ALIA Board Blog

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

Thanks to Graham for his first impressions of IFLA!  My activities this year started earlier, as I was the organiser of one of the satellite events and spent three days in Borås, so I got to know the place pretty well!  I can confirm that it was a really pleasant little town, as Graham indicated.

The satellite meeting was a collaborative forum on library and information science education and research, involving the IFLA Section for Education and Training (SET) [I am on the Executive of this section], the IFLA Section for Library Theory and Research (LTR), the American Association of Library and Information Science Educators (ALISE) and the European Association of Library Educators (EUCLID).  The program focused on cooperation and collaboration in education and research, attracting 70 educators from across the world, with a rich program of papers which highlighted the amazing amount of collaboration happening internationally, nationally and regionally. 

Australia was well represented, with Helen Partridge discussing the current national research project into the future of library education in Australia (visit http://www.liseducation.org.au/ for more information on this significant initiative that involves all the universities with LIS programs), Philip Hider from Charles Sturt University (CSU) provided insights into the program offered by CSU, and Ann Ritchie (editor of ALJ) and I presented a joint paper on the collaborative project that ALIA Health Libraries Australia (HLA) are undertaking to determine the workforce and education/training needs of the health library sector.  This work will also be featured at the ALIA Access 2010 conference.  Delgates learnt about the new directions in international librarianship and emerging developments in a number of European, Asian, African and North American countries.  The forum resulted in the stimulus for further collaboration between the three organisations - IFLA, ALISE and EUCLID.  We are working with Emerald on publishing the full papers, so that they are all readily available to everyone, as Emerald and IFLA work on new plans for open access (the theme of the IFLA conference). 

The satellite meeting was hosted by the Library School at the University of Borås - this is the only library school in Sweden, so plays a very important role in our field.  The conference dinner was hosted by the City of Borås - a fun evening with the delgates getting to meet many of our local colleagues in the library profession.   On the second day, the IFLA New Professionals Special Interest Group (NPSIG) ran their satellite event, also at the Library School, so it was great to share a networking session at the close, before everyone moved on to Gothenburg for the ‘main event’.

For me, so far, the main focus of the IFLA conference has been meetings - lots of them!  There have been meetings and strategic planning sessions with the IFLA Section for Education and Training, and I am also working with IFLA on a new intiative - the Building Stronger Library Associations (BSLA) program (http://www.ifla.org/en/bsla).  A familiar face, Fiona Bradley, is the project leader for the BSLA program, which incorporates five training modules which will help support library associations in areas such as organisational development, planning, volunteer management, fundraising and building partnerships.   Six countries have been selected for the first roll out of the program: Cameroon, Lebanon, Peru, Ukraine, Lithuania and Botswana, funded by IFLA in conjunction with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Global Libraries project.  I am about to go into a meeting where the selected trainers will test the online version of the training program. 

So - it’s all very interesting here in Sweden - and more reports and impressions will follow soon!

Gill Hallam, ALIA Director

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”.