Conference season!

Over the summer, several colleagues have had chance to attend conferences on a number of different themes/topics.

Conference: Business Librarian’s Association Summer Conference, University of Northampton, 26^th-28^th June

Ben Taylorson, Faculty Librarian: It’s not as straightforward to get to Northampton as you might expect, but a mere 4 trains and 5 hours after leaving the house I had made it. Before the conference began, I was afforded the opportunity to have a look around the town and a wander over to the football ground, before making my way to the Waterside Campus. This is a collection of buildings overlooking the canal and a nearby park, which is lovely. The overpowering smell from the nearby Carlsberg brewery – not so much. 

The theme of the conference was sustainability, both in terms of libraries and the wider workplace/living ramifications. Several talks over the 3 days dealt with various different aspects of sustainability from speakers in a variety of fields. More importantly than that, there was a quiz one night and the team I was on came third. I won a splendid notebook. Plus, I had a melon starter that was shaped (roughly) like the Sydney Opera House. For some reason.

Conference: Academic Libraries North Conference ‘Generative AI and Emerging Technologies’ in St George’s Centre, Leeds, on 5^th July

First-time conference attendee Alex Lavery, Library Assistant: I was grateful to be able to attend both the online and in-person conference events. It was my first time at a conference, so this was very exciting! Attending the in-person event was a good opportunity to network with colleagues from our own department, in addition to meeting new information professionals from other ALN institutions.

I particularly enjoyed learning about how some institutions are responding to the use of AI in higher education, particularly in the context of designing information literacy and library skills sessions. Some other highlights included participating in a creative writing workshop, where we worked in groups to imagine how AI might affect the day-to-day work of librarians in the future. We also had the chance to explore different generative AI tools in another practical workshop, which was followed by a thought-provoking group discussion on both the practical and ethical considerations of these technologies.

Overall, it was very interesting to explore the impact emerging AI tools on ethics, information literacy, research, and search tools within academic libraries! I’m looking forward to seeing how AI tools such as Microsoft Copilot and Apple Intelligence (when available) might be utilised by library customer services over the coming years

Jonathan Bush, University Archivist: Housed in a former Anglican Church with many original architectural features, the main auditorium provided a stunning backdrop to the conference, which was well attended by archivists and librarians from across the North of England. Following the opening comments by the conference organisers, the conference was divided into separate workshops and talks. I signed up for the ‘Exploring our future with AI through fiction’ workshop, led by Andrew Cox (University of Sheffield) and Neil Dixon (Anglia Ruskin University), which employed fiction as a method of interacting with chatbots. Participants worked in groups, responding to fictitious scenarios involving library chatbots and how likely/unlikely such scenarios were to happen in the future. It was a very sobering view of the value of chatbots and their implications for the future of library and special collections. Following a break, we had talk from the Platinum sponsor of the conference, Kortext. Kortext have designed a portal tailored towards academic libraries that includes the ability to use bespoke AI tools to interrogate digital resources, but is rather limited by publisher permissions and copyright. I then listened to two short papers in the main auditorium. The first by Adam Duffield (University of Central Lancashire) entitled ‘How AI is blending the line between Fact and Fiction’ was full of examples of the way in which AI is fuelling fake news in the media, how this is affecting the academic sphere, and what we can do as information professionals to help students navigate this minefield. The second talk, by Heather Johnston (University of Liverpool), ‘Discovering how students use Generative Artificial Intelligence Tools for essay planning purposes’, followed nicely on from this and focused on student interactions with AI and how we can incorporate teaching of these tools into information literacy sessions.

After lunch, we had the keynote speaker, Ciaran Talbot (Associate Director of AI and Ideas Adoption in the University of Manchester Library) on ‘Surfing the wave: positioning the academic library for our next era’. Ciaran took a ‘big picture’ view, arguing that libraries are uniquely placed within the university environment to take advantage of AI and emerging technologies and to play a leading role in creating collaborative opportunities and partnerships within the institution and beyond. Following a Gold Sponsor talk from Clarivate, a company that specialise in research data, I attended the final session of the day, a workshop on ‘Practical and Ethical Considerations of Generative AI), led by Andrew Walsh (Academic Libraries North) and Nicola Gregory (Manchester Metropolitan University). This interactive workshop enabled participants to play around with various image, text and music-based AI tools to generate outputs. I was given an AI chatbot to trial, although when trying to adapt it as a way of searching information relating to ULC’s special collections, I found that the trial version only allowed the chatbot to trawl the homepage of the Library webpages with (very) limited results!

Overall, this was a very informative and thought-provoking conference and I am now actively thinking about ways in which some of these ideas can be incorporated into the workflows, processes and procedures in Archives and Special Collections, hopefully without too much impact on the careers of my fellow archive and library professionals!

Conference: UXLibs8, Anglia Ruskin University, 11 – 13 June

Kirsty Barnfather, User Experience Officer: I set off to attend my third UXLibs conference at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, excited to see what this year’s conference would bring. I was also eager to catch up with many delegates who I have met through the conference or other UX groups that I’m involved in, such as the Academic Libraries North UX Community of Practice.

The conference was held over three days (including a pre-conference workshop) with more than 175 delegates from 20 different countries attending, making it a real international affair. The theme was ‘Curiosity and Empathy’ and throughout the conference, the importance of these themes in our practice of UX were explored. We heard from many fantastic speakers, from a range of professional backgrounds (not just libraries) to offer their insight into the use of curiosity and empathy to get to know our users better. By doing so, we can understand and see things from their perspectives and improve service provision for them as a result.

There was also a choice of practical workshops (I attended ‘The Design Studio method’ with Bob Liu, which was brilliant!) and a team challenge which included working with other delegates on a case study to come up with ideas on improving or including alternative UX approaches. And not to mention the Paper Chain Challenge where we had to work as a team to make the longest paper chain in a set amount of time (well done team ‘A. A. Milne’ 😊)

As always at UXLibs conferences, there’s also a fantastic social calendar to offer more relaxed opportunities for networking and meeting new people. This year, we were treated to indoor mini-golf and pizza one evening and a beautiful Gala Dinner the next, with lots of fun and friends made.

Overall, a fantastic experience with like-minded people who are using UX practices to design and implement relevant and improved services for their users.