I attended the UKSG annual conference in Glasgow from 8-10 April 2024, at the Scottish Events Campus. I thought the SEC looked like a croissant and it turns out that it looking like a croissant and armadillo is a known thing.
It is a huge conference with 760 attendees from 26 countries this year and it was my first time attending. The conference is so big, that there is a dedicated app to help you organise your time and network etc. There was a gamification aspect, where the more you engaged with the app and other people on it, you were put on a leaderboard. For a good while I was in there at number 5. Unfortunately, the competition was fierce and I dropped out of the top 10 fairly quickly.
I was asked to attend with both my C&ERs and my liaison roles in mind, and because the conference was massive with a packed schedule, I’m doing a blog posting for each day.
Day 1 [coming soon!]
Day 2 [coming soon!]
Day 3 [coming soon!]
Free time
Kelvingrove Museum & Art Gallery with a blue sky
As I arrived on Sunday afternoon, I took a walk after checking into the hotel and saw the outside of the Kelvingrove Art Museum (it was already closed!) and had some dinner.
I was quite chuffed to have a view of the Clyde from the Premier Inn. A much nicer and safer-feeling hotel stay than the one Leanne and I experienced in Liverpool for LILAC 2018. We will tell you about that if you ask us.
A view of the Clyde from my hotel room at the Premier Inn.
I attended the UHMLG Spring Forum on 21-22 March 2024. It was two half-days online. UHMLG is the University Health and Medical Librarians Group.
Martin Compton: I Only Know That I Know Nothing: Why We All Need to be Engaging With AI
The first session was delivered by Dr Martin Compton from UCL. Dr Compton is an AI in HE specialist and he was a highly engaging speaker. To highlight the problematic gender, racial and social bias inherent in the data used to program AI, he shared the following AI-generated images. On the left were the images he received to the prompt ‘show me an academic librarian’ and on the right ‘show me an academic.’
I am pretty certain I have met the man on the bottom left at the Whitley Bay Parkrun.
Dr Compton offers a Future Learn course on AI for Higher Education. He is a good teacher, so it might be a good course to take.
Another super interesting moment was when someone on the session linked to this tweet demonstrating a peer reviewed research article identified as being generated by AI:
The session was recorded, so if you like, you can watch it here.
Jane Wilkinson: The NHS long-term workforce plan (LTWP) – Impact on HEIs
This was a sobering and highly critical look at developments in the medical school curriculum and efforts to condense it as well as current and future challenges to the NHS workforce. Dr Wilkinson is a practicing pulmonary specialist, so it was good to hear from someone a bit more outside of Higher Education. The recording is here.
Jasmina Makljenovic: A Journey to Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy
Jasmina told us about her experience applying to AFHEA, and it was very practical and hands on description of how assistant staff might gain association fellowship. It was daunting to translate the language and requirements to make them relevant to an assistant library staff member’s role but she described how, once she got started, she realised she had a lot more to write and share than she realised. The recording for this session is here.
Randomised Coffee Trial
I was brave enough to attend the Randomised Coffee Trial where you go into a Zoom room with a random subgroup of people to have a casual chat. I met some lovely colleagues from around the four nations. We mostly talked about systemic reviews and AI. Two highlights:
Someone asked the really great question which I can summarise as: “if AI is being used as a part of systematic reviewing process which will result in making health/drug decisions, should it be treated, evaluated and held liable the same as a medical device?”
Rather than referencing AI like you would a journal, KCL are having students document their AI assistance in an appendix to the paper.
UHMLG events are well organised and this was probably one of the best online conferences I’ve attended in a while. There is an in-person conference in Lancaster that Cheryl will be attending this summer, and I’m sure she will have a good time and learn a lot.
At the start of June, I attended UXLibs7 at the University of Sussex in Falmer, near Brighton. The theme for this year was ‘Connections and Collaborations’, looking at:
Collaborating with specific user groups to co-create more relevant and inclusive library services.
Forging connections with external groups or individuals to improve our processes and results.
Persuading senior managers and stakeholders of the value of UX research.
The conference gave me lots to think about when it comes to conducting UX research and ensuring we are being more inclusive with any research we undertake.
Andy opened the conference by discussing and encouraging us to use more creative ‘right-brained’ UX methods and the value offered by exploring creative expression. These include:
Cognitive mapping – users draw pictures of their experiences on paper with different coloured pens.
Love and break-up letters – users write letters to a service as if it is someone they love or are breaking up with.
Generative play – users build physical models of their experiences, thoughts, and feelings.
Most people will be more creative than we might expect and by giving our users the opportunity to express themselves creatively, we can receive richer information and provide an opportunity to connect more deeply.
We can take this further by using these methods for generating ideas and designing and testing new service ideas (ideation and prototyping). These sorts of methods are engaging and enable people to:
Perform divergent thinking – embracing creativity and spontaneity.
Tell stories – promoting deeper understanding and providing emotional context.
Use imagination – accessing innovative solutions.
We could consider using these sorts of methods when collecting feedback from our students, perhaps to complement the data we receive through Big Talk.
Marie oversees Dokk1, a public space that functions as a culture house to unite public institutions such as the library, citizen services, and national TV. It is designed to be a democratic space, providing a place for co-creation, dialogue, knowledge, and inspiration with people and the community as the focus.
Democratic open buildings are key to empowering and enabling citizens. Marie and her staff believe that if you plan and programme everything within your physical space, there is no room for co-creation or adaptability. The spaces within Dokk1 can look different every single day and you can do lots of different things within them.
The questions they ask themselves are how can we say yes more? And how do we develop a space so we can say yes more?
Arun talked about the idea of ‘constructive disruption’ to make real intersectional change within our organisations. We may have seen this as ‘change management’ or ‘transformation’.
Intersectionality is an inclusion practice developed in the 1980s and designed as a tool for action.
Libraries naturally support inclusion as they have always been places to reflect and ask questions but what part do libraries play in practising zero tolerance when it comes to exclusion? Competing priorities and poor practices interconnect and unless they are disrupted, they cannot be changed.
Disruption can take the form of interventions, investments, policies, programmes, and transformations.
Emma spoke about how to align with – and communicate within – our organisations while engaging in UX research. Through her experience managing up, down, and sideways, she believes that everyone can influence positive change.
Design – UX research does not always have to be big; from the initial method to the final change small changes can make a big difference. For example, the law department was becoming bigger and law students wanted their own library. By speaking with them to find out what they wanted (a cosy place like home) they could work with what they had to provide a solution (rearranging the shelving to create a cosy space).
Align – Aligning with the strategy, goals, and objectives of the wider organisation is important. When proposing a new idea or piece of UX research, consider the key strategic aims of your organisation and align your own strengths and ideas with these.
Combine – Combining with people can mean you can work with others on your idea with often much-needed support. Consider letting go of your idea if it might be better taken forward by someone else.
Traditionally, librarians are the people who answer questions. Sometimes we need to ask questions too and UX is a good example of that.
Victoria explained that ‘underserved’ are groups with lower inclusion in research than we would expect given population estimates.
Why ‘underserved’? Phrases like ‘underrepresented’, ‘hard to reach’ and ‘marginalised’ put the onus on the individual to be represented and have their voices heard, whereas underserved puts the lack of inclusion into the context of the barriers they face.
Demographic factors (e.g., disabled, age extremes, women of childbearing age, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+/sexual orientation, educational disadvantage)
Social and economic factors (e.g., people in full-time employment, unemployed/low income, military veterans, people in alternative residential circumstances, digitally excluded)
Health status (e.g., mental health conditions, cognitive impairment, learning/physical disability, people with addictions, pregnant people)
By including underserved groups in UX research, we can empower these groups and build trust between the groups and researchers to effectively deliver services and products. By actively ensuring the involvement of underserved groups, we can also develop both personally and professionally as researchers.
Participation v inclusion – Participation is the involvement of people in the decisions and processes that affect their lives, including sharing information, consulting, managing, making decisions, and acting. Inclusion can be defined as ‘the degree to which individuals feel a part of critical organisational processes,’ which can involve access to resources and decision-making. These terms are often used interchangeably when we start with participation and hope to move towards inclusion, however, we need to consider that there are barriers that can prevent us from moving past participation.
Barriers to inclusion – These include the increasing digitisation of research methods, focusing on unidimensional aspects of diversity, lack of willingness to participate (stemming from negative attitudes and beliefs, lack of trust, lack of interest), lack of research confidence or training, and exclusionary recruitment practices (poor promotion and advertising, lack of incentives, timing or location).
Facilitators for inclusion – These can look like cultural congruence (people recognising themselves in the research), participant benefits (social or financial incentives), and the removal of logistical barriers. However, these Facilitators can only cancel out barriers in the right environment.
In UX research, we often conduct research from a place of bias e.g., us vs them, with our language reinforcing our biases e.g., ‘hard to reach’. Research and learning institutions are exclusionary with the language of research, power imbalance, lack of diverse workforce, and research dominated by the Global North. There are deeply rooted issues within the research environment that cannot be changed by one individual or library service alone – but this doesn’t mean they should be ignored.
By being aware and knowledgeable about these systemic problems, we can work to overcome these barriers and ensure the environment is right for facilitators to work.
Shelley spoke about a project she ran on how UX work in academic libraries is structured and supported, and the conclusions that were drawn from her initial research:
Working groups demonstrate the impact of UX work. For example, a UX committee allows communication and collaboration with other teams and departments.
Having the authority to implement change, or having the support of those who can, is important.
Over time, it was clear that the first conclusions were not the end of the story. Shelley realised that although she was working with other people, she found that she was working on her own a lot. Shelley re-interviewed the participants from her first project, to gain an insight into whether others were experiencing the same and what more could be done.
The next step of Shelley’s research was to understand what meaningful support from management looks like. This includes time, money, participant incentives, staff support, and a genuine interest in, and acknowledgement of, the value of, UX. Working with management is a collaboration to determine resources and expectations, align potential UX work with strategic objectives, and ensure that results are taken on board, with change implemented where a need has been identified.
Mini-plenary
UX and spatial skills by Dr Clodagh Reid (Assistant Lecturer in Technology Education at the Technological University of the Shannon, Ireland)
I also attended different workshops and delegate presentations, which are linked below:
University of Sunderland Library and Study Skills Professional Sharing 