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CILIP is the largest cross-domain organisation for librarians, knowledge managers, and information professionals in the UK.


INSIGHT


President’s View


Unity, humanity and community – a shared experience


S I sit down to write this column I’m still processing the incredible experience of sharing ideas and


inspiration with so many fantastic colleagues at this year’s CILIP Conference in Birmingham, an incredible couple of days of engagement and conversation with current and future leaders from across the whole of our profession. I’m sure many of you who were there will have come away with the exact same sense of renewal and excitement that seemed to be so common among the people I was privileged to meet and chat with, and I hope those of you who couldn’t join us at least had a sense of the highlights from the incredible work done by colleagues who were sharing key points live on social media!


Of course, a particular highlight of the conference for me was the Presidential Dinner and Drinks Reception on Tuesday evening, when the winners of the CILIP 125 List were formally announced!


Celebration


As I said at the start of the year, the CILIP 125 List is a celebration of some of the most inspiring and up-and-coming individuals in our profession, the people who will help CILIP and our sector meet the challenges facing us as we move into the 21st Century, and it was an absolute delight to be able to hear from two of the winners at Conference.


But I want to be clear that they are not alone: as a profession we are surrounded


July-August 2023


by the people who will lead us into tomorrow, and there are far more future leaders among us than made the final list of 125. Already we’ve seen a fantastic influx of new professional and student members this year, and we continue to develop and strengthen CILIP Pathways to open-up the opportunities for those joining our profession through Apprenticeship.


Our new professionals aren’t simply being welcomed into the profession, clapped on the back, and pushed in the direction of a nebulous destination called “leadership”: instead, they join a brilliant profession where they have the incredible opportunity to learn from their new colleagues – as we all do! CILIP is the largest cross-domain organisation for librarians, knowledge managers, and information professionals in the UK, and the work of our membership in sharing ideas and experiences that we saw being show cased at conference is honestly awe-inspiring.


Challenges


One of the best things about CILIP is the way it seeks to bring together everyone across the information world, forging a community of practice where we can share our experience, expertise, and ideas to the benefit of our communities as their information needs evolve.


The challenges which CILIP is facing and addressing today are not, perhaps, completely the same as those which our first members faced in 1898 (although I’m sure some perennial issues would remain instantly recognisable to them!), but they are challenges which we are


John Trevor-Allen is President of CILIP. www.cilipconference.org.uk


rising to meet as the needs and concerns of information users change. Among the fantastic messages and themes of conference, the key thread I found running through almost every discussion, a deep understanding that our work matters because, across the whole of our incredibly wide-ranging profession – what we do touches and improves millions of lives.


In all our diverse services, offering sanctuary, inspiration, and information to people from all walks of life, we are united by our common ethics, our energy and our empathy – by a shared conviction that libraries and access to information are an essential element of what it means to be human.


That unity, and our absolute commitment to sharing our ideas and expertise and experience amongst ourselves to ensure we can all provide the best possible service for our communities, is something that will drive us forward not just into 2024 or 2025, but far into the future as we grow our profession further. IP


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