Reflections on 14th International Congress of Medical Librarianship, Glasgow 14-16 July 2026

I was delighted to attend ICML 2026 in Glasgow 14-16 July 2026. Can I begin by sharing my gratitude to YOHLLNet for providing a bursary and therefore making this possible. I had previously attended HLG in Scarborough in 2017,  but haven’t been to a major conference since and therefore was really looking forward to the opportunity. Like many colleagues, I feel like the majority of the work I do concentrates around the day-to-day Activities of delivering a library service, therefore, I relish the opportunity to learn more about developments in our field.

First morning, After the initial buzz of seeing colleagues and friends from all over the country and an insightful first keynote around the work of CILIP in Scotland, it was into the 1st parallel sessions. An obvious recurring theme across all three days was around AI and how health librarians are delivering the profound changes AI is creating to our field in practice. So an initial highlight of this was from John Barbrook of Lancaster University presenting his work on using prompt engineering in ChatGPT in Systematic Review searching for sensitive topic areas. My main takeaway from that talk is that ChatGPT can be used alongside the searchers skills to increase sensitivity of searches and potentially reduce bias. I’ve not used ChatGPT before in this way, so with the prompts suggested by John, this is something tangible I can explore when searching.

I was really keen to leave the conference with clear ideas and interventions which I could implement or adapt to my service. So with that in mind, couple more highlights from day one particularly useful to my work. Firstly, Andrea Harrow from the Medical Library at the University of Southern California and her presentation on delivering collaborative abstract writing workshops. I deliver writing for publication and poster creation sessions so this really peaked my interest. The session provided a case study on the development and evaluation of a structured abstract-writing workshop programme designed to increase confidence and capability among healthcare professionals. The presenter talked through the programme and also gave me some food for thought on how she collected feedback data, providing the measurable impact of the intervention on participants confidence around developing their own abstracts.

A final highlight of day one and something else I will be exploring putting into practice was “an innovative online systematic review escape room for early career clinicians” by Tracey McKee and Paul Cannon from the University of Glasgow. One of the challenges I face is making literature search training interactive and developing effective plenary sessions at the end of searching demonstrations to get a sense that participants have taken something away from the session. This presentation showcased how the presenters developed a Microsoft OneNote-based escape room containing multiple-choice puzzles focused on methodological guidance, Boolean operators, and search  syntax. I enjoyed the creative approach to teaching information literacy and systematic review skills, areas that can often be perceived as technical or intimidating by learners. The use of gamification through an escape room appears to have increased engagement while introducing complex concepts in a memorable and accessible way. I deliver a number of courses this exercise would fit into and enhance, so really hoping to develop something similar.

On to day two. Worth saying that I am being very selective choosing my highlights, there were so many brilliant and varied presentations, so I am being very selective here! Another great presentation from day two came from Lisa Riddington from Gloucestershire who presented on the development of the Gloucestershire Evidence & Research Repository (GERR), a system-wide research repository designed to showcase and manage research outputs across organisations within the Gloucestershire Integrated Care System (ICS). This was particularly interesting to me as we have developed a similar system with the same software in Sheffield, so I am always looking to swap notes with people and explore ways of improving our system. Very much like our repository, the repository aims to promote collaboration, increase visibility of research activity, support research growth, and foster a culture of knowledge sharing. While the system was similar to ours, I was struck by the branding and marketing approach they took to promote the repository. Another difference between ours and Gloucestershire’s was their greater inclusion of grey literature. So the presentation has given me a number of ideas for how we can improve the system and grow it further.

An afternoon highlight from day 2 “Tea Trolley teaching as a method of delivering library outreach” by Suzannah Bridge and Hannah McGivern from the University of Oxford health. Recognising that clinical staff often have limited time to engage with library services, this case study discussed taking outreach services directly to the ward, to promote library services and teach colleagues about resources available to them and how to use them. Outreach is a long standing challenge for the health librarian, so this practical and innovative outreach approach that meets healthcare staff where they work, rather than expecting them to attend traditional training sessions was particularly impressive. There was a mood in the past to embed library services which I think fell away a bit during the pandemic; this is renewing that vision to the current age and nature of the health service. I really hope to replicate something similar, although I do recognise that this can be a challenge in a large service such as mine.

On the third day, after a very interesting keynote talk around health literacy delivery in Scotland, it was my turn to present. When I had previously attended HLG, I did not present so was feeling slightly nervous – especially as I was in the big room! However it was a valuable opportunity to reflect on a unique period of my professional career and share lessons learned with fellow health librarians. Revisiting the narrative highlighted the uniqueness of the situation and how rewarding the experience had been, by creating a fully operational NHS library service with its own spaces, staff, collections and strategic direction. I thought the presentation had gone well and the feedback was positive.

The afternoon included a number of lightning talks. A highlight of these was Ryan Ford, now at University Hospitals Leicester. We rely a lot on KnowledgeShare for delivery of Current Awareness, so was really pleased to see his innovative approach on the redesign of current awareness using Microsoft systems.

In conclusion, I found attending ICML 2026 in Glasgow an inspiring and professionally rewarding experience. Due to work commitments, I have felt I’ve had little opportunity to really engage with my profession over the last few years, so I am really grateful to have three full days to really immerse myself in the profession and learn about many best practice examples of health librarianship from across the world. Listening to colleagues from different countries and sectors provided valuable new perspectives and ideas that I can apply in my own practice. As previously mentioned, the conference provided an excellent opportunity to explore how health librarianship is evolving in response to new challenges, especially artificial intelligence. Ultimately though, the best thing about the conference was the opportunity to meet international colleagues, to share our personal experiences in our local settings; in part as our profession must continue to be customer-focused led with the human, personal touch despite the growing prevalence of AI.

Daniel Froste, Knowledge and Library Services Manager, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust