense couple of days,
but I came away feeling like I’d got a better grasp of the ‘bigger picture’ in
librarianship, as well as picking up some useful tips for demonstrating value.
I’m hoping I’ll be able to put some of those into practice in my job over the
next few months. I’ve provided feedback to CILIP on ways in which I think the
conference was beneficial, as well as how it could be improved – particularly
the venue, which really wasn’t very accessible with huge numbers of steps
everywhere, but there were also issues with timekeeping and sessions running
over. My thanks go to the ARLG London & South East for sponsoring my place.
The speakers' presentations are now available on the conference website.
