 Thanks very much, Kate, and I'm delighted that so many colleagues could join us today. As Kate said, I'm the Deputy Executive Director for Research Libraries UK, and I'm delighted to welcome Ed Jewell, President-elect of Libraries Connected, and the Tina Hill Head of Delivery to the Library on at the British Library today. And the focus for today is really around highlighting some of those broader digital inclusion challenges and opportunities across libraries and society, which can inform and inspire us as an audience, but also look at how we can best support digital inclusion in all its facets, and also, as Kate was saying, to provide a forum for discussion after we've had the presentations today. And this session is a sort of natural continuation from a May 2021 session, which Research Libraries UK did around digital poverty. And I'm just going to do a bit of scene setting around that before we lead into our two speakers. So in terms of context, ROUK's strategy, the Library Transforming from 2022 to 2025, has five headline strands and three crosscutting themes. And one of those headline strands is digital shift. And the strategy is also intended to be an invitation to like-minded stakeholders, the wider community and members to help us work to transform scholarship and the role of libraries and also what we can do around digital inclusion. So it's fantastic to have that opportunity today to hear from kind of Ed and libraries connected, and also from the British Library who are an ROUK member. And as Kate had said, the digital shift forum are part of the digital shift manifesto, which ROUK has put together a vision for kind of transforming digital and that move to digital between now and 2030. And part of that pivot and that move to 2030 is all about an equitable shift. But within ROUK's own strategy, we are seeking here as well to work to better understand the challenges of digital poverty and exclusion amongst our research library users and communities. And I think this is incredibly critical. It was incredibly critical when this was first done back in May 2021 during the kind of pandemic. But now as we've come out of some of that looking at kind of cost of living crisis, all kinds of other activities, there's a variety of elements for us to continue to pick up. So ROUK began some of this activity with this symposium on digital poverty inclusion and the role of research libraries in May 2021. It included a range of panelists drawn from both the United States and the UK with a variety of backgrounds and perspectives. And there were no slide decks for that session and it is available on YouTube. It was chaired by Kirsty Langstatt who is now the director at the University of York Library. And it was really part of ROUK's activities to understand the impact of COVID-19 on the research library community and also the ways in which libraries can work collectively and collaboratively to mitigate these. And I think there's really kind of lessons from that and some of the talks going forward today, which I think will really help mitigate that. And the May 2021 symposium included a number of key topics. It touched on digital skills, it touched on digital exclusion poverty, ecosystems, the role of public libraries in England, more broadly the role of public libraries. It posited questions around how we as research libraries could do more and the impact around those and things that we can do around research libraries. So what could research libraries do more of, and there was a mix of responses from the US, but also from the UK. There was a sense that there's not the same degree of national coordination within the US, but that there had been a lot of pivoting to ensuring access to mobile devices and equipment and skills for staff, remote training to support and provide staff. But also the importance of the public library sector around this space, particularly a la in the US, a strong advocate of universal services, some of the underpinnings of the Department of Commerce and telecom bills. And there was comments as well about how important it was that broadband is recognized as a piece of infrastructure. And at the time of the symposium legislation was still going through. Since that time, the bipartisan infrastructure law has now provided $65 billion to help close that divide in which was passed in 2022. In the UK, there's been discussions around community in partnership with libraries. What could we do around that who's on our doorstep that we could continue to work with the, the setup of the data poverty lab research and work into the minimum digital living standard. And some of that work has come out of it's led by the University of Liverpool with partners in Loughborough City and the Good Things Foundation and the Welsh government. And it thinks about that again that holistic piece around digital inclusion around the basket of digital goods services and skills that you actually need to live in the digital world, which we live in today. The Good Things Foundation reports and other activities which some of the other speakers will talk around the importance of building on the momentum of the pandemic, and also we struck by this comment of out of turbulence comes change, and really that that kind of opportunity for for change around this space. And all of the panelists were asked, what could research libraries do. There are a number of activities things like kind of joining a digital network digital poverty Alliance, the local links where we could direct students, providing that kind of scaffold scaffolding partnerships and communities were absolutely critical in this space. The kind of question how can we turn that connectivity into inclusivity how can we do how can we do that how can we provide further support around digital skills, the inclusive programs with inclusion really embedded as a framework, making sure that we don't minimize users either needing help, or getting kind of other kinds of equipment be led by the evidence and doing what works, but also for research libraries as well as for public libraries within their, their governing bodies. What can we also do to engage our wider institutions, and where can we take kind of partnership around that. As part of today's session we will also kind of share a link to this padlet which is going to focus on these areas around opportunities barriers partners resources and as Kate said, this will help us to kind of build on some of this work and some of this activity today. Thank you very much. And I'm going to hand back to Kate. Thanks, William. That's a great summary of where we're at at the moment and things I'm sure have been motoring on in the meantime as well. And with that thought in mind of really great pleasure and introducing our first speaker who's Tina Hill. She's head of delivery at the library on at the British Library, and these are development and delivery of a 3.4 million pound single digital presence project, an innovative new online platform that will drive wider digital transformation of public libraries across the UK and beyond. The project has a local national international impact, and it invest 1.1 million pounds into local library websites to transform the reach and impact of public libraries across the UK. Part of Tina's remit is also to provide a strategic contribution to the development of British Library corporate strategy and strategic work with public libraries. So without further ado, I'd like to call on Tina to give her talk. Thank you very much, Tina. It's lovely to have such an international national audience here today. And thank you for the kind introduction. So, as Kate mentioned, I lead on a programme of work called library on based at the British Library. And our goal really is to get more people to use public libraries by making it easier to find and access services provided by libraries online, as well as kind of improving some of those systems and processes behind the scenes. Obviously, in a kind of an inclusive manner. Now, I'm very conscious that this might not be quite so relevant for all of you as I'll be kind of speaking from a public libraries perspective, but hopefully it still gives you a kind of a snippet of a different perspective. And I've worked in kind of cultural and not for profit sector for the last 20 plus years in UK and abroad. And prior to joining the British Library, I set up the Digital Culture Network Arts Council England, which supported cultural organisations with digital skills development. So really pleased to be talking about digital inclusion as such an important topic today. So what I thought I might do is just talk a little bit about what is kind of digital inclusion and why it matters as I see it. Apologies if I'm kind of stating the obvious, but it's really useful to kind of set the context and then talk about it from the perspective of libraries in terms of some of the challenges around it. And I'd love to give you some examples of really interesting work that we've seen recently, and a little bit about how we can influence change around this topic. So, let's kick straight into it. So, in terms of digital inclusion. It really just means that everyone, regardless of their background, age, income or abilities should have access to and effectively be able to use digital technologies like computers, internet smartphones. And essentially have the same opportunities to participate in a kind of a digital world, helping to level the playing field for everyone. So, but once you start to kind of dig a bit deeper, you kind of discover really how deep rooted some of those challenges around it are. Now, some of the kind of the key components in terms of creating a really an equal and accessible society for everyone is for to have those kind of digital skills devices and data needed to participate to basically prevent anyone from being left behind, because they lack these resources and digital unite has championed a lot of the work and research in this field, and libraries, particularly, plays such a vital role in the ecosystem, and already provide a lot of these aspects. I've added a few links, a few, few kind of references there, where libraries are already making such a huge difference. Now, why does it matter? Well, I guess the reason it matters is because that lack of digital skills and access can have such a huge negative impact on a person's life, such as limited access to jobs, education, core services, such as a pension or benefits, and impact on health outcomes, leading potentially to kind of lower life expectancy, for example, increased loneliness, social isolation from lack of connectivity, and the list goes on. And it's kind of easy to forget about digital inclusion in a very digital world. Like, for example, if you if you think yourself like some of those essential services, think of how many of them have moved to a digital first approach. So things like, you know, making a doctor's appointment, or you might need to download an app for an online GP consultation, your car parking every car park now seems to have like you need an app to park your car, or online food shopping, and so on. So just thinking about some of those kind of core digital skills and online safety, just to kind of illustrate, I've added a couple of examples here of some of those core digital skills and online safety. Now these are things that we are we need in our kind of everyday lives. They also influence our future prospects, you know, being able to apply for jobs, have the skills for work and managing our money. And I guess for us librarians, well I'm not a librarian, but you most of you are librarians, and is also interesting to consider how kind of digital upskilling and information literacy kind of go hand in hand. And then I guess from the practical perspective, unless you have the money to pay for data and devices, you can't do any of those things we just discussed in terms of daily activities that involve using getting online. And cost of living obviously has made everything worse. So, so those are kind of some of the strands around it, but even around kind of devices, it's worth bearing in mind that challenges may still arise if a person's level of access is limited, say for example, mobile only connectivity. So, I've added a stat there that says that 21% of Internet users in the lower socioeconomic groups are smartphone users only versus 10% in the general population. So that immediately suggests that it's important to make sure that digital services function well on mobiles. Good Things Foundation has done, as William mentioned, has done so much incredible research around the fact that there are many people who don't use Internet or devices, often due to lack of motivation or willingness to engage. Now that's a report that's really worth reading. The other thing that they've published quite a lot of research around is that kind of concept of a digital divide. And I really like this lovely illustration. What it does sort of portray is that sadly, it's often people who are already at a disadvantage through whether it's age, education, income, disability or unemployment, etc. who are most likely to be missing out and therefore kind of further widening that social inequality gap. Definitely worth having a look at that. But what I think is important to do is to start shifting the focus from a deficit as gender to that of possibility and opportunity. And beginning to address some of the barriers for everyone to use and benefit from digital technology. And one thing I wanted to mention was around thinking about it's such a multifaceted sort of topic because stating the obvious, it comes down at so many levels. So in the public sector, working in the public sector, obviously our work is not about generating profit for shareholders, but serving the communities that we work with. But in order to have that kind of inherent delivery capacity ourselves, we need an inclusive and digitally skilled workforce within our organizations. But we also need the kind of the digital technology to do our jobs well in order to deliver those services. And importantly, that organizational culture that values digital inclusion, where everybody in our organization buys into it, forming part of that kind of wider digital transformation and leadership agenda. But the other thing to know is what you're kind of aiming for. So I guess thinking about what does digital inclusion success look like? Like where do you want to get to? And once you know what success looks like for you, is then not forgetting the kind of the starting point in terms of our current users and being kind of user centric in thinking about what are their current digital skills and what are their digital needs of our kind of customers, service users and what barriers they might be facing and working in that kind of user centric way with our kind of customers, service users and the community that we're within. Now, I think the big challenge for libraries is how we cater for a range of user needs. Like, as I mentioned before, we live in a world where kind of digital information and services are now the norm. Many people, particularly younger generations, which I probably don't kind of cut myself into anymore quite so much, but my daughter certainly fits into this, this camp. Expect everything to be available digitally. Now, from information to online shopping, paying for bills, entertainment on demand, social conversations and much more, now there's an up for everything. People expect kind of a level of convenience and ease from their home and on the move. And there's that kind of dilemma around the fact that libraries can't get left behind with the kind of pace of innovation. And, but not withstanding making sure that that is not at the cost of inclusion. Now, Library Sector has made great progress in recent years in opening up collections, resources and services through digital access. And Library On is supporting that further. We've been giving out grants we've got through our Arts Council funding, which supports library services across the country to basically make their services easier to discover and access for new and existing users. And we've funded things like library apps, virtual tours, website enhancements, user journeys, video content, etc. Well, I'll give a few examples in a minute. But I also am very conscious how, you know, there are practical challenges around it in terms of library services across the country and the kind of the staff and people who work in libraries their own digital capability and skills. And therefore the kind of the capacity to help customers with basic transactions like paying for bills, online banking support around information literacy, etc. And the funding to purchase devices like tablets, hublets, PCs, etc. So, you know, it's a really challenging landscape to operate in. But I also did want to give a few examples of libraries and how they've been kind of supporting inclusion. Now, at Library On, and in my kind of previous role with the Digital Culture Network, we did, we do a lot of work around digital accessibility. And actually this morning, Roberta Beattie from the Digital Culture Network delivered a great session for our community of practice for our grant recipients around digital accessibility. And I saw this lovely neat image from her. It's a huge topic. And I'm not going to go into it now. But the main headline though is kind of thinking when you're thinking about digital accessibility is making sure that that accessibility comes first, not retrospectively. So, but happy to share the kind of the recording of that session. So, as I mentioned, we've given 1.1 million out in digital grants. One of the projects that have been one of our recipients is RNIB are working on a project with Camden Library Service for inclusion of blind and partially sighted people. And they're doing a lot of work to kind of make public PCs more accessible. And Lambeth libraries has done similar work. They had made, they've made sure that all PCs have assistive technology and keyboards, and they run a weekly support group. And they've also brought bought a range of support equipment. And so the readers for documents, touch type training for those losing sight, etc. And library kiosks have often been kind of a little bit poor on accessibility. But RNIB are also investigating accessible talking kiosks, which I'm really curious to see what they're going to be like. A couple of other projects. Sorry libraries are creating virtual tours that help library users with autism and generally kind of help people reduce that level of anxiety in terms of going to new places knowing what is what is there and what's coming. And Brighton and Hope have been doing work with children and young people who don't normally use the library. And libraries unlimited have are focusing on kind of areas of deprivation really interesting projects. A few libraries have mentioned using tools from the National Autistic Society around social and comic strip conversations to support autistic people develop greater kind of social understanding and help them say safe. Which I'm going to look a little bit deeper in but sounds incredibly valuable. A couple of the other bits that I've picked out is age is still one of the biggest potential factors in being digitally excluded, while also poverty plays a particular particularly large role. And born of the library has been working with aging better. And as well as kind of aligning their emphasis from the council to promote kind of stronger communities and to ensure people aren't lonely. They're working to create a kind of an age friendly community and digital inclusion is part of that. One couple of last final examples. And New York State Library have published a really detailed digital inclusion toolkit. And my absolute kind of latest absolutely amazing example is Rushdale, a cooperative mesh sounds absolutely amazing. They are providing free civic Wi-Fi to over 4000 people in an area of deprivation, which is just incredible and they've done that through kind of partnership working. So, yeah, definitely check them out. I think that is has such a huge scale and could potentially be kind of replicated in other parts of the country. So just to summarize, I guess, picking on some of the things that I've covered. Sorry, just checking time. I'm good. So what seems to be kind of working really well is focusing on the kind of the needs of the users and the community. What is it that they need is what what is it that they need and how can how can we support that. Building then a really clear strategic framework around it. And working with wider partners and across departments to address that. And also the kind of the more practical access level in terms of devices and data. You know, so much incredible work through donation schemes, data banks, device banks, and like that civic Wi-Fi work that Rushdale has done. Like, why can't every town across the country have a civic Wi-Fi scheme. Apparently, it only costs 27 pens per household per month. Now that's a lot cheaper than the broadband that I'm paying for. And I think there's that sort of making the case for digital inclusion, that business case for it. And, you know, we can continue to highlight some of the social value and the economic impact that is having. And I think that's where a lot of the all of you here on the call can really kind of begin to influence and make the case for. And then kind of amongst the sector itself is sharing learning exactly what research libraries UK are doing here today is kind of sharing some best practice through networks and through sort of local initiatives. Some of the organizations that already work in the space, as William mentioned, worth kind of delving a little bit deeper into some of the research and some of the programs of work and the learnings. So that kind of sums up some of the headlines that I wanted to cover. The other thing I did want to sort of say is it is sort of in line with digital inclusion is that at library on we are launching today. If there is anybody here from a public library, our second round grants program, which invites projects around digital inclusion. So I'd very kindly ask you to spread the word if you can. Some of the things that we can support are things like library apps online registrations, virtual tours, upgrades to websites, etc. So, yeah, please do do spread the word. And if you want to get in touch with me. Here's my email address. That was a bit of a whirlwind, but hopefully that is was useful. And I will hand over back to Kate. That was really fascinating. I just struck by that you said kind of in the center of your presentation that it is a challenge because libraries are expected to innovate. But we can't be left behind in terms of digital innovation, but that should not be at the expense of inclusion. So I think that's those are words to live by for all of us public sector or research libraries. So thank you so much. Thank you so much for the opportunity to chew over there. It was a quick presentation, but you packed a lot in. Thank you very much indeed. And please do everybody put in questions or thoughts, comments in the chat. And Susan will be working away in the background and collect all those together and we'll bring them to the Q&A session after our next talk. I had got great pleasure in introducing our second speaker today, who's Ed Jewel. He's a chief librarian at Jersey Library and the president elect for libraries connected during the last nine years. He's created a new model for jerseys public libraries that deliver services that are practical and relevant to the needs of the public. Ed believes libraries should be engines for opportunity at the heart of their communities, enabling people to engage with and access learning information, health and well being creativity and enterprise. As president elect for libraries connected as working with colleagues national government departments and key funders across the British answer to build the profile of and support for public libraries. So Ed over to you for your session. Thank you very much. I will make a start. I'm afraid I might not be quite as concise as Tina was because it feels like there's so much to cover on this very fascinating and extremely important topic. What I wanted to do was just give a kind of brief overview of what where libraries connected is coming from and our local context in Jersey before really exploring the scale of the exclusion problem that we're looking at. And then how libraries connected and libraries more generally responding to it. Just in terms of libraries connected, we're an independent charity that supports promotes and represents public library services in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Crown dependencies. Our work builds on 20 years experience as the Society of Chief Librarians. And today our audience extends beyond heads of public library services to include all library workers. Public libraries help tackle some of society's biggest challenges by providing vital community infrastructure, access to culture, literacy and the written word learning opportunities and essential digital resources for modern life. Across the areas we serve, there are 176 individual library services of around 3000 library branches that are offering services to over 61 million people, which is because a real sense of the scale of reach that public libraries have. The core mission and purpose of libraries connected is to act as a connector and a catalyst through the work of our staff, our trustees, members and partners. We support libraries to harness the power of collaboration. This in turn means that we can innovate, empower, connect and influence so library services can better meet current and future challenges. Just a few words about Jersey. I do like this slide. I asked our external affairs department to give me a slide that summarized Jersey and they've come up with something that looks like it's perhaps summarizes Bergerac. You've got a map of Jersey in the middle but then there's the Jersey Royals and the Jersey County, a castle of course and our fantastic coastline. But it doesn't perhaps give you the in depth for knowledge of Jersey. First up, we're not part of the United Kingdom. We are part of the British Isles and the UK government retains former responsibility for our defences and some extend our formal affairs but we are a self governing island and we have our own finance and legal systems. We've got our own governments, which is the States Assembly made of 49 elected members and it's effectively a local council and a national government wraps into one. So we're setting our own education, health policies, all of the kind of main things that local authorities and the national government setting UK we have some independence over. The islands has a population of around 105,000 with 66% of the total resident population of working age, about 18% of the population retired and about 16% are below working age. In terms of education around 700 to 800 students a year continue on to key stage five education which includes a levels international baccalaureate and vocational courses and in terms of further education. Whilst a large number of students do leave the island, we do have a college of further education based here, which offers a range of vocational courses courses distance learning degrees for local students, which includes civil engineering, digital technologies and social care. One of the things we often come around to as an island when we're discussing within government is sandbox Jersey in that we are quite a self contained jurisdiction. So we've got that population of 100,000 and we're able to try new things that perhaps we're not quite so bound up and we'd be a little bit more nimble than colleagues perhaps in UK are because of our size and our independence so that might come through some of the things we're going to share. In terms of the the context that Jersey library service works within this just pop this slide up here which gives a kind of very quick overview in terms of numbers. We are a small team got 24 staff in total at the moment and we deliver side services from the central town library, the branch library and our mobile library service, as well as supporting the college or FV prison and hospital libraries. So we try really for a whole island island service library service and as a service we're looking to inspire lifelong learning, support health and well being and enrich the island's economic and cultural life through the management of outstanding collections and provisions of services that support customers to access libraries and realize their potential. With just under 50% of the population as active members and around 350,000 visits to our library network year, we do stand as one of the most visited cultural and community institutions in the channel islands, which is great again in terms of the reach it gives us kind of making kind of making content of people at different points within their lives. So there's real potential for the library service to deliver a whole range of social policies and practices. We've a burgeoning program of talks workshops, magazine activities in the library, but we also have a free large and fast growing online offering of ebooks, audio books, magazines and newspapers. And I do think it's worth mentioning just in the context of this talk that are our main central library in town is very heavily used by school further education adult learning students. As you can see on the slide we have over six and a half thousand hours of study room use per annum, but that's that's ignoring the study desks around the rest of the library. Often it's pretty much standing room only we do find particularly once universities break up we get a lot of students coming back into use the public libraries. I just wanted to mention very quickly as well another project we've been asked to develop as a library service, which is the Jersey International Cultural Center, which is looking to support newcomers to the island celebrate new support. Support newcomers to the island celebrate different cultures and bring increase awareness around Jersey unique culture, whilst also researching some of the barriers to it equality integration and social cohesion. I just wanted to flag this up because I think it's relevant in this realm around digital inclusion, because Jersey is home to a rapidly changing and an increasingly diverse population with many people moving to our islands on fixed time contracts to work in finance, hospitality, finance, farming and healthcare. Around 20% of the island population is now from a non British background and we've got over 62 different languages spoken in the islands. And I think that raises some really interesting questions around digital access and inclusion, but both in terms of how we make services accessible to people who may not have access to necessary hardware or data. But also how we we're working with colleagues across government to ensure that the information we are presenting online, particularly for those digital by default services is presented in relevant languages that people can actually understand and use. So that's the kind of context both libraries connected and Jersey are approaching the digital inclusion agenda from. I just wanted to kind of look at this the scale of the issue really and I think that's helpfully set out by the recent House of Lords communications and digital committee reports on digital exclusion that was published I believe earlier this year. As as the House of Lords report notes, everything from housing and healthcare resources to banking and benefits systems are shifting online at an unprecedented rate. It's this is alongside a picture where we see 1.7 million households having no mobile or broadband Internet at home up to a million people cutting back or counseling Internet packages in the last year as the cost of living bites and 2.4 million people unable to complete a single basic task. Online because they lack skills. Locally, as always Jersey is the same but a little bit different outwardly we're a wealthy island, but there are sharp inequalities and the distribution of that wealth. We're currently one of the most expensive places to live in the UK. I think we're ranking in the top 10 globally. In that context we've got a quarter of households surviving on under 28,000 pounds per annum so that's a quarter of households on the under 28,000 per annum. And we're seeing 62% of the population finding it difficult to meet living costs and 9% going out without essentials. And I think for me the impact of that and the impact on people's digital access was really bought home during the pandemic. During the first lockdown it became very common and normal to see people sat outside the closed library doors trying to get onto our Wi-Fi. And when we reopened initially in June 2020 we operated just a book lending service as it has felt too high risk to reopen our public computer labs. And I'll never forget one of the first users who came through the door who kind of exclaimed in frustration of me and I'll give you the sense of the thing. You know what's the effing point in the library of our computers. The truth of the matter was we had a substantial proportion of our community who for almost a third of the year have been unable to access jobs, banking and in the worst case families who might be living under the overseas. And for me I think it's really bought home and further public libraries, the role they can play comes down to three key factors. It's around access to hardware, access to data and access to skills. As the House of Lords report noted, libraries are one place that people can help people bridge this gap. Good Things Foundation has had several mentions already today. And it is libraries connected with a very pleased be able to work the Good Things Foundation earlier in the year to produce the recent digital inclusion in libraries reports. As Tina was saying I would urge you to have a look at their website and some of the resources that are on there and I'm not going to go through this point by point. I'll just give you a very quick summary. The report draws on a data from 113 library authorities and paints a compelling picture of the current digital provision within library services and the aspiration and potential of those services to support digital inclusion. Some of it I think is quite self-evident to librarians in that libraries play a vital role in the ecosystem of digital inclusion to support communities. Libraries are positive, trusted, universal and free. I think that's something that we can all agree with, I hope. But it was clear that we still have work to do ensuring that services are truly accessible to everyone, particularly for those who may have hidden needs. As Tina alluded to, public libraries are increasingly becoming the front door for council services across the British Isles, helping users navigate online forms of health benefits and other council services. And within the sector, there's clearly a desire to innovate. That desire is undercut, though, by mixed provision across services, what staffings available and hardware limitations. And it was noted in this report that over half of library services lack a digital inclusion strategy. So with that in mind, I think it's fair to say what the Good Things Foundation research revealed is a public library sector that's keen and indeed driven to support the information needs of its community. But at times it's held back by lack of skills, resources and overarching strategy. The answer put forward by the Good Things Foundation and Libraries Connected really comes in the form of a challenge to local authorities to recognize and promote the existing role of libraries and to ensure their work is systematically embedded across the council. Coordination of local skills, ecosystems and work will help amplify the impact public libraries can have in terms of building digital inclusion. Of course, this needs to be underpinned with funding to support staffing skills and infrastructure, and perhaps most importantly information. We need to ensure that library services are effectively represented across their authorities to ensure that they're in the loop and positioned to respond when they're asked to help or when opportunities come up for them to help with digital transactions. At a national level, Libraries Connected echoes the House of Lords report in calling for a new digital inclusion strategy that recognizes the key role of libraries and community organizations. Now please excuse this rather dense slide. It's a systems map of a project that we've been working on that I think helps illustrate this kind of whole systems approach to addressing a problem and it's called the Community Compass, which sees our libraries, culture, health and IT teams work together to combat social isolation. The Community Compass project arose from the COVID pandemic and seeks to alleviate social isolation through physical and cultural activities. We've made a number about 48 microgrants, I believe, in total to a wide variety of community groups that people can get involved in. What we're trying to do alongside that is to work to create ways of digitally signposting people's activities, services and benefits that could help them. So we're working with our health and IT teams to develop a CRM system that can be accessed in libraries, community venues and GP surgeries that will be supported by library staff and trained volunteers. And our vision is to create health zones and libraries, which bring together the library's physical and online resources and most importantly staff to help the community access that IT system. So it's bringing that kind of digital alongside the library's physical resources and using that community space. I've got to say, this activity isn't unusual to Jersey. Across the UK, most public libraries are working with educational institutions, national organisations like Citizens Advice and financial institutions like Barclays Digital Legals. And for the community compass project, we are very much looking at other authorities like Merton in London, who are doing work around health checks that link directly through to GP surgeries. So you can go and get blood pressure checks in the library and it will update your record at the GP. And there's a kind of another community, kind of an intervention area on a light touch basis. Alongside those place-based partnerships, the Goodfings Digital Inclusion and Libraries Report also points towards the range of impact, the range of impact public libraries can have in digital inclusion. And I think this slide is really interesting because I think it ties in quite nicely with the strategy for RLUK that William referred to in his introduction in terms of where public libraries can support digital inclusion through skills and empowerment, data connectivity and devices. I think elements of this offer really apply to all demographics within our communities. Independent learning, free Wi-Fi, access to hardware and study space, these are all things that see our libraries packed with students when the school day finishes or when universities break up for the holiday. BeastBoat one-to-one support, employability and financial support are services that we offer in jerseys libraries, as do many libraries across the UK. And it's fair to say an increasing number of libraries also offer the loan of devices and some services have started offering digital assistance alongside their home delivery services. At the other end of the digital skills spectrum, we're seeing maker spaces open up across the UK and libraries to give people an opportunity to access, learn and use the latest and specialist kit like laser cutters, design equipment and video editing software. And I really think we shouldn't lose sight of the value libraries and library staff bring in terms of corporate government experience, governance experience too. As libraries were set up and well-versed to ensure compliance for copyright, privacy and safeguarding. We've a hard-won reputation as a trusted space which is based on many years' experience. In practice, and I'm sorry for this rather messy slide, but that translates to that. That's what our kind of dynamic learning and digital offer would look like in jerseys libraries and it mirrors what a lot of other libraries are doing across the UK. On a very basic level, we provide the space and resources for students to study in the library. We also house resources in the library to support our local College of Education, College of Further Education courses, which is part of a broader drive towards a campus-based island approach. Our librarians are working closely with the College of FE to run information skills sessions with new distance learning undergraduate students. And we're also working in partnership with the choosers at the college to enhance their study skills offer. As you can see, the Privacy Hero and the Skills for You poster on that slide, we're working very closely with other organisations like Digital Jersey Skills, Digital Jersey and our data protection team to bring in that advice and support within libraries to the local community. And for those starting out in IT, we offer one-to-one sessions, one-to-one support, free Learn My Way sessions, and we're also a certified ICDL testing centre for the public. I just want to show you very quickly our make space that we have in Jersey's town library. Again, we've got lots of kit in there, but really what's important is the staff we've got here who can support people to use it independently, the thinking being that they then go on and create and learn by themselves. I should explain the gentleman with the musket, he had lost one of the buttons from his rather fine uniform, so he had come in and we helped him scan it in a 3D scanner, print a new one out and he then went on from painting that and he replaced his irreplaceable button. But that's the kind of, I just like that because it brings the kind of history and the cutting edge tech together. I mean, these are all wonderfully exciting initiatives and it's kind of things that I get excited about. But I would like to finish by just mentioning one final report that suggests there's real substance to the work libraries are doing across the UK in this area. The University of East Anglia's Libraries for Living and Living Better research that was published earlier this year. The report was commissioned by Libraries Connected Eastern Region and looks at the 11 services that comprise Libraries Connected East, focusing on the impact that they make on digital inclusion, children's literacy and wellbeing. With regard to digital inclusion, the report identifies many of the issues and the challenges that have already been mentioned. So there's the move to digital by default, which is just effectively excluding some users from services, lack of public access to hardware, accessibility issues or software, and the mixed library skills profile amongst staff. The key point I'd like to leave you with though is the impact and value of libraries work when combined systematically with other council services such as adult education, health and community services. Aside from the invaluable contribution libraries make on a daily basis to alleviating socialization and loneliness and providing a lifeline to essential online services when delivered in the services, when they're delivered in a systematic way with partners, a library's digital offer can actually deliver quantifiable returns. For digital inclusion, for example, it was estimated a value of £379 per participant per annum, assuming that those participants continue to secure employment within two years of using the library services. So that's the kind of quantifiable impact that libraries are making. I'd highly recommend having a proper read through that report just to see the way those figures were calculated because it really has worked diving into it. I think in short, it's fair to say that digital services are no longer an optional add-on or a concession to modernity for libraries. They're an essential part of our portfolio as community information services, and they build, I would argue, on the vision laid out by David Lanks in this final slide. I really like this quote and I'll just read it out and I will yield the floor back to Kate. Our libraries cannot be services joined to the side of our universities or cities. We must also discard the old metaphor that the library is at the heart of the community or the university, or dare I say the country. Instead, we must be the blood of the body, coursing through the arteries and veins of the community, delivering oxygen and ensuring the health of the whole. Librarians will be delivering oxygen and vitality to communities in the form of literacy, access, but above all, hope. Thank you very much. I'll hand back to you. Thank you, Kate. Thanks, Ed. That's a wonderful talk and a very inspiring quote at the end. And I also loved the quote that you gave from the Good Things Foundation report, which was something we should always remember. And it's as much the case for libraries in universities as anywhere else is that libraries are positive, trusted, universal and free. And we've got such huge opportunities to increase inclusion across all of our communities, both within our universities and outside as well. So thank you for that really inspiring talk, Ed. Just to reiterate as well that we have a Padlet online and in the chat we've got a link to the Padlet, which is a little bit further up. People have been adding to the Padlet and I would encourage everybody to continue to do that. We can put some of the reports, the links to the reports that have been mentioned by our panelists in there and also anybody that's on the call on the webinar today as participants, as delegates, please do add links to any resources that you know of, any projects that you're involved with or that you even know of that have had an impact or an effect in your community. Or elsewhere. And also those barriers maybe that might be things that we could work on together and the opportunities that are out there. So we've already started to gather a few of those things on the Padlet. But can I just call our participants back Ed and Tina to turn your cameras back on again. And also call Susan into the call. So just to say hello to Susan, who is part of the Digital Shift Working Group. Would you like to introduce yourself as well, Susan? Very good to know you. Thanks Kate. I'm Susan Halfpenny and as Kate has mentioned I'm a member of the Digital Shift Working Group. I'm Head of Research and Learning Information Services at the University of Aberdeen. So I've been monitoring the chat as we go through. So if you do have any more questions as they come up, we've got a couple of things that have come through. Please do post them on there and I'll make sure that we can pick them up as we go to the panel discussion now. Okay, so yeah, so are there any questions Susan that you could pick out to start us off? Well I think we as a panel we had kind of, if we may just start as an introduction question that obviously we've heard from our two great speakers this afternoon and we've been talking about the public library role but I know that there's a lot of people here maybe from academic libraries and research libraries. So I wondered whether I could put to Tina and Ed, you know, where do you see that we can partner with you and support with your digital exclusion, inclusion activities. So I'll put that to Tina first if that's alright. Thank you. I think it's that really important part around that sort of advocacy and that systemic working, the systemic approach that Ed spoke about in terms of what can we do as a sort of a library sector as a whole that we can begin to influence policy from government, local authority and where that sort of partnership work can come into place. I think that's probably the kind of the biggest thing that we can start to make a real difference in. Great, yeah, there's been a lot in terms of the Padlet in terms of how we can work more in partnership. And I think one of the things that's come in there has been in that skills element that we maybe can start to look at how we can share our approaches to skills delivery. But I think also in both the talks there was a lot of talk about infrastructure and I'm quite interested in how we might be able to move to that as well. But I will hand over to Ed as well to any thoughts in terms of how we can work together to really get to that equitable digital shift as William put it earlier. I think it's a really interesting question. Thanks, Suzanne. And I think, like you say, it's that equitable piece. I would say I'm going to say something that I'm sure is going to be shot down because of budgetary constraints. It won't work in practice, but it's one of those things we need to work around. I mean, I think a lot of the people we see coming into the library in terms of students studying, for example, they're almost institution agnostic. They're not bothered whether they're studying at a university or if they're studying in a town library. But what's sharpening up for us here, I think we're noticing increasingly is the cost of living. So students do need somewhere to study when they are home. They might be sharing. I mean, we've got a lot of people living, a lot of families living in very small apartments here. We also have issues around people having to share devices. They might not be able to afford, you know, they might have a laptop for the family. I mean, I appreciate this doesn't apply to academia, but we had an issue the other day with a young mum coming in her school. Her son's do his homework online. All she's got to get online with is her mobile phone. So he's having to, you know, we're trying to work out how we can increase provision then for students to be able to access laptops and the like. And I think that raises questions in my mind around how we can increase access then perhaps in some public libraries to virtual learning environments. It's an online resources that people might need to be accessing in terms of resources from the university. And also how we can get some of the more infrastructure in Lawrenceburg. I don't know if people are familiar with Lawrenceburg, but they publish a regular report on digital use of in libraries. And one of the fastest growing pieces of infrastructure public libraries are looking at is wireless printing. And it's obviously driven by the public, but I strongly suspect there's a little bit around students coming in as well to utilize it because it's something that they don't have necessarily at home. And finally, just on that piece, what I do find is working very well in public libraries is that softer partnership working where academics are potentially coming into libraries to offer subject specific training or particularly around digital skills and literacy. But also where we're able to then send some of our trained librarians into academic settings like College of Firm Education like to support. So sorry, it's a slightly waffly answer, but there you go. That's great. And I really liked that point in terms of our user as agnostic in terms of where they go to get that support and how therefore if we work together in designing those systems and ensuring that we can share what those varied needs are, then hopefully we can improve it and make it more accessible to use libraries. If I may do, there was another question that did come through and I think it crosses over on to add some of the points you were making there in terms of providing access to different services, whether it be the virtual learning services and VLEs and that kind of thing. So we'd had a question from the participant, one of our participants about virtual reading rooms and this linking to actually how we designed inclusive design. I think that crossed over into what Tina was talking about as well. So how do we design so that things are inclusive in a way that you can access that through a mobile device, but also that you can access it with low data. And I just wondered, both Ed and Tina, if you have any tips for participants today of how we can design in that really inclusive way. If I can go on here. I guess just to say to the question you're asking there is almost kind of leading us into that digital inclusion thinking in a sense that you ask that question. Before you go and create a virtual sort of room. So you kind of ask that question and look at those. Okay, well, what are those key inclusion barriers in that? Obviously, obviously virtual reading rooms, for example, you know, they do a lot of other things. They provide geographically remote access to collections and materials to worldwide audiences that might not be able to access them otherwise. So there is a huge value in them. But, you know, those those accessibility questions and starting from that accessibility first perspective. And I think somebody mentioned in the comments about yeah well how do you perhaps need to consider how you make them available at lower bandwidth or mobile devices and I think that that that comes to the heart of it. Yeah, I was just going to pick up on that. I think that really key point it said there in terms of the inclusive by design ask that question first, you know, and the fact that it is going to be something that we've designed to be accessible to enable, you know, further access to resources but do you think what barriers might come through with that as well so I think really great things to take away from that. I'm sorry I'll hand back over to Ed. No, no it's fine. All I was going to say was I totally agree with Tina and I think inclusive first, it makes it better for everybody if we can get that right at the foundation and it should be good for everybody. I mean, what we found in the past is very much about getting people with that lived experience in to actually help design what we're doing. We work quite closely with liberate locally who do a lot of assessments of buildings and services to see if they are inclusive. I mean that their remit is now very much broader across all diversity so they come in and look at it from that point of view. I think as well in terms of things like virtual reading rooms and where we're moving library services online. There's a kind of onus on public libraries as well to offer that training in the house to people so they can drop in and they can people, you know, everyday library users can actually understand what's going on. Libraries connected around an interesting session yesterday about open access libraries which I'm sure you're familiar with in higher education the idea that you're using a library card to access a library after hours effectively when there's not staff there. And it was fascinating how much of the emphasis wasn't necessarily on technology, but how public libraries trained up their users to make them ready for that change so they could access the service. They weren't introducing a kind of free digital heavy service or free technology service that ended up excluding a whole tranche of their membership. Yeah, I really like that kind of people first in this and the skills element really did come out in terms of we can't talk about digital inclusion without thinking about both access the data and the skills that people need to access things. I realised I kind of dominate with some questions here that have been from the chat but I will hand over to my fellow chairs and the panelists in case there are other things that you wanted to elaborate on while we've got the chance. So we're just looking at the padlet Susan and some of the barriers that have come up across here and so human resources shortages is something that's come up as a barrier, sort of collaborating with helping students to in terms of inclusion, and also one which is quite interesting is exclusions to entry to he do many people come into the he sector already have digital skills and access. Do we need to be more inclusive in the ways that prospective students and staff can access universities to start with. I was quite struck by Ed saying that you get a lot of students through your doors and school pupils at that level and evidently there, some of them will be on a track towards university maybe going through further education soft post 16 education and then potentially and they may well be using your resources to, for example, do the UCAS applications if they don't have in house spaces to do that so other other young person orientated digital skills sessions I know we talk about. There's quite a lot of emphasis on enabling people in a senior category to get comfortable with it and digital but are we are we expecting the younger generation to kind of automatically know these things and is that the right aspect are we doing familiarization for younger people as well. I think that's a really good question I'm just chucking because I promise myself I wouldn't talk about AI. I'm going to talk about AI now. It's because it's a bit of a horny topic but I think that there is a real issue around an information literacy for that kind of age group particularly secondary students but but you know early university students. This is why we're supporting information literacy sessions in our local Refi, but I can well see, you know, public libraries that almost becoming a center for the true force that's something that helps people at least navigate an increasingly complex information world I mean I know at the last libraries connected seminar. We have quite an interesting session on news and kind of I'm trying to think of the word now misinformation and disinformation and how people really are starting to need to develop those skills to navigate the information that they're being fed. So not just that a student level all the way through their life so I think it's it's almost become a little bit of a misunderstanding thing we're focusing just on older people I think this is something that needs to be put in from from base. Just in terms of the students we have I mean we have students from school age we have been going all the way through university and then going on to things like banking exams so we did cover the whole remit. And increasingly not so much on a digital side but we're running a lot of mental health support sessions in the library so drop in sessions for students because that unfortunately is becoming an increasing issue as well. It's really interesting I was actually reading an article in the Guardian today which is about somebody that was a recovering conspiracy theorist. And one of the comments that they made was they were very early on to the internet so they had digital access. But what they didn't have was research skills and information literacy skills to discern, you know fact from fiction or what was a valid pursuit really and was deluged by misinformation and became part of that misinformation culture because incorrect facts beget even more incorrect facts but what his comment was was if he'd had his time again he would have appreciated much better information literacy and learning how to do valid research on the information that he had access to, which was fascinating to me. I mean that's that's why I mentioned AI briefly because I think that's that's the concern because we're moving into a space now where those kind of AI bots will be generating things like chat GPT. News articles are very hard to differentiate from the genuine thing there was an example recently I think something had gone out, purporting to be written by David Aronovich, and it looked like it was in the times and it was support is around the Ukraine war is support Russia, nothing he had written but it's very much in this style and it was close enough, but AI will shift to be deluging people with that kind of information we need to be quick women with skills now to actually be able to differentiate the truth from the defaults. Cindy. Quickly add to that. I totally agree in terms of that information information literacy aspect of it, but going back to kind of younger people is, I think there's a risk that the digital divide could almost get bigger with a kind of a younger generation in some ways because it's easy to think, oh, young people are kind of digital first, and they know that they've got all the digital skills, but if you're starting your starting point is where you don't have that digital access. Suddenly you've got quite a big kind of, you know, that that divide aspect to the young people who are the digital first and those that aren't is suddenly getting a lot bigger. So, whilst often we talk about digital inclusion in terms of age and people who are elderly, for example, but it is, it is also significant in the kind of the younger generation and I think that's worth, worth bearing in mind. And we found that very much in the pandemic and and it's not just people outside of universities that have digital poverty in terms of devices we're finding a lot of our students only had access to smartphones. And when the that kind of the image of the person sitting on the doorstep accessing the free Wi-Fi was really potent actually from Ed's presentation because we've had had that definitely in the past. Susan, are we picking up any more questions from the audience please audience to put your questions or thoughts in the comments. Nothing's coming through just now but just just as we were talking then about those generational divides something just came to me and I just wondered in terms of the two presentations we're talking a lot about user centric design and actually the very needs of our audiences and certainly for yourselves I think actually working in academia I think I've got a diverse community to serve but the communities that you're serving are much more diverse and I just wondered if you have any sort of advice or have an experience of maybe bringing people from those different different groups or with diverse experiences together to talk about these kind of experiences in terms of how they're experiencing the digital divide and maybe learning from each other or if you found that it's better to work with a particular group to understand their needs. So just really interested in how you work and cater to such a diverse community. I'll jump in briefly because it's something we're starting to touch on with the community compass project and developing that customer relationship management system. So we have got a whole range of different stakeholder groups we're working with and we'll be bringing them together so we really understand where we're going with that. And I can see it's early days yet for our international cultural centre project but that is going to be really important that we have input. We've got a large steering group that represents a lot of the communities of Indiana but we're going to need input from them and beyond them I think to really understand that what we're creating is actually accessible and meaningful to them and it's something that they would use. I mean I think particularly of that group some of the feedback we get is a kind of slight distrust of government resources. So this is why we're kind of really the libraries driving in some ways and that we're seeing as a trusted community resource. So we want to maintain that and they involve them in the development. But Tina, I think you're probably better placed to be honest with the library on. Yeah I mean our work is in terms of library on itself is very much kind of user focused in a sense that everything that we design in terms of our work is is is led by that and we also tend to do quite a lot of. We're very lucky with we've got a full time kind of user researcher who spends time with sort of thinking about that kind of current potential users and then does actual sort of practical user testing sessions and then we make sure that that is then fed to the whole team and it helps us kind of iterate that that what we're producing. So it's very much kind of built into the cycle of where we work. I mean, I think in complete honesty I guess in terms of library on particularly because we are promoting public libraries on a national scale, as you say there are so many different types of users that it's, it's much more challenging because you're offering a kind of that social free service that is universal, as opposed to I don't know if you are a commercial provider of something and your goal is to get somebody on your website and then to purchase something. It's quite a different proposition to kind of offering a universal service that is available for everyone. So what we've been doing recently has been kind of thinking about what are some of those key life stages of when people interact with libraries often, and also thinking about what are some of those core services, like, I think I said, you know, when people come to libraries to use PCs and they need the devices so that's kind of what are some of those core services, when in people's lives do they come into play. And who are the people who don't currently use libraries and what would take make them take that step and sort of building on that that level of knowledge that way. Yeah, I guess kind of. It's a topic that I could talk about for an hour so. But yeah, just to kind of give you a little snippet. Right and I think that insight into how we can design at different points in the journey is definitely something that you know translates to kind of the academic side but a good way of looking at in terms of when do you need when are those points in your life that you need to use a library and then how would you want to best interact with that and what might be the challenges so thank you for that. Thank you. I'm just picking out a couple of things on the chat. A couple were from Kirstie linkster to mentions about use centric design being a real challenge. How do we how do we get that right are others I think it's a question for both Tina and Ed are the other places that we could go toolkits to get started and what how to approach user centric design or inclusive design. Any advice kind of top tips, just to finish off the session. I think Tina's probably best placed on that one to answer properly Kate I mean I know we were doing a lot of work locally here with our policy team around consultation as an awful lot of thought going on there, but I'm afraid that that's probably not something that you'd be looking for Jersey's kind of guidance on so I'll defer to Tina. Yeah, I think there was a question about kind of how do you meet say for example how do you meet the, the kind of what younger people are looking for versus kind of older people through my struggle with digital interfaces and language and how do you kind of get that. I think it's thinking that sort of aspect of how do you design something that is inclusive. There's an aspect of that in terms of just because it's, it is inclusive for for elderly people doesn't mean that it's not going to be suitable for younger people. So I think there's an element of, of, of that. And I think there's probably something around the fact that not everything that you do has to cater for everyone. So I guess it's thinking about the offer that you have as a holistically. And so just because not every single user is going to use your library app that doesn't mean that you don't need to provide it. But you might want to provide something else for another audience or a user group. So I guess it's just that sort of thing more holistic thinking of well what are the key things that we want to provide through our digital provision. And how do those different strands cater for different needs. Thanks, Tina. I think that's just really powerful thinking about our system, our services listically is maybe a patchwork quilt, rather than having to provide a do they for everybody. We have a patchwork of little aspects that we we create pockets for different audiences. So I think that's something we could all take away because that seems more approachable doesn't it rather than thinking we have to do everything for everybody all of the time which is just incredibly challenging. But if we can think about patchworking everything together, I think we could all do that and do it incrementally as well.