The annual LILAC conference (Librarians’ Information Literacy Annual Conference) will take place in The Wave between 30th March and 1st April 2026.
The conference is aimed at all professions who are involved with, research or teach information literacy, or are interested in related literacies such as media literacy, digital literacy, AI literacy and educational technologies.
This year’s conference features keynote presentations from Sue Lacey Bryant, chair of the national Health and Digital Partnership and Professor of Knowledge and Information Mobilisation at Manchester Metropolitan University; Sheila Webber, Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield, Honorary Fellow of CILIP and board member of the international collaboration Information Literacy is a Discipline (ILIAD); and Matteo Bergamini MBE, founder of Shout Out UK and pioneer in UK political and media literacy.
Dr Pam McKinney, Dr Sharon Wagg and PhD student Laura Woods will also present their work on digital literacy through arts and culture activities.
Laura Woods will give an additional talk on gendered information in engineering education, and fellow PhD student Laura Williams will give two talks; one about the role of social media content creators in fitness information, and another about information literacy in leisure contexts through the lens of hobbyist mycology.
Also presenting is Dr Peter Holdridge, University Teacher in the School of Information, Journalism and Communication, as well as Dr Graham McElearney, Rosa Sadler, Jack Emmens and Dr Vicky Grant from the University Library.
The full draft programme can be found here.
Dr Vicky Grant, Head of Library Student Education said: “LILAC is a fantastic opportunity to celebrate information literacy right here in Sheffield. We will be offering visits to our wonderful libraries to visiting librarians from around the world.
“Colleagues from the University Library will also be facilitating a workshop entitled Making, makerspaces and the role of information literacy where we will be using the digital sewing machines and showcasing a collaborative code crafting workshop, creating embroidery using TurtleStitch which we run for students in the Digital Commons. This will engage delegates in the pedagogy of making and the literacy of knowledge creation, highlighting how our university libraries provide spaces not only for knowledge discovery but also for knowledge creation. We will also be working with colleagues from the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) to showcase their library based Supercharged by AI exhibition.”
Dr Pam McKinney said: “We are honoured to host the LILAC conference within our flagship building, the Wave. Information literacy has long been a pillar of our School’s identity; our staff and students lead world-class research that continues to evolve the practice of this vital discipline.
“By partnering closely with the Library and our dedicated student and staff volunteers, we’re proud to support this year’s event. Beyond research, we’re committed to the future of information literacy practice - teaching this as a core component of our Library Master’s programmes to prepare the next generation of information literacy educators.”
Sheila Webber said: “It’s wonderful to be keynoting at LILAC in my own workplace - even more so when I know that other staff and students from the University are also adding their insights and knowledge to the LILAC programme.
“Dr Pam McKinney and I will, as usual, be liveblogging the conference for my Information Literacy Weblog. This helps people who can’t attend the conference get a flavour of the presentations and we get some nice feedback from that. At the last LILAC, Pam liveblogged 6000+ words, and we’ll see if we can beat that total this year!”
CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) is the UK's library and information association. LILAC is organised by CILIP’s Information Literacy Group, a ‘special interest group’ which supports librarians interested in information literacy across higher education, public libraries, special libraries, school libraries and beyond.
Find out more about LILAC and book your place.