IN DEPTH
Libraries, critical thinking and the war on truth – what lies ahead in 2024
Nick Poole, Chief Executive, CILIP will leave the organisation at the end of March 2024. In this personal essay, he reflects on the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for the information professions in this year and beyond.
“SO let us wage a global struggle against illiteracy, poverty and terrorism. Let us pick up our books and pens. They are our most powerful weapons.” This powerful call-to-arms for reading and literacy was issued by Malala Yousafzai in her Nobel acceptance speech in December 2014. In all her courage and conviction, she was confronting the reality of a brutal Taliban regime that used violence to deny millions of women and girls the basic right to an education.
It has often been said that we know ourselves best, not in times of peace and prosperity, but in times of conflict and chaos.
As we look ahead to 2024, we have to be clear that our world is experiencing just such a period of conflict. From Gaza to Kyiv, the Sudan to Syria, as a new world order begins to emerge, proxy battles are being fought both at home and overseas – between ideologies and nations, religious beliefs and political movements, territorial and eco- nomic interests.
And in these proxy battles, the war on truth, on ideas, on fundamental rights and civil liberties is every bit as important as those being fought over land or resources. In times such as these, when ideas of truth, accountability and authenticity are coming under intense challenge, it would be a failure in our professional ethics to retreat
28 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
Nick Poole.
behind the passivity of the documentarist. Our role is not to record the changes in our socie- ties but to seek to influence them for the better through the active promotion of literacy, learning and access to knowledge. It is not for nothing that CILIP’s own ‘impact statement’ reads: “We change lives by improving education, literacy and prosperity for all.”
So, I wanted to use this, my last major article for CILIP, to reflect on how our professional community might navigate the challenges of a world that is both chaotic and divided, always with the ambition of bringing about a better, fairer and more equitable future.
Resisting mis- and dis-information As a political tool, populism has always sought to take advantage of people’s fears. Throughout
January-February 2024
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