3 May 2024
Monday
Having travelled up on the first train, I arrived in Glasgow bright and early, excited to hear from lots of different speakers. I had spent time over the weekend curating my agenda based on the program, so already had a good idea of which sessions I wanted to get the most out of.
Monday’s sessions started out with a discussion around research integrity. I found this session really prompted me to think about the way research is viewed, and how the inherent trust placed in it can be eroded by poor practice. I agreed with the idea of research needing better oversight/regulation, however, as a panelist said ‘every metric will eventually be gamed’ – even if regulatory initiatives are implemented, there will always be a few bad actors trying to work things in their favour. It will be interesting to see how this issue pans out in the future.
I next went to a breakout session on how to run an OA service alongside a primary role. I was interested in this as part of my very varied collections role includes approving APC requests and offering publishing advice to researchers. This session gave me insight into issues within OA that I’d previously not encountered – researcher infighting, and dealing with rejections – alongside others I was familiar with – confusing approval workflows, affiliation issues and allowance differences between different deals. From this session I got some ideas about how I could improve my own work – for example creating a deal tracker, increasing libguide information around deals, and disseminating resources to help with choosing licenses for publications.
The next breakout session was about how libraries can support student mental health, which I went to as wellbeing support is an interest of mine, and wanted to get inspiration for what we can do in our institution. It was sad to learn that many institutions are seeing some version of the same issues with student wellbeing, but somewhat comforting to know that we’re not alone in facing these things. After listening to this session, I’m keen to look into upskilling our workforce to help them dealing with difficult situations. While we do have some mental health first aiders, this session showed me that it could be useful for all staff to have a grounding in wellbeing support, including a reminder of our internal routes for safeguarding processes. It has also encouraged me to work alongside other departments – for example working on the student mental health charter with non-library colleagues.
One of the last things I watched on Monday was the SWOT analysis for academic libraries. While this didn’t immediately inform my practice, it did really help to put the bigger picture together, and again see that all libraries are in a similar place at the moment, no matter the size of the institution. I found this session useful as it has potential to inform the more strategy-based work I’m getting involved in as a team leader.
For networking and meeting new people, I found the Award Winner photo session really helped to break the ice. Meeting the other recipients meant that even though I’d come to the conference completely alone, I was able to quickly get to know others and spot them at events and sessions. Having people to walk around the exhibition hall with was also useful as it felt less awkward than starting conversations on your own. On Monday night I went to the Quiz and Dinner for the evening, which was a nice opportunity to continue networking whilst being a little bit competitive! Even though we came second, I had a really good time.
Tuesday
The next morning started with a plenary session about TAs and OA publishing. As I’ve only recently started working in this area, I don’t have the same insight that others may have and was concerned/surprised to hear that TAs are actually leading to a decline in green open access, and that the intended purpose of flipping titles to OA would take 70 years at the current speed of action. From this session I’ve gained some further reading to take a look at, including JISC’s review of TAs in the UK.
Tuesday’s first breakout session was on algorithmic literacy. Like myself, I think a lot of people went to this session due to interest of issues around AI use in HE, but this session showed me that there are other aspects – for example algorithmic use in automatic grading, and hiring process, and also the opportunity for the library to build different roles within data analytics, ethics, management etc. The session signposted towards a wealth of useful links and learning resources which I look forward to looking through in my own time to see if anything will be useful for our researchers.
In the subsequent lightning sessions, I came across GetFTR, which I’d never heard of before – but I’m glad I have as I’ll be looking into it in more detail to see if it’s something possible for us to implement in our library, to help students with finding access to resources.
The next plenary session on Predatory Publishers was very interesting, as at our institution we’ve had a handful of staff come to the library for assistance with publishing issues. In this session I contributed by asking a question about the hallmarks of predatory publishers, which was read out and answered by the panelists. I was glad to be given a list of things to think about when researchers come to us with questions – the more the library educates itself around the issues, the better we can help our researchers.
The last thing I attended on Tuesday was the HAGGIS Workshop. I was particularly interested in this as making e-resource work is a large part of my new role, and looking for possible guidance. I enjoyed the interactive nature of the workshop, and the discussions around e-resource management gave me lots to look at in my own institution to improve user access. I liked the suggested solution of a collaborative system to help in organising the management of databases and their content, but am hesitant of the ability for this to be a permanent solution due to the sheer volume of e-resource databases and the ever-changing landscape. However, if there was ever a group to tackle an information management problem, I guess it’s librarians!
While I didn’t stay out all night for the gala, I did very much enjoy that it was based in a science museum. As well as having a great time with the experiments, I thought this was a great way to easily interact with a lot of new people, which helped to immediately dissipate any feelings of overwhelm or awkwardness. 10/10 choice for a gala setting!
Wednesday
Wednesday started with a plenary around AI and GPTs. While this isn’t an active part of my daily role, I did really enjoy understanding a bit more about the world of generative AI and it was very interesting to see the detailed work that people had put into various projects – for example CORE’s attempt to battle hallucinatory citations by only using real content.
I then went to a breakout session on the future of R&P deals after the end of block grant funding. Although out institution doesn’t use block grants, I was very interested in what the session had to offer in terms of how to look at R&P deals going forward, as part of my role is to manage and renew these. This session gave me lots to think about for when the next R&P renewal comes up for us, and I’m hoping to use the ideas and resources presented in the session to help build a workflow to use internally next time around.
Following this I attended a session on collections engagement. While I don’t personally do much academic liaising and student engagement, I work closely with teams who do and was hoping to bring back some ideas for them. Among other ideas, I’m hoping to work closely with my colleagues to collate and organise information around underused resources, as it will be good to have oversight of this. Another idea I got from this session was to use NSS scores to identify courses and modules that could be worth looking at, to make sure their resources are up-to-date.
The conference then finished up with a completely different type of session on leadership and authenticity. I really enjoyed this session and thought it was a good end to the conference, even if it did prompt me to tackle some difficult themes in the moments of silent reflection. All in all, this was a great first UKSG and I really enjoyed learning a lot about the sector, and feeling part of a really engaged and forward-looking community.