In 2024, UKeiG awarded two fully funded bursary places to CILIP Conference. Below, Megane Quelvennec, one of the lucky recipients, shares her insights and learnings over the two days.
Megane Quelvennec
Trainee Library Assistant
Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust
Hello! My name is Megane Quelvennec, I’m a trainee library assistant working at Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust and currently working towards my MA in Information and Library Studies at Aberystwyth University as a distance learner. I was fortunate enough to receive one of the UKeiG Bursaries to attend the CILIP Conference 2024 in Birmingham.
As a new professional to the librarian industry, it was an educational experience hearing from speakers from all over the sector, not just from a health aspect of the field. The headlining theme of the 2024 conference was intellectual freedom which is quoted by Loius Coiffait-Gunn (CEO of CILIP) as “the bedrock of our professional practice, wherever we work”. This was echoed throughout the conference with keynote talks on “Truth Decay in Europe”, “Creatively Languaging the value of KM in your Organisation” and “AI and KM: Learning from Practical Experience in AI Pilot Projects”.
I first attended a session called “Libraries, Health and Digital Literacy” which was a panel discussion style event. We first heard from Debbie Hicks from The Reading Agency where she spoke about how in this age of information the internet has changed the way that we communicate but increased the amount of misinformation. Debbie talked about some rather shocking statistics- how 1 in 6 adults are reading at below 9 years of age and 1 in 5 can’t find or don ‘t have access to the right resources or information. In a world where health and digital literacy are constantly evolving these stats make you realise just how important libraries can be. Ruth Carlyle from NHS England spoke on the challenges and solutions that we face in a health digital world where 43% of patients struggling with words and 61% with words and numbers. Ruth mentioned how the medical evidence base doubles every 77 days and brought up the struggles with making sure that patient information is evidence-based in a way that most people will be able to read and understand. Both health libraries and public libraries play an important role in the distribution and availability of health and digital information, with librarians being the 3rd most trusted profession.
Vishaal Virani from YouTube touched on this topic by mentioning there is a growing demand for health-related content. YouTube has developed a “health shelf” which is an authoritative tag for trusted resources so that viewers can be assured that they are watching resources posted by credible sources. As well as this trusted tag, YouTube has created a health creator community to help increase the accessibility of credible resources for the wider public. Sophie Randall, from Patient Information Forum, spoke on the importance of co-production of evidence as it cannot be done alone. Having expert sources from a wide array of backgrounds, nationalities and communities ensures that everyone’s voice has a chance to be heard. PIF produces information in an array of resources, making sure that health information can be widely accessible by the general public.
On Day 1, we had the pleasure of hearing from Stijn Hoorens from RAND Europe on his keynote speech “Truth Decay in Europe”. He started his speech relating to the four main trends of truth decay: increasing disagreements of facts and data, a blurring line between fact and opinion, the increasing relative volume and resulting influence of opinion over fact and a declining trust in formally respected sources of factual information. In the ever-expanding world of social media and interpretive journalism, anyone is able to post their own opinion. Trust in governmental and academia sources has been declining in the last decade, coupled with the difficulty of differentiating between fact, opinion and speculation has created what Stijn called “a threat to democracy”, including political paralysis, erosion of civil discourse and higher levels of disengagement. He finished his speech by mentioning that libraries play an important role in helping to dispel truth decay by offering trusted content, skills and a safe space for people to learn.
The last session I attended on Day 1 was “Libraries Change Lives”, in which Rabeea Arif presented a case study presenting the value and impact that libraries can have on the community- especially for youngsters! With a focus on literacy, there was a number of free creative events offered to those aged between 10-16 years old, aimed at low-income households but anyone was welcome to join. The workshops included: filmmaking, bronze-casting, creative writing and nature journalism as a small example. Over the course of 2023, 182 library cards were issued to teens and some teens even become volunteers. 97% of teens said that they would like to return with 84% of parents noting an increase in confidence of their children. These sessions helped to also build confidence in the library staff and establish trust between the teens and the library. Rabeea talked about the future development of the programme expanding to future mentorship and curated training for teens as well as expanding to other libraries in the local area.
Day 2 brought about another round of interesting discussions, starting with “AI and KM: Learning from Practical Experience in AI Pilot Projects”, in which Susan Smith from Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, spoke on how AI can be used within a healthcare framework. The health wellbeing chatbot was a project that was worked on by Microsoft and students, as a student project during their time at university. Its base function worked on trigger words, helping to form questions and reply depending on the preprogrammed responses. One important point that was brought up during the talk was that no matter how exciting and new AI can be, projects should be created to fix a problem you are trying to solve. An example of this that Susan brought up was surrounding repositories and looking how robotics can process information. The key questions asked during the initial stages of the project were:
- What do they want this to add?
- Can we make this possible?
- And how can we create this with the tech available?
Susan spoke on the challenges of such projects being that as it was a student project, it created concerns over the long-term viability as well as the lack of information on the creation of chatbots at the time. As this project was created by students it was ultimately discontinued after they graduated.
“Creatively Languaging the value of KM in your Organisation” a session that was organised by Janine Weightman from Knovolution LTD, showcased using non-knowledge management language to make share information in our organisations. Janine mentioned that her biggest obstacles were that some people don’t know or care about knowledge management and that they way in which we present information needs to be in a way that people in that space will listen and understand. The language in which we use can have a direct impact on the interest and learnability of the information that we share, and that knowing your target audience is important. Their hopes, concerns, objections, behaviours and attitudes can play a direct role in how you language the information. By tailoring the language we use, not only for knowledge management but for any information, we have a higher chance in engaging our target audience and creating a better chance of them understanding the message being conveyed.
The sharing and accessibility of knowledge took centre stage in most of the sessions I attended, and I found it fascinating. Hearing from diverse experts across different areas of the field offered insights that might not have been considered otherwise. The networking time led me to meeting some lovely people (including getting a cool caricature drawn by Femi Adetunji Caricatures who was hosted by one of the sponsors- Crown Records Management), and getting see librarians hit the dancefloor with some live music at the end of the night. Overall, getting to attend this conference was an experience that I deeply appreciate, so thank you UKeiG sending me to the conference, and I hope to see everyone again next year!
