I'm delighted to re-publish Louise Ashton's report  from her attendance at the CILIP Conference 2018 in Brighton in July. Louise successfully applied for a GIG Bursary to attend the conference. Keep your eyes peeled for information about future bursaries from the Government Information Group.

CILIP Conference 2018

I had wanted to attend the CILIP conference because I was looking for an experience that would provide a comprehensive overview of the whole profession as it currently stands.  In my day job I have become increasingly specialised and as a Chartership mentor I feel it is particularly important to keep abreast of LIS developments.  So I was looking for breadth and breadth was certainly delivered!  The major speeches ranged from the personal and uplifting (e.g. Orkney Children’s Librarian Sally Walker describing the innovative range of activities she has developed to better engage with her communities – side note: I am still trying to work out how I can shoehorn teddy bear sleep-overs in to the copyright department at the British Library!); to invigorating calls to arms for public library activism and standing up to austerity measures (e.g. EveryLibrary who outlined the seriously focused library campaigning underway in the US and Samira Ahmed who gave an alarming account of the impact and erosion of cultural heritage collections due to austerity); and finally to the practical and useful (e.g. Helen Dodd who spoke about her management of GDPR at Cancer Research UK and their decision to view GDPR as an opportunity to be exploited rather than a hurdle to be overcome.

One of the things that really struck me was the overwhelming evidence of the long-arm of libraries; this was demonstrated time and again in nearly all the sessions I attended.  This point was most clearly spelled out by Penny Young from the House of Commons Library who demonstrated that a high-quality library service and the ability to search for and evaluate information is integral to the House of Commons work…and therefore democracy.  I found Nick Barratt’s (Senate House Library) heartfelt talk on embedding academic research into local communities captivating; he discussed compelling research concerning re-offender rates which demonstrates how lives can be transformed by proximity to and connecting with library collections.  Nick also warned us not to forget that library spaces can often be as important as the collections; given much of my own work concerns the digitisation of library collections this has given me much food for thought.

However, the most eye-opening session for me came from Suzanna Joy who spoke about the work of UK Blue Shield.  The UK Blue Shield is an NGO who promote cultural property protection, working in partnership with the armed forces to protect cultural heritage collections in times of conflict/natural disaster.  I was particularly impressed to learn that work is also being undertaken to protect against the possibility of cyber warfare being used for the destruction of digitised heritage documents.

I would like to thank the GIG Bursary Panel for awarding me a CILIP funded bursary to attend the conference and I strongly encourage other GIG members to apply in the future.  The beauty of the conference is indeed its breadth and two weeks on I am still reflecting and drawing on my experiences.  The conference also provided the opportunity to connect with the wider LIS profession and has really helped me to see where my role, my work, and my institution fit into the bigger picture. 

Louise Ashton
British Library