Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

Research report: The impact of AI, machine learning, automation and robotics on the information profession

The purpose of this independent research is to help our professional community to understand how AI, machine learning, process automation and robotics are either already impacting the daily work of healthcare information professionals or likely to do so in the near future.

In it author Dr Andrew Cox from Sheffield University, calls for a joined-up and coherent response from information professionals, enabling us to maximise the benefits of AI, machine learning, automation and robotics for information users while mitigating the emerging risks.

The full research report, published by CILIP with the support of Health Education England, sets out a detailed and methodical analysis of the challenges and opportunities presented by this new generation of technologies.

Report at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19gWoLV_rSP1qKS9Z8KOoorRAQuHmFN4u/view 

While I am delighted to be here, I have to admit that I thought long and hard about whether to accept the invitation to speak today. I am aware that we’ve heard a lot of voices like mine, that voices like mine can drown out other people's voices, and that really it is time for me, for us at CILIP to stop speaking and start listening.

But we also have to be accountable, to our members, to the profession, to society at large. We have to explain ourselves – not to dictate terms but to set out a commitment to change and to learn, and to listen.

Because all of us that hold leadership positions in this sector have to confront the fact that we are where we are because of a system of unseen privilege – a system which lifts some of us up while holding others down. The basis of that privilege is rightly being challenged. We are being challenged, rightly, to reflect on that privilege critically and to think about the impact it has on other people’s right to shape our profession.

As a profession, we aspire to universality – but we have to be critical about what ‘universal’ really means. I don’t want to be complicit in a system that promotes some voices at the expense of others.

Most college students have been exposed to more technology than students of previous generations. This does not make them technology experts.  Students do a lot of searching online for information. This does not make them expert, or even good, searchers. Thanks to Google, students can always find information on any topic.  This does not mean that they have found true, accurate, useful information and does not make them expert finders of information. Students need instruction and guidance in learning how to find, evaluate, select and use information, just as they need instruction and guidance in learning anything else. They are not born "information literate" and frequent, uninstructed Googling will not make them so.

Margaret Casely-Hayford, Chair of CILIP’s Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Awards Diversity Review, talks to Rob Mackinlay about her experience of society’s ingrained inequality, how this has informed the review, and why all aspects of language and process need to be implemented carefully by anyone hoping to increase diversity.