CILIP Libraries Rewired 2023

An overview of the CILIP Libraries Rewired event which took place on 10th November 2023 at CodeNode, London.

Libraries Rewired was a brand-new event which has been in the works for the past couple of years by CILIP, bringing together tech-inquisitive colleagues, suppliers, and thought leaders to connect on all things digital. I attended a variety of talks to better my understanding of the digital world, and how this could be used to improve the service of NHS Libraries to end users in the long run.

Welcome

We were all warmly welcomed to the sold-out event by Nick Poole, CILIP’s CEO, who gave us the rundown of what to expect during the event.

Suffering an AI change - Bill Thompson

The first speaker of the day was Bill Thompson, Journalist, Commentator and Technology Critic, who presented on the AI change, and how this change could potentially impact libraries in the future. His talk included what AI is defined as, and how it’s already influencing life as we know it.

We were introduced to Spot the Tour Guide, a robot whose persona was a British butler, and could seemingly have a conversation with the user.

He reminded us that a library is so much more than the physical and digital resources held, it’s also the human-element that staff bring to the library that help shapes what is it, and how we can view AI as a partner, rather than something to overcome.  

You can read Bill Thompson’s talk about AI on his blog post.

Adventure with tech in the Digital Solutions Lab

After Bill’s talk, it was time for a quick break and an exploration around the Digital Solutions Lab. It helped to showcase a number of important suppliers in the library sector, including AM Quartex, Axiell, Blockworks, Keenious, PTFS Europe, Scholarcy, Visual Geometry Group (VVG) and many more.

Many of the suppliers brought their products with them, to demonstrate how they work, and the usefulness of them to the sector.  

The Future of Library Technology - Thomas Shaw, Emma Adamson, and Ken Chad

After the Digital Solutions Lab, I headed off to the talk all about the future of library technology. An additional talk was happening at the same time about Gaming the Library.

Emma Adamson spoke all about the Wales Higher Education Libraries Forum (WHELF), and the achievements it’s had since officially starting in 1993. This included creating an all-Wales shared Library Management System, successfully merging over 10 billion bibliographic records, and winning at the Times Higher Education Leadership and Management Awards in 2015.

Ken Chad talked about the different technology that libraries are currently using, and how not all of this is designed specifically for libraries. He mentioned how resources like Google Chrome and Microsoft Office 365 were also vital technologies that are relied on to make the service work.

His view on future technologies were that more and more libraries would take advantage of apps, and creating reading lists to help end users find what they need faster. He mentioned that Google Ads may be used to further engage with end users, and ‘open’ systems, resource sharing, and shared collections would become more popular so that the most could be provided for the end users collectively.

There are full slides available for this talk.

LibraryOn | User research-informed UX - Tiina Hill and Liz White

After lunch and further looks around the Digital Solutions Lab, I headed off to the next talk about the British Library’s LibraryOn project, and how they used user informed research to improve user experience. At the same time, a talk on Harnessing AI and machine learning took place.

The British Library team who worked on the LibraryOn project spoke about how their main goal of this project was to increase both physical and digital visits to Libraries throughout England, Scotland, and Wales. They planned to do so by developing a national brand which could showcase the breadth of what’s on offer via Public Libraries.

The project also invested in local libraries via grants which allow them to be able to improve their presence and discoverability online. You can read more about the grant recipients from the first round on LibraryOn’s website.

Do more with data - Luke Burton, Dave Rowe, and Kate Lomax

The next talk I listened to was the Do More With Data session with main speakers Kate Lomax and Dave Rowe. An additional talk took place at the same time about Digital Rights.

Kate Lomax for Artefacto started the session speaking about transformative data in libraries.  She spoke about a few projects the company had worked on, including HLISD and Surrey Cultural Lives, and how measuring certain data may make libraries look and feel good, but further data should be collected to make positive progress forwards in improving services to end users.

She also spoke about how libraries are using the increasing data they’re receiving in thoughtful and strategic ways, with some examples of this being IFLA Library Map of the World, Libraries Hacked, and LibraryOn.

There was also a big emphasis that this isn’t restricted to just big data projects, smaller ones which are based on sharing the information gathered, ethically working together, and being transparent are the key elements to a successful data project.

Dave Rowe continued the session by talking about what data most libraries currently collect, and what’s typically done with this data. This includes;

• Performance - to show how well a library is operating.
• Statistics - to show how well a library is used by its end users.
• Measures and metric - for example KPIs to see whether a library is hitting a pre-determined goal.
• Advocacy - to try and promote the service libraries provide and tell end users how good libraries are.

He emphasised that all of this is useful data, however it shouldn’t be the only data that’s focused on, and that this data is primarily self-serving. To be able to fully understand and be more curious with data, libraries need to think outside of the box with what data they should collect.

For example, it’s good to collect data about how many users visited a library in a day, however it’s also good to investigate external factors which could’ve contributed to the number of users of the library, i.e., 'was it raining on that day?'

The digital version of this could be, 'were there any internet providers that experienced outages during that day?' He also talks about how we can combine our data with other libraries to understand where there may be user overlap, and how well something works for one library compared to another.

Viewing data in a dynamic way also allows for exploring data in a different view, which could provide a way in to seeing trends which wouldn’t be captured in traditional data visualisations.

The key message was that libraries need to share their data with others, as it provides a greater insight and provides better access to information for end users. All sorts of users need and benefit from library data, including authors, publishers, reading agencies, National data agencies, and the public.

Ethics and emerging technologies - Nick Poole, Sue Attewell, Bill Thompson, and Liz White

The last talk of the day was Ethics and Emerging Technologies, which was a group discussion between Nick Poole, Sue Attewell, Bill Thompson, and Liz White, with also audience participation to get involved with this discussion on a wider basis.

One of the topics discussed was around biases in new technologies, and how do we approach this? As well as should AI principles be transparent?

After talks of some biases being subtle, and how library staff need to be using the new tools to be able to support end users effectively, the conversation opened to the floor where further discussions on how libraries can effectively move through the changing technology, the day was wrapped up to a close with some final words from Nick Poole.

Overview

Overall, the CILIP Libraries Rewired event was a huge success, and provided a lot of useful information which can be used to improve the service provided by libraries. I especially enjoyed learning more about data and how we can find so much out by gathering it in an ethical manner.

All the available slides from CILIP’s Libraries Rewired 2023 event can be viewed on their website.