LibFest: critical information literacy and connected relations, Rosa Sadler, Rhian Stephenson, Georgie Broad, Vicky Grant and Tomás Rocha-Lawrence

Editor's Notes

• #2: LibFest is a year-long festival of events focused on liberating the library. Based at the Information Commons, University of Sheffield, the festival builds a new cycle for our participatory action research project: the Creative Library (Liberate the Library!). Participatory action research works through iterative cycles of planning, acting and reflecting (Bradbury, 2015). The Creative Library Project (Grant, 2024; Cruz De Carvalho et al. 2024; Whitehead-Wright et al., 2024) was an AHRC-RLUK Professional Practice Fellowship Project which explored information creation as a process (ACRL, 2015). This critical information literacy project was co-led in partnership with the University’s Students’ Union Liberation Officers and positioned students from marginalised groups as active knowledge creators, in creative workshops organised in the Digital Commons, the library’s newly developed academic makerspace. LibFest aims to build on this work to celebrate the liberation priorities of our students, include previously missing voices in our university libraries, promote collaborative working, co-creation and interdisciplinary dialogue and enhance access to digital creativity through an ongoing University Library and Students’ Union partnership. Along with creative workshops, the festival includes exhibitions, curated collections, reading groups, and a decolonising your literature searching workshop. There is also a complementary library staff development programme. This presentation highlights how LibFest continues and embeds work to decolonise the library (Crilly & Everitt, 2022) partially through expanding opportunities for students from marginalised backgrounds to be knowledge creators. This promotes knowledge justice as a wider range of perspectives and approaches to information creation are embraced. Traditional academic literacy is revealed as culturally contingent (Ewing, 2022). Our work playfully disrupts the knowledge hierarchies which persist as a part of the coloniality of contemporary academia (Donovan & O’Donnell, 2013). This presentation builds upon previous work by specifically considering the challenges and opportunities of undertaking this work authentically in the context of institutional financial constraint. LibFest ensures rigour through the reflective and iterative approach of action research methodology. A recruitment pause at the start of the 2024 academic session meant that we were unable to appoint student associates as project partners, and the library team needed to reflect on how to continue to build connected relations for LibFest through more informal networks, including through a commitment to further reach out to student societies, an approach that has been student led in the past. By working with the Liberation Officers we have been able to build connections with students we may not have otherwise reached. Their engagement with our work highlighted a need for us to reconsider and develop our communications about LibFest. A smaller number of registrations for the first LibFest Creative Workshop compared to the workshops for the Creative Library Project showed the importance of connecting with students through informal networks rather than promoting LibFest to students using posters and social media. This presentation will demonstrate to the audience the importance of adopting and maintaining a proactive ‘with us, for us’ approach to change (Russell, 2019) as we work to grow and develop our commitment to liberate the library.
• #4: Our approach to IL at UoS has been conceptualized in our IDL framework since 2017 The IDL framework was produced in 2017 It Intersects digital literacy with information literacy and recognises that active learning involves positioning students as creators as well as consumers of information through the literacies of creating and disseminating information
• #5: We’ve been influenced by…. ACRL Framework for Information Literacy The ACRL framework for information literacy (2015) articulates the complexity of a rapidly evolving information ecosystem, providing a rich, philosophical underpinning to the skills and capabilities librarians have traditionally supported and taught. Critiquing how the processes involved in the creation of information impact on the product disseminated and how it is subsequently discovered has broadened the IL landscape. This has opened opportunities to take a less linear and disjointed approach to researching, creating and disseminating information. Recognising that the creation of expert knowledge is constructed within contextual traditions, points towards new opportunities for HE libraries. The move towards more democratising approaches for information creation has gained traction through research into digital literacy. understand how and why some individuals or groups of individuals may be underrepresented or systematically marginalized within the systems that produce and disseminate information
• #10: Decolonising and liberating our libraries requires that we attend to the philosophy of knowledge and broaden the epistemologies (ways of knowing) that we consider valid in our university libraries. Moving away from reductionist and hierarchical approaches to information towards a pluralistic understanding of the world involves distributing power amongst those whose voices have been erased.
• #11: Decolonising and liberating our libraries requires that we attend to the philosophy of knowledge and broaden the epistemologies (ways of knowing) that we consider valid in our university libraries. Moving away from reductionist and hierarchical approaches to information towards a pluralistic understanding of the world involves distributing power amongst those whose voices have been erased.
• #12: Melo and Nicholls (2022) assert that library makerspaces developed through an actively inclusive and critical lens have the potential to disrupt the domination of Western propositional knowledge by creating a space for other ways of knowing. We must attend to power distribution through minority communities. All this inspired us to create a library makerspace so that we could develop support for student creativity, make space for other ways of knowing and knowledge creation within the Library, and
• #14: https://digitalmedia.sheffield.ac.uk/playlist/dedicated/163871581/1_1t9gueca/1_8wfrpo34 The festival builds a new cycle for our participatory action research project: the Creative Library (Liberate the Library!). Participatory action research works through iterative cycles of planning, acting and reflecting (Bradbury, 2015). The Creative Library Project (Grant, 2024; Cruz De Carvalho et al. 2024; Whitehead-Wright et al., 2024) was an AHRC-RLUK Professional Practice Fellowship Project which explored information creation as a process (ACRL, 2015). This critical information literacy project was co-led in partnership with the University’s Students’ Union Liberation Officers and positioned students from marginalised groups as active knowledge creators, in creative workshops organised in the Digital Commons, the library’s newly developed academic makerspace. CLP workshop attendees: BHM - 7 RTN - 7 DHM - 10 LBGT+ - 4 Not including the SAs
• #15: The CLP was an IDL project that brought library literacies and library spaces together - the literacy of making in a library makerspace It provided a pilot for the Digital Commons - a library makerspace on level 1 of the Information Commons We adopted participatory action research working in partnership with the Students Union Liberation Officers and a team of five Library Student Associates partnered with librarians from our Learning and Teaching team to co-plan, co-deliver and co-reflect on creative workshops The Creative Library Project has enabled us to invest time money and deep thought into developing our Digital Commons through a lens of library liberation. Phase one launched October 2023. We are positioning students from marginalised groups as knowledge creators and reimagining our library as a space for making as well as discovering knowledge. Librarians and a team of Library Student Associates partnered together to co-facilitate creative workshops in our Digital Commons.
• #17: Rhian take over here. LibFest is a year-long festival of events focused on liberating the library. Based at the Information Commons, University of Sheffield. LibFest aims to celebrate the liberation priorities of our students, include previously missing voices in our university libraries, promote collaborative working, co-creation and interdisciplinary dialogue and enhance access to digital creativity through an ongoing University Library and Students’ Union partnership. Along with creative workshops, the festival includes exhibitions, curated collections, reading groups, and a decolonising your literature searching workshop. There is also a complementary library staff development programme and it’s part of the Library Action Plan for 2024/25
• #18: We currently organise events to coincide with four themeD history months including BHM, DHM, LGBT+ HM and WMH. And have collaborated with the Students’ Union Liberation Officers and Student Societies including BookSoc and the Poetry Society to co-produce these events.
• #19: This work maps to our IDL Framework and Comprehensive Content Strategy. Through Lib Fest we aim to use our makerspace to position students from marginalised groups as knowledge creators and disrupt knowledge hierarchies by actively including missing voices in the Library.
• #20: As we have moved our work on the CLP into Lib Fest this academic year a significant portion of our work has involved building connected relations with students to sustain what we have already achieved and develop it further.
• #21: As part of CLP we also took a ‘with us, for us’ approach to change as outlined in Russell’s Four Modes of Change model, which is an approach based on co-production and really emphasises doing research with rather than on participants. For us this was particularly important given what we’re trying to do, which is position the library as a liberated space for silenced voices - how could we really achieve this without collaborating with those who it directly affects? What really helped with that is that as well as working with the SU Liberation officers we were able to employ those Library Student Associates with the funding, which allowed us to co-produce our research. In hindsight we’ve also realised how much work was done by those employed students to recruit participants to the workshops. Unfortunately as we’ve moved what was developed as part of the Creative Library project into what is now Lib Fest, we haven’t had the budget this academic year to employ students in the same way and we initially did take a bit of a hit with engagement and attendance to workshops, which we now realise is due to the loss of multiple channels of informal networks that our Student Library Associates had established to promote the workshops and having less capacity for in person promo in our spaces which was also led by the students. The reading groups that are run as part of Lib Fest, promoted as Reading for Diversity, is a collaboration between the Library and a student society, Book Soc. We sponsor Book Soc and provide a space for their events in return for their participation in session planning and reflection on Reading for Diversity. From this collaboration Book Soc has introduced a Library Liaison role to the Committee. This has streamlined collaboration and demonstrates BookSoc's commitment to, investment and engagement in the collaboration. This model of working with societies has influenced the direction we’ve tried to take when increasing engagement in other areas of Lib Fest. So, as we develop Lib Fest It’s important to us that we continue and expand our collaborative approach and so a significant portion of the work we’ve been doing this academic year has been put into building connected relations with students to increase engagement with our workshops and exhibitions space- and actually doing and establishing this ourselves in a way that is viable even when we don’t have employed students working with us, as we realised that with or without employed students, having a network of connected relations is really important for sustainability of what we want to achieve in liberating the library.
• #22: Once we had this realisation - next step was working out how to achieve it and it really has been a journey of progression and learning - trial and error BHM Our first workshop, that aligned with BHM is when we started realising that we maybe needed to think about a different approach now we didn’t have our LSAs We did very standard, basic level comms for this workshop e.g. posters on our digital plasma screens and a couple of posts on social media and the Ethnic Diversity SU officer promoted it in several meetings she attended. We didn’t get great sign up or attendance, 3 attendees (including SU officer), although this is disappointing the students were very engaged and encouraging about attending future events. We did have a couple of students come right at the end that the SU officer brought back with them from a meeting they needed to attend. Although they were unable to participate in the activities we had some really beneficial discussion with them about our aims of Lib Fest and they were really insightful in providing advice and suggestions on how we should reach out and engage with students. What stood out most from these conversations was that we should be putting more effort into comms in the physical spaces that students occupy. From this interaction we also got the contact details of those students as they were keen to work with us on ways to further develop our promotion. DHM Then moving on to the workshop aligning with DHM we realised we needed to put more effort into the established connections we had with the SU officers. We really encouraged, Nick, the Disabled and Neurodivergent Students Officer to have more involvement in the facilitation of the workshop and this collaboration on workshop activities was a great way to encourage ownership of the session for them, which played a role in increased engagement as we really benefited from the promotion and communications they did within their networks. I reached out myself to some societies to stir up some engagement but this wasn’t very successful. However, there was significant attendance from Neurodivergent Society via connections that Nick has with them. This prompted the idea that we need to utilise the already established relationships we have with the SU officers further to develop connections with groups they know as it seemed students and societies may respond better if it comes from peer to peer via someone they already know and trust. Promo meeting/ LGBT+ In preparation for the LGBT+ History Month I (Rhian) met with several of the SU Officers and some other students we’d make connections with to discuss how we could improve comms and promo. The SU officers and students all agreed that word of mouth is the best way to start conversations and promote activities and events so agreed to use their connections to do some promotion for us. As previously raised by students at the BHM workshop, Nick, the Disabled and Neurodivergent Students Officer noted that some students have mentioned it would be good to see more promotion in physical spaces rather than online, so we put physical posters out on the Level 1 IC space. We also discussed developing the sessions with societies and inviting them to be co-creators and co-facilitators of the workshops and also providing the opportunity for them to use the Digital Commons as a space for other events and activities so they feel they can claim it as theirs. We thought this could be a win-win situation - us getting the engagement from students we're aiming for as part of Lib Fest and them promoting the groups and having alternative spaces to use. Despite these efforts, registrations for this workshop weren’t great and post meeting there was limited communication with SU officers which is likely due to it being exam period and their other commitments and priorities. Because of this we made the decision to cancel the workshop and focus on the Exhibition and Reading for Diversity group for LGBT+ HM because we’re conscious that when running the workshops because of the aims of Lib Fest we don’t want a disproportionate number of staff in the room compared to students. WHM Leading up to the workshop aligning with WHM we reflected on everything we had learnt over the previous 3 or 4 months and aimed to apply this in a way we could develop more connected relations and increase engagement. We were in regular communication with Eloise, The Women’s Officer, to keep conversation going and Lib Fest current and relevant to her plans for WHM and so she become really active in co-planning the workshop with us. We took all the opportunities she offered to us, including having a stall for Lib Fest at a Women’s History Month fair she had organised that allowed us to do some in-person promo that had been lacking since the loss of our Student associates, giving us the chance to be more visible in the SU and outside of the library. Eloise also has a really vast network of relationships with different students and societies and what we did differently this time was really lean into that, Eloise connected us with students who were interested in what we’re doing and wanted to co-produce with us. This included the Sapphic Society, Art Society, Poetry Society and a student who was fundraising for the charity, Peace over Violence. Eloise connected us with these students via meetings that we all attended and then we took it that step further by following up ourselves with those students rather than continuing to do everything via Eloise, and so we began to develop meaningful connections with them in a way that enabled us to maintain their engagement from thatinitial interest all the way through to co-planning and co-facilitating with us at the workshop. We ended up having a student co-facilitator for each of our workshop activities from these different groups and societies. We co-produced, listening to their experiential knowledge and adapting activities from their suggestions helping to make the workshop more authentically inclusive. The students really took ownership of the event , they actively promoted it, particularly via their informal channels and word of mouth that we’d already been told works. We ended up having 18 student participants and 5 student facilitators attend the workshop, demonstrating the impact of the changes we made to our approach compared to the first workshop we had for BHM with 3 attendees and the engagement issues we were having at the start of the year.
• #23: The increase of workshop attendees has also impacted the increase of submissions to our Lib Fest Exhibitions With this we’ve been able to come full circle with students from marginalised groups taking ownership of the library as a space for them to be creators, contributing to library liberation and challenging hierarchies by displaying their knowledge and outputs in the space.
• #24: This contributes to our Library Comprehensive Content Strategy and Principle of inclusivity, as we acknowledge historical and active biases within the library and the collections and seek to include missing voices in our collections and wider work.
• #25: What have the challenges been then? Having limited money and funding to employ students to work with us this year, really highlighted the impact their contributions and collaborations had on the success of our work. As discussed this has meant we’ve had to be more proactive in developing connected relations with students that we don’t employ... but it has also raised the issue of the ethics of co-production when you can’t pay. We’re very aware of the possibilities of unintentionally exploiting students for our own gain without giving them something back and so ensuring equitable relationships with the students we work with is at the forefront of our minds as we move forward. Time has been a big challenge in a number of ways - from a simple administrative point of view of contacting students, navigating availability and having meetings. While also trying to manage this within time constraints of being able to guarantee engagement and co-production before scheduled workshops. Establishing trust and buy in to our aims of Lib Fest also takes time - but is crucial and can’t be rushed if we want students to take ownership and collaborate with us. And then students are just busy..had some great conversations and ideas that didn’t come to fruition simply because, naturally, students have other commitments and priorities.
• #26: We’ve learnt that it’s important to utilise the existing connections that we already have. Students and societies initially respond better when we’re connected with them via already established staff-student relationships, so when the SU officers put us in touch with them. Instead of jumping the gun and rushing to build loads of new connections ourselves we need to nurture the ones we already have and allow them to help us. So utilise the connections the liberation officers have but then be more proactive in developing relationships ourselves with those people the SU officers put us in touch with rather than solely relying on them to do the work of maintaining those connections. That’s on us, we need to be doing that to ensure follow through. With that in mind we need to be consistent and persistent - it’s all very well having conversations and ideas but we also need to make sure things actually happen and that we enable these connected relations by actively seeking to develop them. Then of course don’t give up. We’ve learnt from LibFest and other projects and areas of our work that things don’t magically and instantly become successful. This kind of thing takes time to establish and that’s okay so you shouldn’t be disheartened if things don’t happen straight away. It just might mean you need to take time for reflection and consider a different approach.
• #27: We plan to increase the number of attendees that can register for the workshops. Previously they have been capped at 10, simply because we thought that would be most manageable. However, the students who worked with us challenged us on that as they felt uncomfortable promoting something that people might not be able to sign up to and this also made us consider does it being a smaller number put people off signing up too. We increased the number significantly for WHM and had a really successful workshop with a record number of attendees, so we know it is manageable. We’ll also update our registration form to actually collect information on how they heard about the workshops for a better understanding of the affects of what we’ve been doing to build connections and their impact. We’ll still continue with a range of comms. Our colleague Vic, asked one of the students how she had heard about our Women's History Month creative workshop - she said she'd seen a poster, her friend had mentioned it and then she saw it on Instagram. Seeing it in so many places had made her think she was meant to attend! I think that speaks to that feeling of 'is this for me' that students might have. Lots of comms is really important for promoting that sense of inclusion. This year we did a lot of learning in semester one, we’re hoping we can implement what we’ve learnt straight away next academic year to progress more quickly in the next round of Lib Fest. We’ll need to account for new SU officers being in post and potentially new society committee members so our plan is to act early which will involve inviting students to a Lib Fest welcome event. To ensure our connected relations are sustainable and meaningful we’ll start small by focusing on building a relationship with just one or two more societies. From the success of our collaboration with BookSoc, money has been delegated to expand society sponsorship so we will try to progress what we’ve already started with the societies we’ve worked with this year and see if they would be interested in sponsorship and collaborating with us further on Lib Fest first. We also hope this will help to keep these relationships equitable while we also ensure we are ethical in what we ask and expect of the students collaborating with us.