ALIA Board Blog

I am finally writing a post about my last day of IFLA2010, as it turned out to be a sad day with the news of the death of Bob McKee, Chief Executive of CILIP reaching a few of us that day.  The closing ceremony in Gothenburg with Abba singing “Thank you for the music” and photos of Bob enjoying the conference were part of that farewell, prior to the official announcement a few days later.

We all have library colleagues that make a difference in our lives, and whose passing give us cause to stop and remind ourselves of the gift of life.  Bob influenced so many people within different communities - the library community and the political community are just two.  The September IFLA Presidential Newsletter and links to other comments really do capture the essence of Bob’s character.  I, like many others at IFLA2010, enjoyed hearing about his plans for retirement, world travel and his ongoing IFLA contributions, including the IFLA Building Strong Library Associations programme. 

In his last blog post Bob mentions the ALIA National Year of Reading 2012 campaign - Love2Read.  Bob and many of my Management of Library Associations section colleagues helped me with a set of videos during the conference.  It’s Bob’s funeral today and I mark the occasion   - with the videos from 12 August 2010, a reminder that ‘Life is too short’ and a glass of good Australian red wine (because Bob always celebrated with a glass of something).

Sue Hutley, ALIA Executive Director

[youtube RZ61s_jUbfA]

Saturday 14th August 2010

There’s only two days left of the main part of the Congress. The library lovers campaign has been featured here http://www.librarylovers.se/english.html, including materials to buy at the Congress shop (a set of Library Lovers luggage even!)More meetings today. Our second MLAS meeting started the process of finalising projects against the strategic plan and the activities until next year at the WLIC http://www.ifla.org/ifla77 in San Juan. Congrats to the IFLA Governing Board and HQ staff who have survived another marathon WLIC and as their new membership officer, Tatiana said today at Officer’s Training - they have “dined, met and danced” with so many of the 3000+ delegates.

I have gone through the progam and have highlighted the Australian’s presenting papers and posters : (who have I missed? Sorry if I have)

Posters: Delivering the Goods: Health Librarianship by Distance in Rural Queensland, Australia. Presenter: Jane Orbell-Smith, Australia

Papers:

• Get the edge, get ahead: QUT Library’s approach to learning support Vicki Mcdonald, Queensland University of Technology
• Collecting online newspapers: the National Library ofAustralia experience with archiving the SydneyMorning Herald (smh.com.au) Pam Gatenby, Assistant Director General, National Library of Australia
• Researching the Information Commons (RIC) Kerry Smith, Associate Professor, Curtin University of Technology
• All change: job rotations as a workplace learning tool in the Flinders University Library Graduate Trainee Librarian Program Liz Walkley-Hall, Flinders University Library
• Communicating Marketing and Advocacy Research to Practice Gaby Haddow, Curtin University of Technology
• New paradigm, new educational requirements? Australian viewpoints on education for digital libraries Katherine Howard, Royal Society for the Blind
• Students on placement: building their e-portfolio from practical experience Primoz Juznic, Associate Professor, University of Ljubljana & Dr Bob Pymm, Charles Sturt University
• ePortfolios a plan for success: Australian new graduate experiences Corrinne Hills, DRUG ARM Australasia Library & Rebecca Randle and Joanne Beazley, Logan City Council Libraries
• Learning Library : connected community and innovation - Full paper not linked yet. Marion Morgan-Bindon. Library Services and Cultural Development, Gold Coast City Council, Australia
• Creating a national voice for Australian libraries Sue Hutley, Executive Director, Australian Library and Information Association

Sue Hutley, ALIA Executive Director

You can look through the IFLA Daily Mashup at http://paper.li/tag/ifla2010

13th August 2010
Today I spent some time at the trade exhibition talking to vendors and suppliers about ‘what’s new’.   There was quite a few scanning machine types for digitisation and copying options.  There is also a book cleaning machine. And a funky sound booth chair from Schulz Speyer.  And there are the usual trade supporters of LMS companies, journal publishers and electronic resources vendors. ALA and IFLA also has stands.

The posters were also accompanied by their authors at lunchtime today  - there are a lot of posters this year, including some from Australia, and it was good to speak to a few of the presenters and gather abit more info. 

I also attended the OCLC update, and we also thank OCLC for being one of the IFLA Congresses major sponsors.  OCLC Research (useful reports) and their Innovation Lab are creating many applications http://www.oclc.org/applicationgallery/   and trialing ‘cool tools for libraries’ as well as continuing to make the world’s library collections more accessible.  This year’s OCLC reception was also a very nice networking function held at the Gothenburg Museum of Art last night. 

This afternoon was the National Associations meeting of IFLA member associations.  Ellen Tise and Jennefer Nicolson spoke on the important role that national associations play in IFLA.  We support the work of IFLA in many ways, including local, country specific perspective and lobbying on certain topics such as copyright and freedom of access to information.  Winston Tabb, Chair of the Copyright and Legal Matters gave us an update on the library treaties currently being negotiated http://www.ifla.org/en/news/29 A number of Australians continue to contribute to the work of CLM and especially through the ALCC.

Sue Hutley, ALIA Executive Director

Yesterday I spent most of the day in the Management of Library Association’s session which has pretty much run the whole day. The main focus of the morning session was on advocacy, and it featured our own Sue Hutley as the major speaker. The other speakers were from Croatia, Lativa, Chile, UK,  and India - all speaking about advocacy but from their own perspective and within their own context.As you can imagine each country was at a different stage of development in terms of their social development. While we may complain in Australia that times are tough and money is hard to get, we are streets ahead of our colleagues in less developed countries in terms of library services, and the stage of development and sophistication of our professional associations. Nevertheless, many of the problems raised by each of the speakers are similar. One particular problem that had ressonance was the engagement with decision makers.  We seem to have done pretty well on this front in Australia given our engagement with government over the past 12 months or so. Given the way Sue was handing out her business card it was pleasing to see that some or our approaches could be adapted by colleagues in other countries. The afternoon session of the MLA stream focussed also focussed on but from the perspective of evidence based research. It certainly remined me that regardless of whether its a national issue being addressed by ALIA or a local issue in our own libraries we need qualitiative and quantitative evidence to support and substantiate our claims and issues.The weather in Gothenburg is warm, sunny, and on occasions wet. The locals certainly enjoy the sunshine but don’t seem too phased by the damp. At the moment the annual Gothenburg Cultural festival is on with free music and acts throughout the central city. Last night as I was returing from a catchup with colleagues at the IFLA nightspot - the basement of the central library, the streets were full people, old and young. It was raining and people were going about enjoying the music unphased by the elements!Now the Gothenberg Public Library was an interesting place. Its located close to one the main central squares near the concert hall and art gallery and its normal hours during the week are from 10am to midnght, yes midnight. As we entered the main door at about 9:30pm I thought people woud be in there sheltering from the rain. How wrong I was! (Well I think I was wrong) People were in there reading, playing computer games, and going about their normal library business.Graham Black, President

ifla2010slides-sueh.pdf  - Slides from the session today (I had a few requests for them) If this link does not work, please email me at sue.hutley@alia.org.au

Thursday 12th August 2010

This morning Henning Mankell opened the day of the conference with a lovely speech on the importance of the library role in combatting illiteracy, which is still a worldwide plague.  A good link between Sweden and Africa.   There are reports on his presentation at IFLA here.  One of his nice opening quotes was also  “Laugh at least once in a day! Otherwise the life is miserable”

I also gave a keynote presentation today at the joint MLAS+other sections session – the paper is here and the slides uploaded above.    The original paper was crafted with simultaneous translation in mind  (at IFLA, if you have translators you normally have to pretty much stick to the original paper).  Our session ended up not having any translation available, so I mixed it up just a little bit.  My slides were originally designed with multi-language viewers.   It was great to get the audience involved by getting them to do a Love2Read action for me.  Thanks everyone for getting involved.  Am still trying to upload videos to the Love2Read Facebook site over coming days.  Other videos are already on the site.   I know how much you all love to read.  The National Year of Reading 2010 website is http://www.love2read.org.au  

In my paper I spoke about a few of the ALIA Advocacy initiatives http://www.alia.org.au/advocacy and especially our Every Member an Advocate campaign, workshops and materials http://www.alia.org.au/education/pd/pd.services/every.member.advocate.html 

Two of the case studies I mentioned today are :  http://www.saferinternetgroup.org and http://www.alia.org.au/schoollibraries

Today’s joint session involved a number of IFLA sections in the areas of library associations, research, education, statistics etc  and the papers are here http://www.ifla.org/en/conferences-session-day/2010-08-12 

For me, one of my main IFLA2010 tasks is now over, so I’m off to get a quiet glass of Swedish pinot grigio to celebrate. 

Sue Hutley, ALIA Executive Director

P.S. An Australian delegate got a celebrity IFLA2010 experience today.     Leonard Cohen is performing in Gothenburg tonight and staying at the Congress hotel and on his way to his afternoon soundcheck he bumped into Regina Sutton, State Librarian from the State Library of NSW.  After getting to talking, Leonard mentioned to Regina that his sister is a librarian.   Always good to have some celebrity goss at conference

I am sitting staring at a yacht skimming across the blue waters of Gothenburg, well I assume it is Gothenburg as it is just a photo on the wall of my hotel room in front of the desk that I am sitting at. 

The weather has been warm but overcast and the threat of rain looms at all times.  Like my colleagues from the ALIA board, I have had a busy week.  It started in Oslo at a joint pre conference satellite from the IFLA sections, Libraries Serving Persons with Special Needs (LSN), the Literacy and Reading section and the section I chair, Libraries serving persons with print disabilities (LPD).  Over the two days I heard many talks on the delivery of services to people with dementia, blind and dyslexic. But the main one that stood out for me was the report from the BUS-biblioteket which is a hospital library for children and young people. It is situated at the Queen Silvia hospital for children and young people in Gothenburg, which is the largest children and youth hospital of northern Europe. The library was awarded the prize ’Library of the year’ 2009-2010, which is appointed by DIK – the Swedish librarian´s trade union.  The activities and events they offer for the patients and visitors of the hospital are truly amazing, inspiring and impressive.

 Now in Gothenburg I have spent many hours in meetings, discussions on copyright especially limitations and exceptions.  Information meetings about recent  WIPO and standing committee discussions on the treaty for cross border lending of copyright material for the print disabled, the development of a manifesto for libraries serving persons with print disabilities, the Global Accessible Library and the Trusted Intermediary project, plus our own section committee meeting.  

Graham has advised that we were entertained by the ABBA cover group at the opening of the conference, who from a distance did look remarkably like ABBA back in the 80s.  Now I was not one of the many who got up an danced, ABBA is fine in small doses or through movies like muriels wedding but the rest of the audience did appreciate the chance to move their arms and hips.  

Over 3,000 delegates have converged on Gothenburg at the same time that the cultural festival is underway so you can imagine what a lively and exciting place it is to be.  Last night was the opening of the trade exhibition and the usual vendors were present, w that was interesting is the precence of family search, the church of the latter day saints geneaology software, this is the first time I have seen this group at a library conference. I wonder if Ancestry.com is taking their market share.   Ironically opposite their stand is the Ron L Hubbard booth, rows of books by the charismatic and infamous author are available for viewing, one wonders if this is a recruitment drive for the church of scientology or the selling of Ron’s books, probably both. 

This morning the key speaker, Henning Mankell, a renowned Swedish crime writer, occasional children’s author and dramatist, best known for a series of mystery novels starring his most iconic creation ,Inspector Kurt Wallander now made into a television drama and has recently aired in Australia spoke on literacy and dignity and the importance of improving literacy levels across the world and how important libraries are to this cause.

Join the Australian National year of reading 2012     http://www.love2read.org.au/

Julie Rae

Board member

Well I’m at my first IFLA Congress in downtown Gothenburg. Gothenburg (Yota-boy as pronounced by the locals) is Sweden’s 2nd largest city and is situated on the west coast of Sweden. As a centre its origins are based on trading and commerce due to its location as a port, the biggest in Scandanavia. IFLA is very much like the United Nations of the Library world. There are approximately 3,500 delegates from 128 different countires. While Sue was engaged in a standing committee meeting as a delegate, I attended part of the meeting as an observer.  Sue has filled you in on the SC’s work so I won’t dwell on the meeting.

My early exit from the meeting was because I went on a library tour to Boras (Boros as pronounced by the locals). Boras is a city of about 100,000 people and its  traditional base was trading and textile manufacturing. While the manufacturing element of the local economy has died, they have maintained a focus on textile technology, textile design and fashion. The local university where we visited specialises in textiles and design, but has also the largest and oldest library school in Sweden. Our tour was multi-faceted. It included a visit to the relatively new university library building, a tour of the many sculptures of Boras (for which Boras has a national reputation), afternoon tea at the art gallery, and finally a fascinating visit to Sweden’s only library museum.

The museum covers the history of Swedish public libraries since the 1800’s. It has books, shelves, library equipment, records, and technology covering all ages. If ever you’re in Boras I encourage you to visit the Library Museum as it is certainly an interesting place to visit. Here are a couple of photos from the museum. The piece of equipment in the first picture is fairly obvious, but can anybody tell me what the second photo is?

Here a a couple of photos from the many scultpures spread throughout Boras.

The conference commenced in earnest today Wednesday. The opening ceremony consisted of an introduction by Agneta Olsson the Coonference Chair, Presidential Address by IFLA President Ellen Tise, and the opening keynote by Jan Eliasson, UN President (2005/6). His theme was of the importance of libraries to meeting peoples thirst and access to knowledge and that this is inextricably linked to the interdependent entites of peace, development, and human rights.

The ceremony also included two musical segments. The first a hauntingly beautiful acoustic guitar accompanying a female singer with a beautiful, rich, and powerful voice. The other was your traditional Swedish folk group doing ABBA covers. They had most of the 3500 delegates up and dancing. And this was before Midday!

More Presidential observations before the conference concludes.

Graham Black, President

Wednesday 11^th August 2010

IFLA opening ceremonies each have their own unique memories.  Today’s was no exception.  Opening with acoustic guitar by Thomas Andersson.  Our congratulations to the IFLA 2010 Swedish National Committee for all their work.  Agneta Olsson mentioned the ‘experience’ that has been organising an IFLA Congress, as she welcomed everyone to Gothenburg.

You can read IFLA President Ellen Tise’s opening speech here. Jan Eliasson, former President of the UN General Assembly, gave an inspiring address for the Congress and concluded with a quote of the three passions of Bertrand Russell. All the speakers covered the conference theme very well -  “Open access to knowledge - promoting sustainable progress”.