As library practitioners and academics, we constantly face the challenge to establish the effectiveness of the services we design, the services we advocate, the services we provide. Whether this challenge occurs within a climate of expansion, of reaffirmation or of survival we have a professional responsibility to demonstrate to our users, our managers, our colleagues and our other stakeholders that we remain in touch with the evidence base for library and information practice. Although we welcome the growing interest in evidence based practice across multiple contexts, sectors and cultures it brings a further professional imperative – the need to demonstrate that by making our services more evidence based we can make a difference. Evidence based library and information practice (EBLIP) cannot afford simply to be viewed as an academic paradigm – as an ecologically-friendly recycling of otherwise neglected outputs of the academic researcher.
Information literacy is a fundamental human right. Every librarian, whether meeting the needs of schoolchildren, students, academics, professionals, the disadvantaged or the general public, has the potential to serve as a local, regional or national champion in channelling information to the point of need. However, as with water, there is a need for information not only to be channelled but also to be filtered. Evidence based practice provides a means for identifying the best information, the best services and the best outcomes for our specific user groups or for the population at large.
We contend that the 5th International Conference for Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (EBLIP5) provides the best opportunity yet for librarians across the globe to bridge the gaps that exist between sectors, between professions, between cultures. Moreover, we believe that by establishing a dialogue within information practice, as well as with other disciplines, we may be able to address some of the issues around inequitable use of resources, unacceptable provision of services and ineffective comprehension and use of information that continue to plague human society.
In organizing this conference, it is our hope to bring together practitioners, researchers and students involved in critical and reflective information practice to think through new ways to address contemporary issues of evidence based practice in less isolated, more collaborative, ways. It has aptly been said: “People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges.” This may equally be the plight of the committed but professionally isolated library practitioner. We hope you will join us between June 29th and July 3rd 2009 to take the next steps in breaking down walls to reconstruct them as bridges. Yes join us in Stockholm for Bridging the Gap!
Andrew Booth (Chair, International Program Committee)
David Herron (Co-chair, International Program Committee)
Lotta Haglund (Chair, Local Organizing Committee)
