SCONUL Autumn conference: Fostering a resilient and sustainable library

The SCONUL Autumn Conference: Fostering a sustainable and resilient library took place on 18 November in Birmingham. The conference brought members together to discuss common experiences and to share learning, and to collaborate on planning for the future.

Topics included:

• cybersecurity and business continuity
• climate sustainability and behaviour change
• sharing practice on successfully meeting the financial challenges facing the sector
• new approaches to content negotiations
• and opportunities to discuss the sector needs for CPD in growing the next generation of library leaders.

Speakers included:

• Dr Jummy Okoya, Dean of Office for Institutional Equity and Associate Professor of Leadership and EDI at the University of East London on leveraging leadership superpowers in turbulent times.
• Ciaran Talbot, Associate Director: AI and Ideas Adoption at the University of Manchester; Liz Jolly, Chief Librarian at The British Library on cybersecurity and business continuity and Mark Wynne, Assistant Director, IT Services, Liverpool John Moores University on cybersecurity and the resilient library: lessons learnt from the frontline.
• Sue Ackermann, Director, University of Nottingham Libraries; David Clover, Deputy Director Library and Student Support: Head of Library and Learning Enhancement, Middlesex University and Regina Everitt, Assistant COO (Service Excellence) and Director of Library, Archives, and Learning Services at the University of East London, on successfully navigating the financial challenges facing the sector
• Jo Walley, Convenor of the True Leaders Network will lead a workshop session on building a confident and creative workforce: exploring the library’s CPD requirements. Marking the launch of a SCONUL project exploring the community’s needs for CPD support
• Sandra Bracegirdle, Director of Collection Strategies, University of Manchester and Jane Saunders, Associate Director: Content and Discovery at Leeds University Libraries and Co-convenor of the RLUK Collections Strategy Network will hold a workshop session on UK Print Book Collection (UK PBC): Managing Down Print Collections. This session will lay down ways of working together as libraries to deliver efficiencies for our own institutions whilst preserving access to content across the UK
• Elaine Sykes, Head of Open Research at Lancaster University will be leading the workshop on the future of SCONUL Statistics. This session is a real opportunity to help shape the key SCONUL service and help us future proof it in the coming years
• Rowan Williamson, Associate Director Library Services and Support at the University of the Arts London, and Deborah Phelpstead, Head of Sustainability at Birmingham City University on driving behavioural change to meet the climate sustainability challenge
• Anna Vernon, Head of Portfolio, Content Licensing at Jisc on the next round of content negotiations and next generation open access.

A summary and presentations from this event are available here. You will need a SCONUL username and password to access them.

This event was supported by:

Sponsors: