Welcome to NLISN.
The Neurodivergent Library and Information Staff Network (NLISN, pronounced ‘En-Listen’) is a peer support network for neurodivergent (ND) individuals working in the library and information science (LIS) sector in the UK and Ireland.
We are a group of volunteer peers using our spare time, and a small budget, to help others like us.
Currently we do this through enabling visibility, facilitating informal connection, delivering events and evidencing representation and impact.
You can see full details of our activities in our first annual report, the NLISN Annual Report July 2025 and Strategic Plan August 2025
How to join in:
Sign up as a member (free or voluntary contribution)
Join the JISCmail list or Discord Server
Attend an event, online or in person
Who is NLISN for?
NLISN welcomes individuals who are diagnosed, waiting for diagnosis, or are suspected or self-diagnosed neurodivergent.
NLISN also welcomes individuals who are current, past, aspiring, student or adjacent library, information and knowledge workers.
NLISN includes staff from academic, health, public, school, college, law, government, business libraries and information services, and strives to make our deliverables suitable for all sectors.
NLISN is based in the UK and is aimed primarily at colleagues in the UK and Ireland.
What does NLISN do?
Maintain resources online including our website and socials:
Provide a mailing list, discord server and membership platform:
Running in person and online events
Evidencing representation and impact
Our committee members can give short presentations to non-commercial organisations about the work of NLISN itself, the community we support, and the neurodiversity present in library and information work based professions. Example slides are available:
to show the sort of content we cover in a 30 minute slot. Contact us to request a talk about NLISN.
Full details are in our annual report and plan for this year: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16919110
What does NLISN NOT do?
NLISN does not offer professional presentations, training or consultancy on any aspect of neurodivergent support.
NLISN’s activities are not normally aimed at allies or interested third parties.
NLISN is not able to help individuals who are in crisis, and we are not in control of any third party services and resources we signpost to.
NLISN does not have expertise in creating library services suitable for neurodivergent service users.
NLISN does not have expertise in building collections with neurodiversity as a theme.
NLISN does not have any holdings or collections available to lend, beyond our outputs as seen on the website.
Our Story
NLISN was part of the pilot year of the Academic Libraries North EDI Innovation Fund in 2022-2023, then called ‘Neurodiverse Library Leaders’, as a joint project between Joanne Fitzpatrick (Lancaster University) and Andy Walsh (then at Huddersfield University). During that year, we administered a survey asking if there were other ND LIS staff working in academic libraries in the north, and if so, what were they struggling with in particular.
What we found was that there were a high number of respondents to that, which included those outside of the north and outside of academic libraries asking to be included. We made the decision to include them from the start, and saw ourselves as promoting ALN by positioning northern academic libraries as the innovators.
The respondents identified 3 areas of work where they were struggling the most, and we devised a further 3 surveys to explore this more. These became our outputs for the project available on our Outputs page under Scoping Reports.
As this year drew to a close, ALN funded an event where we invited the community built so far to plan out how the network could develop beyond the project. The group devised the name NLISN, and expressed they would like to focus on peer support rather than advocacy, and avoid being affiliated with any other organisation and remain at grass roots level.
NLISN continues with this mandate, regularly reviewing our work and fitting it to the needs of the network.
Neurodivergent Library and Information Staff Network 