Episode 11 of Chatting Info Lit is now live on Soundcloud, Apple and Spotify!
“I guarantee you, you have a perspective that is valuable”.
In Episode 11, Laura Woods (PhD student at the University of Sheffield, Co-chair of the Information Literacy Group Committee) joins the podcast to promote action learning sets at this year’s LILAC conference in Sheffield. She speaks to Kerrianne Orriss about how action learning sets work, how listeners can get involved, and why they are especially beneficial to new professionals who would like to develop their practice and widen their professional networks.
You can hear Kerrianne’s conversation with Laura on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Soundcloud
Episode Links:
Apply to join a LILAC learning set! See the blog post which includes the link to the expressions of interest form: infolit.org.uk/keep-that-lilac-b…ac-learning-sets/
Randomised Coffee Trials by ILG New Professionals – sign up to our New Professionals mailing list to hear about the next ones, coming soon: eepurl.com/ivBM_A
NHS webpage on action learning sets, has some useful links out to further information: library.hee.nhs.uk/knowledge-mobil…h-best-practice
Journal article “Working together: supporting projects through action learning”: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1….2003.00461.x
LILAC Stories report: eprints.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/id/eprint/12245/
The book “Feminist Pedagogy for Library Instruction”: litwinbooks.com/books/feminist-pe…rary-instruction/
Episode Transcript [edited and abridged]:
Please tell us a bit about yourself!
My name is Laura Woods, and I am currently the co-chair of the Information Literacy Group. I share the role with my wonderful colleague Anne-Lise Harding. We’ve been co-chairs together for just over a year now. I’ve been on the ILG Committee for about ten years in total. I started off as membership secretary, then I took over as secretary, then deputy chair, and I’m now co-chair. Outside of this volunteering work, I am studying towards a PhD in librarianship at the University of Sheffield. I’m looking at the information experiences of female engineering students. I’m interested in how the gendered nature of their learning environment interacts with their information literacy and their information behaviours. I’ve come to the PhD a little bit later in my career, so before I started the PhD, I had about 15 years of experience as a librarian.
What are learning sets and how they can play a part in developing our skills as librarians?
Learning sets or action learning sets, as they’re also known, are like a tool for collaborative learning and problem solving. They emerged from workplace training in the 1940s, so they’re quite a long-established tool. Nowadays, they’re very heavily used in large complex organisations so places like the NHS, for example.
The whole idea of an action learning set is that a small group of people, ideally about five to seven seems to be the agreed-on number, and people with diverse backgrounds and experiences come together to share their knowledge or to work together to solve a specific problem. And the most important most important part of an action learning set is that it’s a cycle of learning, doing, and reflecting. You come together to learn from each other, try out new things, or solve existing problems, and you then reflect on how that went before you go on to try again or go to another iteration. So, it works well with the whole idea of reflective practice, which is very central to things like CILIP Chartership. With a learning set, even if you don’t have something specific that you’re wanting to get out of it, just that experience of getting to know other people and building those kinds of relationships is hugely valuable, especially if you are a new professional.
How did the idea for learning sets at LILAC come about?
I first came across the concept of action learning sets when I was studying towards my postgrad certificate in higher education. We’d chat about any teaching and learning challenges we were experiencing or a new idea that someone wanted to try out. It was a brilliant way of getting to know a lot of the academics at the university. But the main inspiration for doing this at LILAC was from a fantastic piece of research that Jess Haigh completed. She’s actually been on the podcast before to talk about her project, which was called LILAC Stories. She interviewed people who’d attended, and she really dug into what makes LILAC valuable as a conference, what people find valuable about it, and what’s missing from the experience. She presented it at LILAC last year in 2025 and I remember being sat there in the audience and just thinking, with my ILG chair hat on, this is amazing. How can we build on this and how could we support even more learning and collaboration?
Jess found a lot about the valuable relationships that had arisen out of LILAC, like people who had taken new jobs, explored new research directions or met collaborative partners, and all things that had been sparked initially by attending LILAC. However, she did also find that those benefits are not equally distributed. If you’re new to it…I remember my first LILAC, thinking ‘how do I even break into this?’ And I did, but it took time, and it is a challenging thing to do. Also, if you are neurodivergent and you maybe don’t feel like you have the social confidence to just go up and start talking to somebody, having a structure that allows you to do that would be hugely beneficial for a lot of people.
How can we take part in a LILAC action learning set? How do we apply and what happens next?
We are going to hold an initial LILAC learning sets workshop at LILAC this year. The programme is being put together as we speak, and details will be available with the draft programme. The workshop will be one of the parallel sessions. You’ll need to sign up to attend the workshop in the slot that’s held. We’re going to use the workshop time to allocate people to a learning set and for the groups to start getting to know each other and to set some learning goals and intentions.
After the conference, we plan to host four online meetings throughout the year. They will be a chance to catch up with your learning set, discuss what’s progressed for you on the learning points that you agreed at LILAC, as well as any challenges you’re experiencing or any new ideas. If you have tried out something new from LILAC, you can share your experiences on that and reflect on that as well. The Information Literacy Group will be hosting and facilitating those four meetings spread throughout the year. But of course, as a learning set, you’re quite welcome to arrange your own meetings outside of that. You might decide to keep in touch via email, or you might arrange the odd Teams chat throughout the year.
If you’re listening to this and you’re interested in taking part in a learning set, we have an online form for expressions of interest. If you fill out the form, you’re not committing to attend. If you’re not sure yet whether you want to take part, or even if you’re not sure yet whether you’re going to attend LILAC at all, just sign up anyway, and we’ll be in touch once the parallel session bookings open to let you know how you can sign up to the workshop. Even if you’re not sure whether you’ll be attending LILAC at all, pop your details on anyway, and then if you’re interested in the LILAC learning sets idea, we can let you know if it runs again in future and if it’s potentially being opened out to beyond LILAC attendees.
It sounds like someone who’s doing their chartership or doing a course in information literacy would be able to use their experience at the learning sets as part of their portfolio. What practical ways could they do this?
I think it’s fantastic evidence for any kind of professional development, whether that’s chartership or for your workplace appraisals. It’s great evidence for collaborative teamworking and knowledge of the wider professional environment. I think the suggestion about, writing a short reflective piece about a learning set meeting and what came up for you, or if there were any ideas that learning sets gave you that you wanted to try out. That could be something to take to your manager and say, ‘I’ve heard about this idea taking place in another library. I’d love to give this a try’. I think however you want to make use of the learning sets is totally up to you. But think of it as professional development and how it could connect into other professional development activities that you are doing.
Do you have hopes for the future with learning sets? For example, would you like to roll out the idea beyond LILAC?
This is a pilot project so right now, we’re really just trying it out to see if it works. I have high hopes that it will. I know how valuable learning sets can be, so I really hope that we can get this off the ground at LILAC. Trying it out and seeing what works is very much in the spirit of action learning, so I think we are practising what we preach. We are focusing solely on LILAC attendees for now, just because this is a way to test it out and see if it works. Depending on how this goes and what we learn along the way, I would love to open this up more widely.
This was one of the things that came out of Jess Haigh’s LILAC Stories research: the voices that are missing from LILAC. Not everybody gets to attend, and we would love to find ways to bring more people into the information literacy community, even if they’re not able to attend the conference. We will be reflecting on evaluating this pilot, see how it goes and see how potentially it could expand in future.
What advice would you give to a new professional who wants to develop their information literacy skills, plug into networks and progress in their careers if they can’t go to a conference?
The great thing about learning sets is that anyone can create their own, so if the idea of a learning set sounds like something that could be useful for you, but you’re not able to come to LILAC, why not have a chat to your immediate colleagues and see if anyone would be interested in arranging informal non-hierarchical meetings just to reflect and learn together? A regular lunch and learn type session can be really helpful to do within your own workplace, or even with people outside of your workplace.
I think, particularly for new professionals, it’s a great time of your career to be meeting other people who are at the same position as you and sharing a bit of experience around. Librarianship is quite a small world. I’m still in contact with people who were new professionals while I was and they’ve been important relationships for me over the years – we’ve been able to keep in touch and share experiences, tips and job vacancies. So just try and reach out to other people. LinkedIn is a great tool for doing that. Have a look at the other institutions local to you and see if you can find other people in entry level or graduate trainee type positions or ask around your own colleagues and see if anyone has contacts elsewhere. I also want to plug the New Professionals Randomised Coffee Trials. I think these such a great way of just getting to meet a new person.
I strongly recommend volunteering with your professional body. I’ve been on the ILG committee for the last ten years. I’ve met people through that who are not just colleagues and collaborators but also consider really good friends. CILIP has regional networks all over the country. Find your local one and see if they are looking for committee members. And there are some brilliant CILIP special interest groups depending on your interests within librarianship. So, look at what all the special interest groups are doing and if there’s any volunteering opportunities there, that’s a great way of kind of getting involved with the profession and meeting other people.
Could you recommend further reading which outlines the theory behind action learning sets?
There are some useful pages on the NHS websites because it is so heavily used within the NHS. I’ll share a couple of links that are helpful in kind of setting out a ‘how-to’. I also found a great article from the Health Information and Libraries Journal, where librarians from various NHS trusts got together in an action learning set. It’s a great reflective piece about what worked for them, what didn’t and how they managed it. It’s called ‘Working together, supporting projects through action learning’.
What one thing would you say to convince a new professional to join a learning set at LILAC?
The best advice I give is to take every opportunity you can, not just to learn from other people, but also to share your own knowledge and experience. One of the things I like about action learning sets is the whole idea that they’re non-hierarchical. It doesn’t matter if you’re brand new. Everybody has some knowledge, some experience that they can bring to the table. So even if you think, ‘I’m new, what could other people possibly learn from me?’, I guarantee you, you have a perspective that is valuable – it could be that is exactly what somebody else needs to hear in a challenge that they’re experiencing in their own career. So, think about not only what you’ll gain from it, but what you can bring to the table.
One of the most amazing things about LILAC is how many people attend from all different types of libraries, all different types of backgrounds, and from all around the world. So, by joining a LILAC learning set, you could be sharing with and learning from people who you never get the chance to meet in your day-to-day work. Hopefully, the learning sets will give you a way to maintain and build those relationships going on as well.
If you could add a book to the definitive Information Literacy library, which book would you choose?
I had to look at the list that the podcast has already, and there’s such great books and articles on there already. I wanted to add two because one of them must be the LILAC Stories Report, which is published by Jess Haigh and Eva Garcia Grau. This was inspiration for the LILAC learning sets and needs to be at the library. It is open access and available to download from the Leeds Beckett repository. I love it, not just because it was so illuminating for those of us involved with the LILAC conference and thinking about how we can improve the experience, but it’s also a fascinating piece of work if you’re interested in social learning and knowledge networks.
My second book is a lovely little book. It’s ‘Feminist Pedagogy for Library Instruction’ by Maria Accardi. I came across this book when I was doing my PG Cert in higher education, and it was such a helpful introduction to the idea of feminist pedagogy and how you can bring feminist and social justice principles into the information literacy classroom. This book was really key in helping me make connections and think about my own personal pedagogy. It’s quite short and it’s very accessible. I would strongly recommend that for anyone who’s interested in social justice issues more broadly or feminism in particular and how that can relate to their library work.
