The past year has seen the CILIP community continue to grow in capability and impact, despite the ongoing challenges and uncertainty of COVID-19. I would like to say a particular thanks to our President, Paul Corney, the CILIP Chair, John Trevor-Allen and our Honorary Treasurer, Alison Wheeler, for their tireless and steadfast support and leadership through the past 12 months.

As at the end of the year, we have 9,126 members, of whom approximately 48% currently hold Professional Registration with CILIP. We are continuing to experience a significant ‘retirement wave’ across the profession, compounded by job losses in most sectors, but it has been very positive to welcome 580 new individual members to our community over the past 12 months.

Growing connections across our community

This year, we have been able to forge deeper and stronger connections across our professional community, working closely with our Devolved Nations partners in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as well as our committed Regional Member Networks and Special Interest Groups.

Alongside our existing Partnership Agreement with CILIP in Scotland (renewed in 2021), we are working closely with the National Committees - CILIP Cymru Wales and CILIP Ireland - to establish a new basis for our work together under Joint Agreements.

I am particularly grateful to the 600 members who dedicate their time as volunteers to supporting our professional community, whether on Committees or in support of our professional services. It has been excellent to see the Professional Registration Support Officers’ (PRSO) network coming together in its new form as a central mechanism for supporting CILIP members with their professional development.

There have been some important developments across our Member Networks during the past year. The re-launch of the Cataloguing and Indexing Group as the new ‘Metadata and Discovery Group’ and of the Multimedia and IT Group as the ‘Digital Technology Group’ both send a clear signal about the increasingly central role of the digital agenda and data across all areas of our member’s work.

The introduction of the new ‘Diversity Networks’ has enabled us to make significant progress in our ambition to be a more inclusive and representative professional community - as set out in our Changing Lives manifesto.

This year, a new Disability Network has been established alongside the existing BAME Network and LGBTQ+ Network and it was a great pleasure to attend their launch event featuring a performance from poet Karl Knights.

I would like to take this opportunity to share a note of thanks and appreciation with everyone that has been involved the CILIP Community during the past year. Your tireless work and dedication to improving the support we can offer to CILIP members is hugely appreciated.

Alongside our own CILIP Community, we have also been able to strengthen our relationships with sector partners and funders. Particular thanks to Arts Council England, whose grant-aid support in excess of £1.24m has allowed CILIP to continue to meet the needs of our members despite the financial impact of the pandemic.

This year, we have worked with a range of leading national and international organisations to advocate on behalf of our members. We have provided a listing of the 30+ organisations with whom CILIP is currently working to improve recognition and create new opportunities for our members.

We have also been able to grow our influence in Westminster and the Devolved Administrations, particularly thanks to the re-launch of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Libraries, Information and Knowledge (APPG LInK) – which has given us a platform to engage with dozens of policymakers during the course of the year.

Building bridges, not walls

A key highlight of our work in 2021 has been the Arts Council-funded Working Internationally programme. This important new initiative has allowed us to strengthen and re-affirm the visibility of the UK information profession in the international community.

New research commissioned for this programme highlighted a tremendous appetite amongst UK librarians for international collaboration and a strong pre-existing culture of international work. Through the Building Bridges grant fund, we were able to support four collaborative projects, despite the obvious challenge of travel restrictions.

Also as part of Working Internationally, working in partnership with the CILIP International Library and Information Group, we have been able to strengthen our relationship with the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA). We are represented by former CILIP President Ayub Khan on the IFLA Governing Board and I have been pleased to forge new connections as a member of the IFLA Management of Library Associations Section, along with several other UK professionals who have joined IFLA Sections.

I am delighted to confirm that the Arts Council has awarded a further grant of £36,000 towards the costs of a feasibility study to build on the first phase of Working Internationally by establishing a ‘standing infrastructure’ to promote collaboration between libraries in the UK and overseas.

Professional standards and recognition

2021 has been a tremendously exciting year for CILIP’s role in professional standards and recognition, under the expert leadership of our new Chief Development Officer, Jo Cornish.

We were pleased to be able to work with our partners at NHS Health Education England to commission a landmark Research Report on The Impact of AI, Machine Learning, Process Automation and Robotics for the Information Professions.

This research, led by Dr Andrew Cox of the University of Sheffield’s iSchool, highlighted the tremendous potential for librarians, information and knowledge professionals to “be the bridge”, enabling their users and communities to benefit from these technological advances while minimising the potential threats to their privacy or security.

We were able to feed these findings through into a comprehensively revised and updated Professional Knowledge and Skills Base – delivering a genuinely future-proof sector skills standard for our profession. I am also pleased to note that for the first time, this resource is also available in Welsh.

Alongside the standard itself, we were delighted to relaunch the PKSB Online Tool - an interactive platform, which any CILIP member can use to evaluate their strengths and to target areas for development. The refreshed version has better accessibility and functionality.

In further positive news, CILIP Pathways, the wholly-owned assessments body established by CILIP in 2021 was formally registered and externally quality assured to deliver end point assessment of the sector’s Level 3 apprenticeship. A truly remarkable achievement and one which establishes a permanent infrastructure for all employers wishing to support apprenticeships in information, knowledge and libraries.

We have been delighted to see the influx of the first Apprentices for the Level 3 Library, Archive and Information Services Apprenticeship standard and to work with employers to support the first cohort of 15 through the assessment process.

If you are thinking about offering Apprenticeships in your library, we can help - find out more on our Apprenticeships page.

We were proud to provide the first successful accreditation of an employer’s internal staff CPD programme. Health Education England used the new Short Course Accreditation service to quality assure the training they provide. A visible investment in workforce development to aid recruitment and retention of great people.

Elsewhere, our new Professional Registration for Knowledge Managers initiative, developed with the support of our Knowledge and Information Management SIG (K&IM) has continued to go from strength to strength, offering professional recognition for a cohort of more than 50 leading practitioners worldwide.

There are two levels of recognition on offer - Chartered Knowledge Manager status and KM Fellow - both backed by CILIP’s considerable experience and certified by the Scottish Qualifications Agency (SQA). See Professional Registration for Knowledge Management for details.

It was also a great pleasure to welcome three new Honorary Fellows of CILIP at our AGM in October. Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Whitty was awarded Fellowship in recognition of his services to evidence in public health. Matt Haig was awarded Fellowship in recognition of his contribution to literacy, mental health and wellbeing. Amy McKay was awarded Fellowship in recognition of her contribution to readership and mental health.

Speaking on the occasion of his award, Professor Whitty said:

“I am very honoured to be awarded this. The role of library and information professionals in the NHS, government and the academic sector during the pandemic has been superb, and a clear demonstration of how information and data should underpin decision making at all levels.”

You can read the full citations and comments from our new Honorary Fellows.

Raising the profile of our profession

I am also pleased to relate that CILIP has made very significant progress during 2021 to raise the profile, visibility and impact of our professional community - both in the UK and internationally.

This year’s Libraries Week campaign, which CILIP leads, focused on the theme of “Taking Action, Changing Lives” and achieved an unprecedented reach of more than 10m people over the course of a single week.

Elsewhere, the Carnegie Greenaway Awards, the annual celebration of the power of librarians to spark the curiosity and imagination of young readers, achieved significant visibility in the press and media despite shifting its focus entirely online.

We have maintained strong contacts with both the national and local press and media as well as the trade press. During 2021, I was pleased to provide a regular column for The Bookseller magazine as well as quotes, briefings and commentary for library and information-related coverage in the national press.

Our colleagues at CILIP in Scotland (CILIPS) were pleased to work with the influential Scotland on Sunday newspaper to launch a high-profile advocacy campaign to secure long-term support for public libraries.

Also in Scotland, CILIPS were pleased to work alongside the Scottish Libraries and Information Council (SLIC) and others to deliver #CILIPSGoGreen - a high-profile celebration of the role of libraries and information services in promoting a more environmentally-responsible and sustainable world.

In Wales and Northern Ireland, the CILIP Cymru Wales and CILIP Ireland Committees coordinated important representations on behalf of the sector to key national policies including the Digital Strategy for Wales.

In all, CILIP led or coordinated responses to nine Government policies during 2021, including important contributions relating to Online Harms and the Office for Student’s consultation on future funding priorities for the Humanities.

A key development towards the end of the year was the launch of the Media and Information Literacy Alliance (MILA) jointly with the Information Literacy Group. MILA has already attracted interest from leading media partners, Government and regulators as well as charity and third sector bodies. During 2022, our ambition is to grow MILA into a sector-wide programme of activities to combat the effects of fake news and misinformation.

Also in 2021, CILIP has been pleased to support the establishment of the Heritage Collections Advisory Group (HCAG) – a cross-industry advisory group which exists to promote the value of specialist knowledge, collections and research. The group has already been able to make constructive contributions to several planned changes to services and will be launching formally early in 2022.

Looking ahead to 2022

I hope that this ‘year in review’ has given you something of a flavour of what CILIP has been able to deliver, working with and on behalf of our members during the past 12 months. I thought it might be useful to share some of the highlights for the year ahead as well!

Early in 2022, we will launch #WeAreCILIP - our new collaborative 5-year Action Plan developed in consultation with our community. This ambitious plan builds on the increased profile, visibility and influence achieved during the past five years to help our profession make the transition from ‘information managers to information leaders’.

As noted in the email from our Chair, John Trevor Allen, to the membership in October, we will begin the process of moving to new premises during 2022. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity both to establish an endowment to secure the long-term future of the organisation and to find new premises which better-support our new collaborative ways of working. Regularly-updated information will be provided for members throughout this process on our CILIP Relocation Plans page.

Sustainability will be a major theme for CILIP over the next five years, and we are pleased to be working with partners such as the Arts Council England, Libraries Connected and the British Library to establish a Green Libraries Partnership with an ambitious programme of sector development and support starting in 2022.

We will also be expanding on the digital support available to members in 2022. Development work is currently underway to establish a comprehensive new training platform and provider for our professional community and we will be commissioning new training and CPD resources to help members get to grips with the new elements of the PKSB which relate to digital, data and knowledge.

Alongside sustainability and digital transformation, we will continue to work with our CILIP community to build on the progress already achieved through Changing Lives, our manifesto for positive change, inclusion, equity and representation across the professional workforce.

But perhaps most of all, our ambition in 2022 is to do more than ever before to help our members succeed, grow their skills and build their professional networks. We are strongly committed to supporting our members with their Leadership development and to providing timely relevant content, CPD, training and professional recognition.

2021 has been hugely challenging, but it has also brought out the very best in our profession and in us as your professional body. We are here for everyone who has a professional connection to information, knowledge and libraries and who believes in their power to change lives.

If you are a member of our community already, thank you and the CILIP staff team and I look forward to supporting you and working with you in 2022. If you aren’t, then there has never been a better time to join!

Wishing you a calm and relaxing Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year!