A report from CILIP conference 2024

This year, the CILIP conference took place in Birmingham from 10th to 11th July. I joined
on 10th July only. This was my first time for me at the conference, which was made
possible through a generous bursary from ARLG. Thank you for this very insightful day!
I arrived from Wiltshire on the train at Birmingham International Airport. No, I wasn’t
flying to another country, the conference took place in the beautiful Hilton Hotel there, a
practical and easy-to-reach location. After a little bit of time talking to some fellow
professionals, we were invited to join the opening ceremony. The ceremony was
followed by the first keynote.
Daniel Gorman was the speaker for this talk. He is the director of English PEN, which
promotes the ‘freedom to write’ and the ‘freedom to read.’ It is an institution for poets,
playwrights, and essayists. He highlighted that libraries are important in the struggle for
human rights, as they are ‘melting pots of ideas.’ Highlighting the importance of library
professionals’ work was a great reminder for why we were all in Birmingham that day.
To me, the most important point Daniel Gorman made was that slower information
leads to deeper thinking. This will ensure that we take into account other viewpoints
that might differ from our own. Libraries provide books and information for free and are
therefore a central element in the struggle for intellectual freedom. Towards the end of
his talk, Daniel Gorman listed places where libraries have been targeted and destroyed
in the past and recently. He started with a library that was more than half destroyed in
1992 in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He described the war in Ukraine, where Book Aid helps
restock the still existing libraries. Finally, he mentioned Gaza. He described the touching
example of the Edward Said Library, which was destroyed in 2014, rebuilt in 2017.
Daniel Gorman mourned the library workers and supporters who lost their lives
protecting their library and the freedom to read. Finally, he mentioned the book bans in
the USA and encouraged librarians to “not be scared but be prepared.” The talk was
sobering but also a call to action. What librarians are doing is already great and
important but there is more to do, and we have to reflect on our work to identify our role
in access to ideas.
After the keynote, I visited a panel on AI and the Digital Humanities. Mia Ridge from the
British Library chaired this talk with Ciaran Talbot from the University of Manchester
Library and Glen Robson from the International Image Interoperability Framework. Mia
Ridge highlighted the AI hype curve and that we now know what is possible and where AI
might go. She made clear that the future holds amazing tools for discoverability, but
also that we are not quite there yet. Ciaran Talbot then highlighted how he and his
colleagues are exploiting diverse historical data sources from archives to gain insights
into the lives of historical figures. This is still in development but has already yielded
some results. Glen Roberts works with image and audio-visual files. His AI tools can
identify faces, which helps to find people across the collection. However, it is important
to have good data sets as a basis for this work. He highlights the opportunities of
entering their collection into a larger dataset as it guarantees access to the collection
that could otherwise disappear; however, a threat is that the provenance of images
might get lost. Change management is a key skill of the next few years to identify what
tasks can be replaced or enhanced with AI and what needs human input.
The third talk I visited was on transformative agreements. The question was if this is a
sustainable model. Beth Montague-Hellen provided a great introduction to the talks,
making sure that everyone in the room was aware of what transformative agreements
are: they are contracts that move away from subscription content to Open Access.
Often, this takes the form of bundled read and publish payments. The first speaker of
the session was Jack Mcdonald from Cambridge University Press. This publisher mostly
publishes humanities texts and have successfully flipped journals to Open Access. This
ensures higher reach and readership. He expressed concern about the financial
environments of Open Access as the cost to publish exceeds the revenue. My colleague
Jason Harper from the University of Bath then spoke about transformative agreements
from the university perspective. He, in turn, was concerned about the rising cost of
Article Processing Charges. He admitted that Open Access is hard to achieve in the
current climate. To conclude, the speakers called for optimism as well as concerns: A
lot is happening in this area and the future might bring some solutions that are
beneficial for both universities and publishers.
After a delicious hot lunch and chats about football and politics, I visited the second
keynote speech of the conference, which was held by Stijn Hoorens from the RAND
think tank. He was talking about truth decay in Europe. He highlighted that there is a
blurring of fact and opinion, with no clear demarcations. This is something that does not
only happen online but also in newspapers. The relative volume of opinion is much
larger than that of facts, as this is cheaper to produce. This leads to readers being
unsure of what to believe. Another reason for truth decay is the decline in formerly
respected sources of factual information.
However, trust in public institutions is still stable but trust in national parliaments,
governments and the EU has dropped. Thus, the public does not know where to turn to
to find facts. Consequences of this are the erosion of quality of discussion and
meaningful debate or a disengagement from political processes. This poses a threat to
democracy. He lists three drivers for these changes: biases, changes in information
systems, such as AI and social media, and the speed and extent of polarisation.
Libraries play a crucial role in this as they provide content, skill, and space. However,
this power has to be met with responsibility.
The last talk I visited was by Kirsty Shankland who presented on some sustainable
library buildings the architecture firm Wright & Wright have recently completed. She
highlighted three projects: St John Library in Oxford, Lambeth Palace Library in London
and the ongoing project at Corpus Christy College in Oxford. The first was created with
light in mind and readers were placed by the bright edges and books into the centre of
the building. Lambeth Palace was a great project which seamlessly fits in with the rest
of the palace. The library was placed in the tower, as it is built on a flood plain. The last
project, Corpus Christy College Library is replacing the library that was spilling into
adjacent buildings. A planned new building ensures the preservation and discoverability
of the collection. This is planned to use ultra low-energy. It is important to protect
skylines and not to lose the heritage of the surrounding buildings.
After this session, I talked to the representatives from PTSF Europe, the firm that is
responsible for Koha. We had a great conversation about library management systems
and the benefits of Koha. This was especially interesting for me, as I have never used
this system before.
To conclude, this conference day gave me fantastic insights into the importance of
library work and the changes the profession can make. I am now more aware of the
backgrounds of some aspects of my work, which I will keep in mind in my practice and
share with others.