#ARLG16 part 2: Attending

Last week I attended the ARLG 2016 conference, held at Conference Aston within Aston University. I attended for just one day, Tuesday 28^th July, and this blog post will record which sessions I attended and the overall experience of being a conference delegate.

The morning keynote speaker was Peter Kilcoyne, ILT director at Heart of Worcestershire College. He outlined a large scale project regarding blending learning within FE. Colleges are encouraged to participate in blended learning as a means of combatting teacher shortages, but creating online resources on a mass scale is expensive and time consuming. HoW college leads a consortium, which colleges may join for a fee. The idea is all member colleges will create resources which will be shared amongst fellow members, thus saving time (and therefore money) in the creation of online resources. The project was outlined from IT and senior management perspectives rather than a teaching perspective and this was reflected in the content. Coming from a college background, I could see the value in the project and it was interesting to learn of it, but at times I felt this particular presentation’s relevance to librarians was limited. Saying that, it was good to see a keynote session coming from an FE perspective – the majority of sessions appear to be aimed at HE practitioners. 

#ARLG16 part 1: Presenting

Recently, I have been lucky enough to present a workshop at the ARLG 2016 conference. This came about as a result of my winning ARLG’s Alison Northover Bursary, which I used to attend the 2014 ARLG conference.  I had such an amazing experience attending the conference that I was determined to contribute to the next one.

I kept my eyes open for the call for papers, submitted a proposal in December 2015 and in January 2016 found out it had been accepted. I was thrilled! The proposal was based around a book folding workshop, to be co-presented with an ex-colleague, Fran Heap. In the past, Fran and I had both used book folding to lead various library initiatives to engage users and raise the profile of the library. We felt we could share these experiences in the hope that other library staff may be interested.

ARLG conference: Newsletter reflection

The following text featured in the ARLG national newsletter, February 2015. It is a short reflection of my attendance at the ARLG 2014 conference, enabled by ARLG's Alison Northover Bursary.


I was thrilled to be the 2014 Alison Northover Bursary recipient. This funded my attendance at the 2014 ARLG conference, entitled ‘The final frontier: to boldly go where you have never gone before’. I had never been to a conference before and was very excited about attending. Looking back, I was not disappointed…

Brighton, baby! ARLG 2014 conference

Earlier this year I was successful in applying for the 2014 AlisonNorthover Bursary, awarded by ARLG. I used the award to fund my attendance at the 2014 ARLG conference, entitled ‘The final frontier: to boldly go where youhave never gone before’. This was the second CILIP ARLG study conference and was held at the University of Sussex, near Brighton, between 23^rd-25^th June.

I have pondered long and hard how to best record and reflect upon my attendance at the conference, and even now – several months later – I’m still not sure of the best way to approach it. The conference offered a very full schedule of talks and workshops, and I came away with a wealth of knowledge. I met new people, learned new things about myself and had an amazing time. Attempting to put the entire experience into words is a tall order! It may not be the most innovative method, but I shall tackle it in the form of a daily diary, leading to a final post summarising my overall thoughts. I make no promises, but shall attempt to keep the entries relatively short, to prevent them from becoming overly descriptive, tedious reads.

And so, dear reader, settle down on the sofa with a warm drink as I take you back to the summer of 2014…

Alison Northover Bursary 2014

I'm all smiles!
Image by Ben Smith

This time next week, I will have arrived at the University of Sussex in Brighton, ready to attend my very first conference. Conferences are something I’ve always had an interest in attending, but due to the cost of tickets it is has never been plausible. Until now…

Towards the end of last year I decided to apply for bursaries with the hope of securing a sponsored place to a conference. Whenever a bursary was advertised I considered applying for it, and in the end I applied for three. All three were to attend CILIP’s Academic and Research Libraries Group (ARLG) conference, entitled ‘Academic libraries: the final frontier’. One of my applications was rejected as I fell outside the geographical boarder for applications, but my other two applications were both successful. Both bodies contacted me to say I’d been successful within a week of each other, and I accepted the bursary with the more substantial financial package. I was incredibly flattered and humbled to win both. I won’t name the bursary I turned down out of respect for the person it was then offered to, but I am both surprised and pleased to be the 2014 recipient of ARLG’s Alison Northover Bursary.