ALIA Board Blog

As Jan mentioned in her blog submission the decision to relocate IFLA2010 from Brisbane to Gotheborg was extremely difficult. Like Jan, it was my first time in being involved in anything as complex. Organizing an IFLA congress is a very complex affair. On the surface and to many it may appear to be a conference for IFLA but organized by ALIA - well far from it.

There are a number of parties necessarily involved in the organisation of an IFLA congress. In our case, obviously there was IFLA itself, and of course ALIA as the host national association. IFLA also had its appointed conference organizer, Congrex, working on the Congress. You also need to bear in mind that IFLA and Congrex were on the other side of the world.

The National Committee was the group coordinating the event. This group was chaired by Keith Webster from the University of Queensland and included Sue Hutley, Jan Richards and (belatedly) myself from ALIA, Jan Fullerton from the National Library, Lea Giles-Peters from the State Library of Queensland, Sharan Harvey from Brisbane City Council, and Moira Fraser from the NZ Parliamentary Library. Alex Byrne from UTS, former President of ALIA and IFLA, also participated in the discussions. The group also had involvement from venue and marketing organizations in Brisbane, and other people at a state and national level. The organizations involved in the event were all reputable, and the individuals were all experienced and extremely well connected. 

As you can see ALIA was a significant, but not the only organisation involved in organizing the event.

The IFLA press release included the following,

With the uncertainty around the world economic crisis combined with very limited opportunity for government and local financial support the Governing Board has agreed that it cannot risk a potential significant financial loss for IFLA. (http://www.ifla.org/en/news/ifla-regretfully-cancels-the-2010-ifla-world-library-and-information-congress-in-brisbane-austr)

An enormous amount of effort was invested by the group to obtain the necessary funding. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the National Committee the necessary funding wasn’t guaranteed. IFLA was advised of the likely scenario of the Congress not meeting budget, and subsequently decided in its wisdom to relocate the Congress to a location where it felt it would be a viable event. To blame ALIA for having the event cancelled is unreasonable and inaccurate. The National Committee provided IFLA with an assessment, and IFLA ultimately made the final determination.

Unfortunately IFLA, ALIA and the organizations represented on the National Committee do not have financial magic puddings for budgets.  In the era of the GEC/GFC risks need to be minimized. Notwithstanding the financial situation, IFLA and National Committee were confident that the 2010 Congress would be a well run, professionally organized, intellectually stimulating, and enjoyable event.

It is extremely pleasing and heartening to see the response from the Australian Library community. I think the sentiment could be generally summed up as disappointed but looking forward to replace IFLA with a stimulating and innovative event.

Its not surprising that there are a few brickbats in the blogosphere and the email traffic - possibly well deserved, possibly not. One in particular, drew comparisons with the 2010 IFLA Congress and Australia’s tilt at securing the 2018 or 2022 Football World Cup. I’m sure if the National Committee, like the World Cup bid, had been able to secure the support of one of Australia’s richest men, we wouldn’t be having the discussions we are now.

What’s done is done and perhaps we now need to look forward to replacing IFLA with a national event.  Regardless of whether the IFLA event is replaced or not there are still significant events on the horizon. Next week we have the ALIA Public Libraries Summit which is sponsored by the National and State Libraries of Australasia, Public Libraries Australia and Friends of Libraries Australia.  Senator the Hon Ursula Stephens, Parliamentary Secretary for Social Inclusion and Parliamentary Secretary for the Voluntary Sector will open the summit and has expressed her commitment to the event. In terms of the influencing the national agenda this one day event could be very important.

In September we have National Library and Information Technicians Conference to be held in Adelaide. In the last quarter of the year we have the National Advisory Congress where members will be able to discuss issues with ALIA Board members. The theme for this year’s NAC is ‘Lobbying and Advocacy’. Given the events of the past week and the results of the ALIA member survey its a very pertinent theme.

A few years ago I attended a leadership workshop. The catch cry at the workshop was ‘chin up’. I think its time for us all to keep our chins up and look forward, rather than looking down or backwards, or thinking about what could have been.

By now most of you will have learned of the decision by the IFLA Governing Board to change the location of IFLA2010 from Brisbane to Goteborg in Sweden. As you can imagine this was a difficult decision which was not taken lightly.  It has come about because world economic circumstances have changed very markedly from when Australia was named as the host country back in 2007. All of us have been affected in some way by the global economic crisis and this is another of the ramifications of the world economic downturn. Because the greater number of attendees come from Europe an North America, the National Committee and the IFLA Governing Board were keenly aware that shrinking professional development budgets would likely have an impact on the Congress. So while fundraising at a local level was progressing well, the projected shortfall was determined to be an unacceptable burden to IFLA.

ALIA believes the long term continuity of the international association is paramount and therefore supports the IFLA Governing Board’s decision.  

Many of you have sent messages expressing your frustration at this direction and while we empathise with your response and share your disappointment we believe it to be the sensible, financially responsible thing to do. An IFLA Congress is an incredibly complex event with a budget of $AU6-7 million - as an outsider I didn’t realise how complex until I joined the National Committee mid way through last year.

True to the Australian spirit of “lets’ move on” the lists and emails are alive “where do we go from here?” “can we now have a biennial?” and innovative ideas for professional development and networking. As we have only lived with IFLA’s decision for less than 48 hours we still have a great deal to work through and I would urge you to be patient. The National Committee will meet again by teleconference next week to discuss future options and the ALIA Board has earmarked this as a priority item. In the interim let’s stay focused and resist the temptation to organise a plethora of unrelated events.

I would like to thank you for your support, reassuring words and understanding. Let’s turn this into a positive.

Jan Richards

ALIA President