CDEG bursary recipient

Emily Jacques, CILIP Conference 22

Outside of the Exhibition Centre, Liverpool is bustling, the day looks set to be another sunny one, the seagulls are having choir practice and there’s an early morning rush hour bustle. There are a few events happening at the centre today. As I walk down the promenade, I try to take a guess at who else is headed to the CILIP Conference. It is quite easy to guess, I think, because not only have I always felt librarians and library staff give off an air of comfort, safety and magic (a bit like the books they house), they are also devastatingly well dressed. I could write a whole blog alone on the fashion at the CILIP conference. I am at the conference due to receiving a bursary place from CDEG. I am over the moon to be here but I am also slightly overwhelmed. I’ve taken the best part of a year out due to ill health and I haven’t really been…well…anywhere for quite some time.

Inside the centre we are directed to the hall that will be hosting the welcoming and opening keynote speech. The lights are dimmed, there’s music playing, and honestly it is no exaggeration to say Nick Poole (CILIP CEO) takes to the stage a bit like a rock star! He bounds up with the enthusiasm so many of us will recognise, regardless of our profession. The enthusiasm that says “We are here, in person, for the first time in a long time, it is SO good to see your faces in real life”. The positivity and excitement in the room is palpable, I think we are all feeling the same, that it is good to be meeting in person again (meeting with safety and covid protocol measures in mind at all times, but meeting nonetheless). Nick doesn’t shy away from politics, and I find a comfort in my profession being steered by someone who is so stringent in their desire to present the important role of the information profession in the face of a post-truth world. I feel safe here, I have always felt safe in library spaces. I hope many more people find solace in what libraries can offer for many years to come.

The conference hits the ground running. We start with a poem about the impact of libraries written by Vanessa Kisuule. The poem was commissioned by CILIP for the conference. This is such an important message; that the professional body uses its funding to work in collaboration with the arts in this way, an important relationship that I feel all libraries should uphold, it is great to see CILIP are showing the importance of investment in the arts. The poem leaves us all silenced, so many of us recognising the profound impact libraries have, the impact a safe community space can have on people, the power of stories to transport, and information to empower.

My entire library experience is public and prison libraries. It is easy to forget that I share a profession with a wealth of knowledge management, health, business, academic, etc. librarians.

I am reminded starkly of the work they do when the next speaker is a video message from Chris Whitty thanking the teams of librarians across the country who worked on the covid effort. The reminder that correct and well organised information does in fact save lives. That the skill of collating, organising and translating key data is a skill we simply cannot survive without.

The first keynote speaker is Sayf Al Ashqar, Director of the Central Library at Mosul University. He is presenting a speech on the ISIS attack on Mosul. That one of the first things ISIS did when they took Mosul under siege was to loot the library and burn it to the ground. Control information and knowledge and you can control the people. Sayf shared his inspiring and deeply personal story of rebuilding the library with a team of people dedicated to what libraries can offer and what they represent. There was a round of applause at the point in his speech when he announced the date the library re-opened and there was a standing ovation when he finished his keynote. What an incredibly inspiring person. I feel very privileged to have heard him speak.

Wow! What an opener to the conference!

The day continued in the same tone, if I shared all I had taken away from the day, all the notes I’d scribbled, all the ideas I had, we would be here a very long time. I shuffled back to my hotel and don’t even remember getting ready for bed before my alarm went off signalling day 2 of the conference.

I notice I am one of the first at the conference centre. Rumour has it most librarians had been dancing in Liverpool museum’s foyer until the small hours of the morning, which may explain the relaxed start to the day. However, when the seats start to fill there is a buzz in the air once again and across the duration of the day my notebook (and heart) are full to the brim again.

There’s so much I want to share with you about the inspirational lightning talks that introduced me to storytelling sock puppets with varying pronouns, sustainable library buildings, Makaton use in libraries. So many great ideas all designed to make libraries more inclusive and sustainable. I want to talk to you about the FLA Map (Did you know there’s a Library Map of the world?! Check it out librarymap.ifla.org/stories). I want to share how they launched the Green Manifesto for libraries, how I spent an hour in a fishbowl, that I went to the LGBTQIA lunch meet up and it was so welcoming and wonderful. How I am pretty convinced that libraries are going to be in the safest of hands long after I retire, and how I have been so fortunate to walk in the footsteps of some incredible, ground-breaking librarians who have come before me and paved the way for innovation. I also want to talk about how they limited paper at the event and all the food was vegetarian, how they practiced what they preached about inclusivity and sustainability. How I was so inspired at the Apprenticeship 101 talk that I scribbled notes all through the break about how best we could implement this in a prison library setting…there’s so much, and really this blog could be so unwieldy.

So, I will leave you with some thoughts/tips taken from Krystal Vittles's (Deputy CEO of Suffolk Libraries) keynote, which was astounding.

“We need to start sharp elbowing our way into conversations.”
“Help others onto the ladder.”
“There is no feminism without intersectional feminism.” 
“I have a profession. I am a professional. I show professionalism.” 
“Professionalism is more than a qualification. It is your passion and creativity and commitment.” 

Thank you so much to CILIP and CDEG for this wonderful opportunity. I may not have had space to fit all my learning into this blog but many librarians attended and they all scribbled notes too, so chances are the learning, ideas and passion will be popping up in some form or another in a library near you sometime soon.

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Connect with Emily on Twitter @minniebirch