LILAC conference - 25th-27th March 2013

On 25^th-27^th March I attended the LILAC (Librarian Information Literacy Annual Conference) conference in Manchester. An enormous number of events were on offer and it was an exciting, informative and exhausting three days.

I’ve come back to work brimming with ideas that I can use to improve my information literacy sessions. The three events that made the most impression were Transfrom your training the sequel: return of the interactive IL trainers by Emily Shields, Rosie Jones and Karen Peters; the Teach Meet and Alan Carbery’s Arming the teacher librarian: using experiential learning and reflective practice to guide pedagogy.

As well as the listening; thinking; reflecting and participating that went on during the daytime there were also ample opportunities to socialise and network.

Gorton Monastery was the venue for the conference dinner – a stunning interior, if a tad chilly. The networking event was held at the John Rylands Library, a huge Gothic building, built with the proceeds of a textiles business and very archives/special collections in tone. I took a liking to the signs displayed next to their collections – I think they helped to set the tone and expectations about the building and purpose of the collections. Whilst networking I met some people I had previously worked with and put faces to names I’m always seeing on mailing lists.

 

 

Since being back at work I’ve compiled a short action plan to make sure I apply all the knowledge I gained at LILAC. Here are a couple of my information literacy ‘resolutions’.

The Tidy Librarian’s LILAC Action Plan

A) Improve my presentation images

·         Take some useful images with my own camera for use in my presentations.

·         Try the Public Domain Image site which I saw referenced on many slides.

B) Information literacy sessions

·         Try using PollEv for online voting.

·         Use the jigsaw method with Foundation Degree students.

·         Use the IL trainers' activity called ‘choose a picture that represents…your feelings about searching’ with the Research group.

·         Question my current lesson plans – are they inclusive of trans/digital literacy?

·         Suggest a researcher information literacy strategy at work and use this to market our offer to PhD students, the research centres and research active staff.

C) Personal Professional Development

·         Begin to build a teaching portfolio using a teaching journal as recommended in Alan's workshop.

D) Building my professional reputation in my organisation

·         Keep blogging and tweeting.

·         I need to get more items in Faculty newsletters; integrate to a greater extent with the research teams, muscle-in on staff development days. I shall attempt to promote information literacy (or whatever we want to call it) better at learning and teaching committees.

E) Building my professional reputation in the library world

·         I should and would like to present something at a future LILAC event. I have previously been reluctant to realise that what I do in my day-to-day work does have value and is of interest to other people in the library world. There were a couple of sessions at LILAC where I sat back and thought ‘I do that already’. However I think to present at a conference you need to ground that work in theory.