Pam McKinney here live blogging from the #LILAC23 Conference. The first keynote is a panel session with new professionals Naomi Cassidy, Tom Peach, Naomi Smith and Kristabelle Williams, chaired by Katie Wise. The panel members work in a variety of sectors and roles, but all are recently qualified and were keen to share their views with the LILAC community.
The first question related to the lack of empathy that some academics have for the IL problems students face. Tom acknowledged that it is really tricky to challenge academics, but that it is useful to approach this problem from the position of seeking to understand. Sometimes institutional policy, departs mental culture and other aspects influence academic opinions, so trying to understand these is useful. Fostering empathy without alienating people is challenging, but is an aspect of successful liaison. It is important that librarians don’t try to adopt all the responsibility for others’ opinions, that is impossible. Tom said that working in an environment where challenge was supported was helpful, and good modelling from his colleagues really helped.
The second question related to how colleagues respond to particular areas of interest from new professionals. Kristabelle said that her colleagues were really helpful, and that it helped to be opportunistic about promoting IL, for example the Extended Project Qualification taught in UK secondary schools is a good platform for engaging teachers. Kristabelle is a union lead for the National Education Union, and this has helped build relationships with teachers. Naomi Smith is interested in anti racism and uses strategies such as creating inclusive reading lists and employs arguments such as “this is good for the university image” to encourage academics to engage with this practice.
Naomi Cassidy spoke about how it can be tricky to challenge if you are a member of a minorities group, and be thought of as unlikeable even though you might just be trying to be assertive. Sometimes it doesn’t benefit senior management for there to be challenge, so that can be hard as a new professional. Any work touching on Equality and Diversity is important, and the role of librarians is to welcome students with protected characteristics into the library.
Naomi Smith spoke about how important it is to speak openly about diversity, and this is part of institutional culture. Managers should support staff with protected characteristics, and enable discussions e.g. about how race might affect participation in the IL classroom. Naomi Cassidy spoke about how important it is to be bold, as lots of librarians are quite introverted, it sometimes takes one person to speak up to encourage others to say they have aligned values.
There was a question about students’ use of non traditional academic sources, where the formal literature is seen to be the only valid source that students could use. This is tricky when university structures do privilege this kind of resource. Naomi Smith spoke about decolonising the library, and including oral tradition as a valid resource is a radical change of direction for the university. Students want to use TikTok, and reference information they have found on that platform, but the librarian has to advise students to ask their lecturer if this is a valid source or not. Some things are beyond the power or role of librarians to control, but librarians can have influence. Naomi Cassidy spoke about the fetishising of peer reviewed research in the health sphere, but it has been proven that some of this literature is harmful for marginalised populations. It’s important to open up these conversations with academics.
The panel were asked about the lack of diversity in pedagogical structures, Kristabelle spoke about the situation in schools, which have a recruitment and retention crisis. There are gaps and weaknesses in the school curriculum, where information literacy is not well covered. Schools could support transition to university much more comprehensively, if school librarians and university librarians could work more closely with each other. It is important to involve the student voice in defining what information literacy teaching should look like in schools. In the UK there is a big discrepancy between the library provision in private schools and state schools, and a need for more development opportunities for school librarians. Naomi Smith spoke about how challenging it is to teach critical IL in a one hour class, when lecturers just want simple classes that cover the basics of engaging with the literature. It is hard to speak out from a marginalised position, so allies from more privileged backgrounds are really important. Naomi Cassidy spoke about the difficulties busy medical students face in engaging with information literacy when their courses are very full.
This was a really interesting panel!
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