Bringing Medical Librarians to the Forefront of LILAC 2026

I was delighted to be able to attend the LILAC conference 2026 on the 30th March through the CILIP bursary. This was my first experience of the LILAC conference and having heard great things about this event, I was excited to learn more about the work various sectors have been implementing to ensure that information literacy is at the heart of what we do. I sat in on discussions regarding the TRYangle – a tool to support the evaluation of information sources which has been trialled with Southampton Solent University. This approach encourages students to interconnect 3 key elements: test and check, retrieval method and your global self with an emphasis on encouraging people to question everything and meet information with curiosity. In our current world of digital transformation, tools such as these will be useful to aid discussions around information evaluations and the diversity of information sources we use and has certainly encouraged me to develop more open ended questions with my teaching.

As to be expected, the use and application of AI within Library services was the talk of the town and it was interesting to hear how different sectors have developed frameworks to teach responsible AI to change the shift from caution to confidence. The theme remained consistent- that many of us are now using these tools to help aid our work and enhance efficiency of tasks but that a human element and critical evaluation is still very much needed.

The keynote speakers spoke about ‘Sheffield’s Women of Steel’ and the research behind these stories bringing change and recognition to the city of Sheffield for their work during the War. The power of story telling was evident, and provoked ideas about how we could share our own research this way. Sue Lacey Bryant spoke passionately about her work relating to health literacy and provided insights into the prevalence and importance of this topic. Working in an area with some of the poorest health literacy it was great to see this topic being discussed and greater awareness of this issue being raised.

After a delicious lunch (I hear the spread is always great at LILAC) I attended sessions around pedagogical approaches to medical librarianship. Highlighting the ways in which, we as librarians, can encourage active learning through different teaching methods including offering a range of sessions from workshops to simulation based learning -giving learners the opportunity for hands on learning and knowledge mobilisation. The main outcome – encouraging us to be open to experimentation and learn from the success or challenges that may come with this.
The way different organisations have created community of practices or embedding information literacy through online courses was inspiring to listen to. Staff were able to build an inclusive culture (with multiple representatives from different teams) to design study skills portals and ‘prescribe’ information skills to students or embed information skills within the syllabus of a course so that these skills are being taught at the right place and right time in their academic studies.

The highlight of my day however, was attending the LILAC awards ceremony, where Siobhan Corrin (Lancashire Teaching Trust) and I had submitted our project- The Lancashire Health Hub. If you haven’t already taken a look please visit our one stop hub to direct people to reliable and accurate health care. We were overjoyed to be awarded the winners of this year’s LILAC awards – particularly seeing the competition between the academic sector. It was great to get this work recognised at such a key event and promote health librarianship. The work surrounding the hub, has allowed us to build connections with external organisations – supporting employability for our population. Our outreach work sharing the hub in some of our most deprived areas gave us insights into what our population needed to know – everything from NHS access, dentistry and maintaining long term conditions. Listening to the public’s feedback we were able to incorporate these into the hub- keeping it relevant for the public in our local area. We were able to connect to refugees and support their knowledge with healthcare in the UK, offering even the most simple advice to ensure everyone in Lancashire has access to information regarding their health – our translation tool and resources for heath conditions in other languages were incredibly valuable to them. As a team we will continue to engage with our public and work towards removing barriers to health care as best we can. I personally feel incredibly proud of the outcome of this project and receiving this award has been one of the highlights of my career to date.

Katie Roper
Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust (LSCFT)