Neurodivergent Library and Information Staff Network

Welcome to the latest NLISN newsletter, this time in Autism Acceptance month! 

Coming up, we’re doing a quick 5 minute slot at the ALN Frontline Forum (online) on Tuesday 2nd June 2026, so if you’re in a HE library in the North of England in a frontline role, keep an eye out for us there.

We’ve also events of our own coming up – just next week (23rd April) there is a great sounding webinar from Grace Dolan “Fitting In and Standing Out: Experiences of Autistic Librarians in Ireland“. Bookings are open right up to the day itself.

Our first 2 day conference (16th/17th July in Leeds) is open for bookings and we hope to get the draft programme out over the next week or two, so keep an eye out for our line up shortly! If you submitted something for it, expect to hear back in the next few days.

Something else to keep an eye out for is a chance to volunteer for the NLISN committee and help drive our work forward. We’re currently pulling together a call for volunteers with the roles we have available, that will be sent out to the same place as this newsletter as soon as it’s ready.

We’ve been collecting Case Studies recently, do you have a story from the network to share? If so, now is a good time to let us know!We would like to demonstrate what is possible to improve and achieve, show others like us that they are not alone, and demonstrate how NLISN is making a difference to neurodivergent librarians.
If you are able to contribute to this then we would like to hear any stories, big or small.
https://nlisn.org/case-studies/
The website also contains full details of what we are looking for and how you can get in touch about this.

Finally, two of the committee members (Amelia and Andy) are pulling together a book proposal on “neurodiverse libraries” at the moment. What would you like to see in a book like this? What do you think we absolutely have to include? Any ideas, email andywalsh999@gmail.com and it’ll help shape our book proposal!