
I was fortunate to win a bursary from the Information School to attend the CILIP Conference held in Brighton. This was my first opportunity at attending a large-scale conference and to meet other likeminded professionals. Not only was it an opportunity to learn about all different topics, it was also a chance for me to meet other iSchool students at the iSchool stand and to also discuss the distance learning course to prospective students. I must say I was surprised at how many people wanted to discuss distance learning, and I am pleased to have been able to chat to them about the work and study balance.
My highlight quote from the whole conference had to be from Sally Walker when she said:
“I’m exactly where I should be, doing exactly what I should be doing. That is peace”
I’m going to be taking this with me wherever I go and remember this moving forward with my career. I really enjoy hearing career stories, as I find they are a great way of finding out about career paths I didn’t know anything about before, they always get me thinking of all the different jobs I could have in the future.
There was so much to see and hear at the conference, that it was a tough choice to choose which breakout sessions to attend. I will just discuss two of my favourite sessions that I attended.
The first session I chose to attend was “Blurring the boundaries: the reshaping of library spaces”. I chose this seminar session as it has very close ties with my dissertation, so it was a great opportunity to hear about what other libraries are doing with their spaces. I was particularly amazed by the work at The Hive in Worcester, they have a fully integrated library, in which they have both a public and an academic library. It was great to hear how there is a focus on being more than just a library, something which I think is extremely important to the future of public libraries.