Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals
professional body for librarians, information specialists and knowledge managers in the United Kingdom
The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP, pronounced SIL-ip) is a professional body for librarians, information specialists and knowledge managers in the United Kingdom.
It was established in 2002 as a merger of the Library Association (LA, sometimes LAUK) and the Institute of Information Scientists (IIS).
CILIP in Scotland (CILIPS) is an independent organisation which operates in Scotland in affiliation with CILIP and delivers services via a service level agreement.
CILIP's 2020 goal is to "put information and library skills and professional values at the heart of a democratic, equal and prosperous society".
History
CILIP was formed in 2002 by the merger of the Library Association (abbreviated as LA or sometimes LAUK) – founded in 1877 as a result of the first International Conference of Librarians and awarded a Royal Charter in 1898 – and the Institute of Information Scientists (IIS), founded on 23 January 1958.
The first President of the Library Association had been John Winter Jones and other notable Presidents had included Richard Garnett (1893), Frederic G. Kenyon (1910), W. C. Berwick Sayers (1938), Lionel McColvin (1952) and Douglas John Foskett (1976). The jubilee (50th year) of the Association was celebrated in 1927. Library associations from fourteen European countries and the United States signed a resolution at the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Library Association of the United Kingdom held in Edinburgh which brought the International Federation of Library Associations into existence.
The Library Association offered professional recognition at the level of Associate of the Library Association (ALA), the basic professional qualification, and Fellow of the Library Association (FLA), awarded for a higher level of professional achievement.
Membership of the CILIP on unification in 2002 was estimated at 23,000.
The public source identifies “Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals” as professional body for librarians, information specialists and knowledge managers in the United Kingdom. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Chartered, Institute and Library.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q14950045. VIAF identifies the subject as 221497978. The Library of Congress control number is no2002039897. Authority coordinates are 51.520, -0.131. 8 of 8 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2002, 2020, 1877 and 1898.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.