To attend the pre-conference please complete the attached registration form:

• Word version [download here]
• PDF version [download here]

Please return this form to Steve Wise (iflaparl.chair@gmail.com) no later than Friday, 31st May 2019. 

Further details of the pre-conference and programme are available on the Section's events page.

IFLA is participating in the SDG Book Club, an initiative launched by the United Nations alongside organisations representing publishers, booksellers and books for youth. Through this, we hope to help more young people engage with the Global Goals, especially in libraries.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a framework for organising action at the global level to improve people’s lives. Yet to be effective, it is important to bring global goals to the national and local level.

IFLA itself has worked intensively to do this within the library field. The International Advocacy Programme has engaged librarians in almost two thirds of countries around the world.

Through hundreds of events, training sessions and meetings, IFLA has raised awareness of the SDGs, and the importance of information in achieving them.

The SDG Book Club offers a further means of achieving this goal.  It is the result of cooperation between United Nations, IFLA, and the International Publishers Association, the International Board on Books for Youth, the European and International Booksellers’ Federation and the Bologna International Children’s Book Fair.

IFLA Secretary-General Gerald Leitner said: Achieving the Global Goals will need action from everyone. The SDG Book Club offers a great way to introduce today’s young people to the key issues of our time, to mobilise them, and to and prepare them to be the doers and leaders of tomorrow. I am proud that libraries are helping give access to this key information, and to inspire new generations.

By defining a selection of books for young people in all official United Nations languages, it will provide a way for tomorrow’s decision-makers to engage with the issues the SDGs raise.

Crucially, the selection is not an exhaustive list, but only a starting point. The goal is to encourage discussion about the SDGs in libraries and other settings around the world. We look forward to launching the first selection next month.

You can find out more on the SDG Book Club website, and read the press release.

Our Section recently held a hugely successful mid-year meeting in Brisbane, Australia.  In addition to our regular business meetings, the section also visited a number of fantastic libraries including the State Library of Queensland (SLQ), Brisbane City Libraries, QUT, Griffith University and the Gold Coast Libraries. Our mid-year concluded with our participation in the exciting ALIA 2019 Library Design Awards conference.  The conference included a panel discussion invovling our standing committee members and an individual paper by Section Secretary Traci Lesneski,  For full details of the awards and the winners see here.  Special thanks to our Section Committee member Janine Schmidt and to  Vicki McDonald, CEO and State Librarian SLQ and IFLA Governing Board member.

Our next event is an exciting joint satellite conference in Rome preceding WLIC 2019 in Athens. Join us and our IFLA partner sections to explore the evolving concept of ‘library’ and its impact on library design! To learn more about this inspiring event see here. We look forward to seeing you in Rome en route to Athens!

Join Ulrike Lang and Hella Klauser from Germany, Dee Winn and Cate Carlyle from Canada and Flippie van der Walt from South Africa in this free online webinar about the benefits of international exchange programmes. It is all happening on Tuesday,  9 April 2019, so please check the CPDWL webpage for details of the time in your region. If you can't make it, a recording will be available too.

Call for Papers – Open Sessions

 

News Media Section joint with Digital Humanities – Digital Scholarship Special Interest Group

 

Theme: Success Stories and Challenges: News Media Re-used in Research and by the General Public

 

Background

 

The News Media Section is seeking proposals for papers to be presented at the IFLA World Library and Information Congress in Athens, Greece, from August 24-30, 2019. This open program is co-sponsored by the IFLA’s Digital Humanities – Digital Scholarship Special Interest Group.

 

Libraries and cultural heritage institutions have led initiatives to preserve news media in its various forms. The large-scale digitization of newspapers and other news content has opened up possibilities for digital scholarship and other re-uses of news. How are scholars and the general public using digitized news content in new ways? What are the successes and challenges of digital news archives for the digital humanities and beyond?

 

Possible topics may include:

• The re-use of digitized newspapers and other news content in research and digital humanities projects.
• Case studies that explore the successes and challenges of using digitized news content
• Digitized newspapers in research and education 
• Users of news media: digital humanities scholars, genealogists, researchers, etc. 
• Themed or special digital exhibits that incorporate and reimagine digitized news content (e.g., WWI portal of the European Digital Library Europeana)

 

Submission Guidelines

Proposal abstracts must be submitted by 29 March 2019, must be in English, and should clearly include:

 

• Title of proposed paper
• Abstract of proposed paper (no more than 500 words)
• Name(s) of presenter(s) and position(s) and/or title(s)
• Employer(s) / affiliated institution(s) of presenter(s)
• Contact information including email address(es) and telephone number(s)
• Short biographical statement(s) of presenter(s)

 

Abstracts must be submitted as an MS Word attachment to all members of the Conference Planning Committee:

 

• Spencer Acadia (acadias1@gmail.com)
• Mary Feeney (mfeeney@email.arizona.edu)
• Minna Kaukonen (minna.kaukonen@helsinki.fi)
• Ana Krahmer (ana.krahmer@unt.edu)
• Anke Winsmann (winsmann@suub.uni-bremen.de)

 

Selected presenters will be notified by 15 April 2019.

 

Accepted papers

• Complete accepted papers should be 3000-6000 words in length, be an original submission not published elsewhere, be written and English, and must use the template that will be available with IFLA’s 2019 Guidelines for Paper Authors and Presenters.
• Complete accepted papers must be submitted as MS Word attachments to the committee members listed above, along with accompanying presentation slides, by 1 June 2019.
• All papers presented at the WLIC 2019 will be made available online via the IFLA Library under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.
• Authors of accepted papers must complete the IFLA Authors’ Permission Form.
• Approximately 15-20 minutes will be allotted for a summary presentation of the paper. It is strongly recommended that the presentation is supported by a visual element such as PowerPoint, Prezi, or other presentation software.

 

Important dates

29 March 2019         Proposal abstracts due

15 April 2019           Acceptance notices sent to authors

7 June 2019             Completed papers and presentations submitted

Please note

At least one of the paper’s authors must be present to deliver a summary of the paper during the program in Athens. Abstracts should only be submitted with the understanding that the expenses of attending the conference will be the responsibility of the author(s)/presenter(s) of accepted papers.

The Programme Committee regrets that it has no funding to assist prospective authors, and the submission of an abstract must be on the understanding that the costs of attending the conference including registration, travel, accommodation, and other expenses, are the responsibility of the presenters of the accepted papers, or their institutions. No financial support can be provided by IFLA, but a special invitation letter can be issued to authors of accepted papers.

Dear Colleagues,

Greetings from the IFLA Regional Office for Asia and Oceania.

IFLA has announced that a postal ballot is being held for the following IFLA Standing Committee 2019 – 2023 elections where the number of nominees exceeded the number of vacancies. See details in table below.  IFLA has despatched the ballot forms to all Members registered for the Sections.

Section No.

Section Name

1

National Libraries

2

Academic and Research Libraries

8

Public Libraries

10

Libraries for Children and Young Adults

13

Cataloguing

15

Document Delivery and Resource Sharing

18

Rare books and Manuscripts

19

Preservation and Conservation

21

Information Technology

23

Education and Training

24

Library Theory and Research

26

Asia and Oceania

27

Latin America and the Caribbean

29

Subject Analysis and Access

31

Libraries Serving Persons with Print Disabilities

32

Library Services to Multicultural Populations

40

Management of Library Associations

Only those Members and Affiliates who have paid their 2018 membership fees in full and who are not in arrears are eligible to vote in these elections. The original ballot paper must be used. It must be signed by the authorised representative of the Member. See also: https://www.ifla.org/node/91904

Please visit the elections announcement webpage for information of the candidates’ profiles.

Completed ballot papers should be sent by email or FAX or post to reach IFLA Headquarters on or before the deadline of 29 March 2019.

 Email

FAX

Post

elections@ifla.org
[PDF format only]

+31 70 3834827

IFLA HEADQUARTERS
P.O. Box 95312
2509 CH The Hague
The Netherlands 

Thank you.      

Best regards,

Janice Ow 
for Manager, IFLA Regional Office for Asia and Oceania

IFLA is pleased to announce that the 2019 General Assembly will be held during the IFLA World Library and Information Congress 2019, 85th IFLA General Conference and Assembly, at the Megaron Athens International Conference Centre in Athens, Greece.

The General Assembly is the annual general meeting of IFLA Members. At this meeting, the President, Treasurer, and Secretary General will report on IFLA's annual activities and strategic directions. The General Assembly is the highest governance level of the Federation and its key function is to determine the purposes and values of the Federation as a whole. 

IFLA Members may propose items to be added in the Agenda (See IFLA Statutes, Art. 9.5*). Proposals may be sent by email ifla@ifla.org or FAX +31 70 3834827 by 28 May 2019.

The draft Agenda for the General Assembly can be found below. The Convening Notice for the Assembly will be sent to Members in June 2019.

Agenda
Wednesday, 28 August 2019, 16.15–18.00

1. Opening by the President, Glòria Pérez-Salmerón
2. Appointment of Tellers
3. Establishment of a Quorum
4. Adoption of the Agenda
5. Minutes of the previous meeting, held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 28 and 29 August 2018
6. In memoriam of those members who have died during the past year
7. Presentation of the Report of the President
8. Presentation of IFLA’s Annual Report by the Secretary General
9. Presentation of the Annual Accounts by the Treasurer
10. Formal announcement of the Results of the Postal Ballot for the Election of President-elect and for places on the Governing Board by the Secretary General
11. Motions and Resolutions
    11.1 Motion to approve the holding of the next General Assembly in August 2020
    (Art 8.2 of the Statutes refers)
    11.2 Motion to approve Membership fees 2019-2021
12. Motion to adjourn and reconvene at 16.15 on Thursday, 29 August 2019

Thursday, 29 August 2019, 16.15–17.30

13. Closing Session

• Address by the President Glòria Pérez-Salmerón
• Presentation of Awards
• Thanks to the outgoing Governing Board
• Introduction of the new Governing Board
• Announcement of WLIC 2021 location
• Vote of thanks WLIC 2019
• Invitation to WLIC 2020 in Auckland, New Zealand
• Address by incoming President Christine Mackenzie
• Close of the Assembly 

*For details on the conduct of the General Assembly, please refer to the IFLA Statutes, Article 9 Convening of General Assemblies.

Gerald Leitner
IFLA Secretary General
The Hague, Netherlands
12 March 2019

IFLA WLIC 2019

A reminder that we are currently inviting submissions for presentations at our Section's open session at the IFLA Congress (WLIC).  Please note that the deadline for submissions has been extended to 29th March 2019.  Further details can be found here.

IFLAPARL Annual Pre-conference 2019

The Sections' annual pre-coneference will be held at held at the Hellenic Parliament, Athens, Greece, on the 22nd - 23rd August 2019.  The theme this year will be "Parliamentary Libraries & Research Services: Supporting Dialogue for Change".  Further details can be found here.

 

Themes:

1. "Local History and Genealogy in Multiethnic Societies, the impact of genetic mapping and digitized sources"

2. "Libraries as Mediators, Producers and Partners in the development of community awareness and cultural understanding"

Call for Proposals and Papers

Today, libraries, archives, museums and documentation centres are moving from a reactive to a productive role. Though they continue to collect, preserve and support the use of historical documents and records, they also engage and participate in the production, publication and active dissemination of new resources based on their collections as the sites of knowledge retrieval. They have become centers of knowledge production, both in the material and the virtual world.

The growing use of low-cost genetic testing, combined with the massive scanning and digitization of genealogical records, allows ordinary families to study both their family trees and their ethnic background in great depth and detail. The results tend to show more variation (multiple ethnic backgrounds) than most people are currently aware of.

The first topic emphasizes the deep changes in our inputs and how new technologies allow us to collect, analyze and connect much more data much faster than before.

The second topic reflects a corresponding institutional change: we must take a more active, and a more collaborative role in bringing the new knowledge to our publics in local, national and world-wide communities.

Session welcomes papers that discuss:

• Innovative use of historical and genealogical collections
• Collaborative work with historical and genealogical societies
• Local History, Local Community and use of social technologies, like crowdsourcing
• Genetic genealogy and the promise of DNA
• Responses to new demands from the well-informed users
• Multi-ethnicity in local history and culture, avoiding more traditional nationalistic and regional perspectives
• We encourage evidence based practice and invite presentations and analysis of projects which can be of practical value to others. 
• Submissions in other formats than academic papers (such as reports, multimedia presentations and essays) are welcome.

Important dates

Deadline for submissions is 31 March 2019.
Notification of submitters 15 April 2019.
The full paper due on 15 June 2019

The 'Guidelines' are now also available in Hindi. 

With many thanks to the Editor of the IFLA Journal Steve Witt (and former convenor of this SIG) the March 2019 IFLA Journal is a Special Issue on Libraries in Times of Crisis containing some of the papers presented at this session, as well as other contributions from abstract submitters. It is available at: http://www.ifla.org/node/92016. This topic at Wroclaw in 2017 was so interesting that it prompted me to seek a special issue of IFLA Journal on the topic.

Dr Kerry Smith, FALIA, AM

Convenor IFLA Library History SIG

The minutes of the Bibliography Section Standing Committee meetings in Kuala Lumpur held August 2018 are now available.

A call for papers for the joint School Libraries Section with Statistics and Evaluation Section is to be found here.

A call for papers for the joint School Libraries Section with Statistics and Evaluation Section is to be found here.

The concept for the update of the 'School Library Manifesto' is ready for discussion now.

Mode (will tally how many people use the link to view the Doc) Mode 1  (for those who cannot use shortened link) For those that cannot access these, here is the download Please send your comments before 31st March to iflasl2019@gmail.com  

The Spanish Senate will be hosting this summer’s ECPRD seminar from 6th to 8th June 2019 in Madrid, Spain.  The seminar will have the theme: “Challenges in a Digital Age: Preservation, Management and Promotion of the Parliament’s Documentary Output and Bibliographical Heritage”. 

Further information about the conference is available here.  Please note that the deadline for registration is 30 April 2019.

Gifts for the Collections: Guidelines for Libraries, 2019 extended edition is now available!

Please refer to Acquisition and Collection Development Publications for details.

To mark the 10th anniversary of the mandate on cultural rights and the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights has written a report to give an overview of the work of her mandate including suggestions for strategies for advancing cultural rights during the next decade.

Libraries worldwide have an essential role in protecting and promoting human rights in their communities. They do this through resisting censorship and discrimination, providing access to information, and supporting the rights of immigrants, minorities, people with disabilities, women, children, adolescents and others.

 

Libraries are also the primary institutions in any society for safeguarding documentary cultural heritage, as well as ensuring that everyone has the possibility to benefit from it. They are increasingly aware of their role in encouraging creativity, in addition to supporting access to culture, and in promoting understanding and tolerance.

In November 2018 IFLA submitted its response to the consultation of the Special Rapporteur on cultural rights, highlighting how libraries are adding to the mandate’s work, as well as the challenges that they face.

Special Rapporteur recognises the importance of libraries

The Special Rapporteur stresses that all citizens should be guaranteed cultural rights, including, the right to freely take part in cultural life, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits. This is particularly important in times of crisis, when some, mistakenly, may see cultural rights as being less important.

 

In her report, she states that cultural rights will only be realised if new ways are found to stand up for them and new allies mobilised in support. She particularly recognises the role of libraries in this, drawing on IFLA contributions, for example with marginalised groups such as indigenous groups. Furthermore, she highlights the work IFLA has done in establishing and distributing guidelines on relevant cultural rights for librarians and highlights how libraries are contributing to giving access to culture.

She notes in particular IFLA’s regular use of the work of the mandate and how artistic freedom and copyright issues has been integrated as vital complements to freedom of access to information.

We are happy to see libraries being recognised in this context, but it should not end there. Much more still needs to be done!

Looking forward to the next 10 years

The Rapporteur makes a set of recommendations to make culture fully accessible to all. To realise this vision, cultural rights must not only be mainstreamed, but cooperation between the mandate of the Rapporteur and other relevant mechanisms must be established.

To ensure this Governments must improve the opportunities for all to take part actively in cultural life by dedicating more support to public cultural events, as well as supporting independent civil society and the voluntary sector, and thereby promoting a plurality of voices in the public space.

Libraries around the globe are already providing a welcoming public space that fosters freedom of expression, freedom of association and access to heritage resources. IFLA therefore welcomes the recommendations made by the Rapporteur. We are looking forward to working further with the Rapporteur to ensure that the recommendations will be upheld.

Find the 10th anniversary report by the Special Rapporteur here, and read the IFLA contribution to the mandate on cultural rights here.

During times of crisis, how can public libraries aid in disaster preparedness, response, and recovery?

In our next E4GDH webinar (Thursday 14th March, 11.30 am – 12.30 am ET), Feili Tu-Keefner will be discussing her research into the role public librarians have played in times of crisis, and sharing lessons learnt. 

Please see our Events page for more information, including the webinar time where you are and how to register.