Information for All

The CILIPS Annual Conference 2024

Download the digital programme for CILIPS24

CILIP Scotland truly is the best conference! Such a brilliant bunch of people, always a great vibe, thought provoking topics/content and the hospitality is phenomenal!

The largest conference in Scotland for library and information professionals, CILIPS24 brought together colleagues from across the nation and beyond to share knowledge, network and engage in professional development as we collectively championed our profession’s commitment to ‘Information for All’.

Taking place on Monday 3rd and Tuesday 4th June 2024 at the Dundee Apex Hotel, our Annual Conference featured inspiring keynote speeches, impactful parallel sessions, a range of networking opportunities and much more.

I thought it was the best conference that I have been to. Everyone was so helpful and
friendly, an excellent programme was on offer which I think made everyone leave feeling enthused with new ideas. The hotel was lovely and everything ran like clockwork. Well done CILIPS!

Thank you to all of our wonderful delegates, sponsors & exhibitors and speakers for making #CILIPS24 such an incredible event, click here to see our delegate interactive map- showing what library services from across the world were represented.

CILIPS24 Keynote Speakers

Great opportunity to hear a range of speakers both international and closer to home and across a range of sectors. The chance to network and meet other professionals in your field is worth its weight in gold. Thank you to the CILIPS team for a really inspirational two days.

James LaRue

James LaRue is the director of the Garfield County (Colorado) Public Library District. Author of “The New Inquisition: Understanding and Managing Intellectual Freedom Challenges,” (2007) and “On Censorship: A Public Librarian Examines Cancel Culture in the US,” (2023) he has been a public library director for many years, as well as a weekly newspaper columnist and cable TV host. From January of 2016 to November of 2018, James was director of the Freedom to Read Foundation, and ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. He has written, spoken, and consulted extensively on intellectual freedom issues, leadership and organizational development, community engagement, and the future of libraries.

James spoke on Day One of the conference.

Dr Althea Greenan

Dr Althea Greenan works in Special Collections and Archives at Goldsmiths, University of London, curating the Women’s Art Library collection. Her work with the collection began in 1989 as a volunteer and she now works with artists, students, and academic researchers to help realise new art and curatorial projects that develop alongside the collection. This includes the Women’s Art Library/Feminist Review Art in the Archive Bursary. She has written on the work of women artists since the 1980s, publishing reviews, interviews, and creative pieces. Her recent doctoral research focused on the WAL slide collection and aspects of digitization to ask: What can an artists’ slide collection do besides represent artwork? Her findings recover the text produced by slide-making and the feminist network that the slide collection continues to reproduce today. Current projects include the Animating Archives research project and the 2023 Exhibitions Hub Alumni Commission Award, partnering with Goldsmiths Art Department. She is on the Advisory Board of Feminist Art Making Histories (FAMH), an oral history, digital humanities project, funded (2021-2024) by the Irish Research Council and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Althea spoke on Day One of the conference.

Sara Sheridan

Sara Sheridan is a writer and activist who is interested particularly in female history. She has written more than 20 books. Truth or Dare, Sara’s first novel, received a Scottish Library Award and was shortlisted for the Saltire. Her novel On Starlit Seas, was shortlisted for the Wilbur Smith Prize in 2017. An occasional journalist, Sara has reported for BBC Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent and on ‘being a lady’ for Women’s Hour. In 2019 Sara re-mapped Scotland according to women’s history for Historic Environment Scotland – the resulting book Where are the Women was listed as one of the David Hume Institute’s Books of the Year 2019. In 2022, Sara’s novel The Fair Botanists was chosen as Waterstones’ Scottish Book of the Year. Sara mentors fledgling writers – including CILIPS Membership Officer, Kirsten MacQuarrie – and she has sat on the board of several writers’ organisations. In 2015, Sophie McKay Knight’s portrait of Sara garnered media and critical attention at the National Gallery of Scotland.

Sara and Eleanor spoke on Day One of the conference.

Eleanor Thom

Eleanor Thom is a writer of fiction and creative non-fiction based in Edinburgh, whose work often focuses on migration, social history and remembrance. Her first novel The Tin-Kin (Duckworth, 2009), a fictionalised family story about three generations of Scottish Travellers, won the 2007 New Writing Ventures Award for Fiction and the Saltire First Book of the Year Award 2010, with Eleanor also being featured on BBC TV’S The Culture Show as one of the year’s best new novelists. Eleanor’s second novel, Connective Tissue, which is based on the life of her grandmother, a Holocaust refugee from Berlin, was published by Taproot Press in 2023. For five years Eleanor has been the Community Writer in Residence for The Edinburgh International Book Festival’s Citizen Project working with local people and organisations to record and present the stories of people who live and work in the city. In 2023/2024, she is one of the Genesis Jewish Book Week’s Emerging Writers for non-fiction.

Eleanor and Sara spoke on Day One of the conference.

Mia Ridge

Dr Mia Ridge is the British Library’s Digital Curator for Western Heritage Collections. Part of the Digital Research team, she provides advice and training on computational research, AI / machine learning and crowdsourcing. A Co-Investigator on Living with Machines (2018-23), she co-curated the Living with Machines exhibition with Leeds Museums and Galleries (2022-23).

Mia spoke on Day Two of the conference.

Kathleen Jamie

Kathleen Jamie is a poet, essayist and editor. In August 2021, she was appointed the Makar or National Poet for Scotland for a three year term. In this role, Kathleen has curated collective poems from lines submitted by the people of Scotland.

Raised in Currie, near Edinburgh, she studied philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, publishing her first poems as an undergraduate. Her writing is rooted in Scottish landscape and culture, and ranges through travel, women’s issues, archaeology and visual art. She writes in English and occasionally in Scots. Jamie’s collections include Black Spiders (1982) and The Queen of Sheba (1995). Her 2004 collection The Tree House revealed an increasing interest in the natural world, and won the Forward Poetry Prize and the Scottish Book of the Year Award. The Overhaul, won the 2012 Costa poetry award. In 2014, Jamie set herself the task of writing one poem per week. The resulting poems were collected in The Bonniest Companie, winning 2016 Saltire Society Book of the Year award. Her Selected Poems were published in 2018.

Kathleen spoke on Day Two of the conference.

Sue Williamson MBE

Sue Williamson MBE is the current CILIP president and has worked in public libraries in a variety of roles for 25 years, finishing her operational career as Head of Library Services for St Helens Borough Council. She then took on the strategic role of Director, Libraries for Arts Council England. In that role she chaired the English Public Libraries a Strategic Working Group, supporting the growth of strategic sectoral partnership and work on major projects such as Accreditation, the work on the Single Digital Presence (LibraryOn) and the CILIP led projects on Working Internationally and Green Libraries. She also commissioned reports on public libraries impact on employability and the impact of the Summer Reading Challenge and supported the Big Jubilee Read. For her services to Public Libraries she was awarded the MBE in the Queen’s Jubilee Honours. She believes passionately in the role that public libraries can play in driving the agendas of education, recreation, information and culture and in the ability of libraries across all sectors to work together to show the value that they add to society. In her spare time, she is a passionate reader and enjoys music, theatre and film.

Sue spoke on Day Two of the conference.

Kevin P. Gilday

Our conference dinner on the evening of Day One will be followed by entertainment from poet, writer and performer Kevin P. Gilday. Kevin is the founder of poetry performance collective The Scribbler’s Union, co-founder of spoken word cabaret night Sonnet Youth, a National Theatre of Scotland Breakthrough Writer and a BBC Writersroom Scottish Voice. He was recently included in the Saltire Society’s 40 under 40 list celebrating outstanding Scottish creative talent. Kevin has published five books of poetry with his latest, Anxiety Music (Verve Press 2022), promoted as part of a 22-date tour of the UK and Europe, and he has released two albums via Iffy Folk Records as Kevin P. Gilday & The Glasgow Cross.

Kevin spoke after dinner on Day One of the conference.

Thank you so much for a wonderful welcome and a memorable couple of days at the
conference. The CILIPS team and volunteers do so well to create a warm and friendly
environment, and to encourage people to mingle. Leaving with ideas and feeling encouraged about the future.

Parallel Sessions Day One:

• Building AI Ready Collections
• See Differently: How to make your libraries accessible to blind and partially sighted users with RNIB
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Professional Registration, including a Q&A with the CILIPS PRSOs (please post any advanced questions here)
• Bridging the Gap: The Role of the Research Library in Participatory Research, Citizen Science, and Involvement
• Murder We Wrote: Plotting criminally good scavenger hunts for your library users
• Reflecting Creative Practice Through Archiving: The Story of The Alasdair Gray Archive
• Supporting Vulnerable Users in Public Libraries: Attitudes to Homeless Users Revisited
• REVEAL: Reinforcing Ethics and Values for Effective Advocacy for Libraries: a practical workshop on ethics-based advocacy
• Celebrating LGBTQ+ Voices: Unheard Stories and Embracing Inclusion with LGBT Youth Scotland and Historic Environment Scotland

Parallel Sessions Day Two:

• Managing Safe and Inclusive Public Library Services: A practical guide from CILIP
• Combating Misinformation in Libraries
• Realising the Value of Knowledge in Health Library Services
• Growing Decolonisation at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) Library and Archives
• Nurturing Scotland’s Next Generation of Readers – Sharing ideas for inspirational, research-informed school librarianship with SLG Scotland and Education Scotland
• Creativity, connection and community: joining #TheJanuaryChallenge (all year round!)
• Promoting Civic and Climate Literacy through the National Library of Scotland’s collections
• Press Play on Moving Image and Sound Archives: Replay (The British Film Institute and libraries) and Moving Image and Sound Collections (National Library of Scotland)
• Green Dreams: Applying to the Green Libraries Scotland Grant Fund and the CILIPS Research Fund
• Seeds to Success at St Ninian’s High School
• Libraries as Agents of Sustainability Thinking in Scotland (LASTS) at the University of Strathclyde

The conference also included the presentation of our 2024 CILIPS Student Medals and Scotland’s Library and Information Professional of the Year.

Sponsors and Exhibitors

Meet the inspiring sponsors and exhibitors who shared their expertise with our delegates at CILIPS24.

Delegate Interactive Map

This year, in order to visualise how widespread our #CILIPS24 delegates are across the Scotland and beyond, we created an interactive map, in which delegates placed a marker to show which city or town they were joining us from.

You can click the link here and once the map has loaded, click ‘place marker,’ located below the search bar to contribute to the map. Please note that, as this map is publicly viewable, you should not input any personal details or addresses.

Listen, Think, Draw – Visual Facilitation

In a CILIPS conference first, we were delighted to be joined by Clare Mills, a visual facilitator with over twenty years of experience in learning and development.

Following along closely throughout the two days of our conference, Clare created a unique graphic recording to serve as a lasting legacy of CILIPS24: visually representing the key ideas shared, professional knowledge exchanged and new networks generated as a result of Information for All. Images coming soon…

Sustainability – Green Libraries Scotland

I feel like CILIPS 24 could be used as an example for other conferences on how to run a sustainable event.

I really appreciated the amount of thought that went into your sustainability steps! I’ve already planted my wildflowers and am looking forward to seeing them bloom.

I thought it was well considered and kept the issue front and centre.

Really creative efforts to reduce the carbon footprint.

It was lovely to see the efforts made to host an eco-friendly conference.

Bravo!

Building on the framework provided by the CILIPS Carbon Neutrality Plan and the success of our steps in making CILIPS22 and CILIPS23 as environmentally friendly as possible, we committed to ensuring that our 2024 Annual Conference was as sustainable as it was inspirational, embedding library-led environmental action into our programme. Plans included:

• NEW: A dedicated parallel session supporting future applications to the Green Libraries Scotland Grant Fund
• NEW: An innovative ‘Green Team’ exhibitor challenge, enhancing sustainability across the sector
• NEW: Eco-incentives for delegates to bring their own reusable water bottles/coffee cups
• The return of our exclusively digital programme (with alternative formats available for accessibility)
• A reduced food/water waste strategy and a locally-produced vegetarian lunch menu, in conjunction with the hotel
• A car sharing scheme for delegates, including signposting to electric car charging points
• Recycled lanyards, carbon captured name badges (including a tree-planting donation to the Woodland Trust) and other sustainably sourced items – including the now iconic CILIPS library garden seeds! – in our optional delegate gift bags.

Newbie Networking

Such a fantastic conference, amazing speakers, a really warm and friendly atmosphere. Very well organised and enjoyable. As a first timer at a CILIPS conference I was hugely impressed and very inspired!

Welcoming new delegates is such a special part of the conference for the whole CILIPS team, but we understand that preparing to attend your first major professional event can be a daunting prospect. One week before the conference, our Digital Assistant Leah led a friendly and informal ‘Newbie Networking’ online event, offering first-time attendees the opportunity to find out how a CILIPS Conference is run and meet their fellow delegates before arriving.

This session shared what to expect when you arrive in Dundee, highlighted some of the sessions and activities tailored to new professionals, and above all brought new delegates together to chat about how to make their first (hopefully of many) experience at the CILIPS Annual Conference as memorable and enjoyable as possible.

Check out our recording from Newbie Networking!

All delegates were also welcome to make use of our designated Quiet Space throughout the conference, offering an opportunity to rest, reflect and recharge.

Well done to the small CILIPS crew who obviously did so much effective prep beforehand, as well as delivered and were visible and friendly during the conference. Amazing effort and really appreciated by a newcomer to the sector. Congratulations and see you next year!