DARTS9 reflections: Part One

CILIP North East Regional Member Network were pleased to offer a bursary to Cheryl Francis from University of Sunderland to attend the DARTS conference. Cheryl has shared a review of her conference experience and we're delighted to share that here in three parts. 

DARTS9 reflections: Part One

Wednesday 21st May – Thursday 22nd May 2025

"Don't challenge power, assume power" 

Thanks to a bursary from CILIP Northeast I was able to undertake my first ever visit to DARTS, a biannual conference run by CILIP ARLG. I was particularly drawn to this conference as it was focused on encouraging librarians to actively take part in research. I applied for the bursary as there was little chance of me being able to attend otherwise. All the slides are available on the Darts web page: https://arlgdarts.wordpress.com/   

The Keynote on the first day was by Dr Elizabeth Gadd, known as Lizzie. I had not heard of her before, but I many people at the conference (and beyond) are very aware of her impact. Lizzie set the tone of the conference beautifully, particularly highlighting the good libraries can do and how librarians can make a difference. The title of this blog is taken from her talk, she said:

“Don’t challenge power, assume power, decide what needs doing and make the change. Inhabit your own voice and don’t ‘other’ your problems. Embrace the painful process of change.”

Lizzie spent much of her career working on and advocating for research evaluation metrics that would present a more wholistic picture of output. She continues to advocate for a fairer system. In the publication-dominant culture, where authors give up so much to publishers, she has been highlighting the nuance that was lost in the quantitative focus of the REF. “What you measure is what you get more of” she says. “Changes to metrics need to be global”.

Lizzie also talked about the Matthew effect (or cumulative advantage) and the academic wheel of privilege to set the tone on how librarians can be part of uplifting others.

Academic wheel of privilege

There was something about the personal and professional story she weaved that felt uplifting. By the end I felt connected to the library and information science community in the room, and beyond.

Overview of the conference

I found the conference had recurring themes based around both how well-placed libraries are to undertake research and yet how barriers to research for librarians is and professional staff in general is very real. I decided a SWOT- type theme (using Strengths, Opportunities, Barriers) theme would work well, so over the next two posts I cover what was mentioned in terms of library and librarian participation in research from a Strengths, Opportunities and Barriers perspective.  

Part 2 | Part 3