ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries C&RL News ■ October 2000 / 809 CONFERENCE CIRCUIT Creating the global library of the future Highlights from the 66th IFLA Conference by Hannelore Rader F rom August 13-18, 2000, the Interna­ tional Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) held its 66th conference in Jerusale Israel. Approximately 1,500 delegates from 93 countries attended the conference with the theme “Information for Cooperation: Creat­ ing the Global Library of the Future,” an ap­ propriate theme as w e enter the next millen­ nium and tRy to prepare the global library of the future. It was the first time that IFLA in its 73 years of existence held the annual conference in the Middle East. Unfortunately, the Palestin­ ian librarians and most of the Arab countries chose to boycott. The largest delegation, 296 delegates, was from the host country, Israel, and the second largest group, 247 delegates, was from the United States. More than one hundred ex­ hibitors presented their various products and demonstrations during several days of the conference. As in previous years, the ALA booth was most popular, with conference at­ tendees w ho stopped to pick up literature about our professional organizations and to chat with ALA dignitaries. More than 50 com­ mittee meetings and more than 100 programs w ere held, addressing topics such as: m, • exchange of electronic bibliographic data, • crosscultural networking partnerships, • multicultural Internet, • management of information, • onsite libraries and virtual libraries, • educating the professionals for the glo­ bal information infrastructure, • reading in the digital society, and • preservation of the past for the future. All program s w ere translated sim ulta­ neously into five languages: English, French, German, Spanish, and Russian. At Council I of the conference, the mem­ bership voted to approve the revisions of IFLA’s statutes, including a banded, differen­ tiated fee structure. The keynote speaker at the opening ses­ sion was Shlomo Aveneri, professor of Po­ litical Science at Hebrew University, author of several books on political science, and an experienced politician from Israel. Christine Deschamps, president of IFLA, addressed conference participants by sum ­ marizing the past year’s activities and her work with the Council to help IFLA develop a more democratic structure to prepare the association for the needs of the 21st century. Change is necessary to ensure that IFLA con- About t he au th o r Hannelore Rader is university librarian at the University o f Louisville an d ALA/ACRL Representative to IFLA University and General Research Libraries Standing Committee, e-mail: h.rader@louisville.edu mailto:h.rader@louisville.edu 810 / C&RL News ■ October 2000 tinues to be viable and productive as an or- ganization. This year a major focus of IFLA was the training of Professionals, or as many people call them, different types of knowl­ edge workers. Helping developing countries with their libraries is another goal of the orga- nization and a variety of projects are in place, including a revision of the dues structure to enable these countries to participate more. Other guest lecturers were Meir Shalev, one of Israel’s most celebrated young novel- ists and columnist; Yair Zakovitch, professor of Bible at Hebrew University; G. Y Baklavov, a Russian writer who is working on creating and establishing a new democratic society in Russia; and Steven Shrybman, a lawyer from Canada. T h ese s p e ak ers ad- dressed diverse topics in the glo­ bal environment from p o litics , econom ics, and religion to litera­ ture . T h i r t y - o n e poster sessions were presented, including many to p ics such as lifelong learning, Attending IFLA offers the odigitization, Web places. Here Hannelore information seek- transport. ing, library in­ struction in an international setting, library services to children, and many others. The User Education Roundtable held a w orkshop at H ebrew U niversity’s Mt. Scopus campus entitled “Training the In­ formation User for the Global Library of the Future.” Speakers from Hebrew Uni­ versity, Israel, Mexico, and South Africa spoke about information competencies and the diversity in training students for infor­ mation use. IFLA’s University Libraries and General Research Libraries Standing Committee, the largest committee within IFLA with a mem- bership of more than 473, sponsored the fol- lowing programs. Benchmarking and best practice Presentations and discussions continued to address performance measure in the elec­ pp Ra tronic environment and how to use bench- marking to measure performance. German, Australian, and British libraries are beginning to use benchmarking to measure perfor­ mance. A H a n d b o o k on Cost A nalysis by Roswitha Poll of Muenster, Germany, will be published soon. Raising the profile “Raising the profile of academic libraries and librarians” addressed marketing academic li­ braries beyond the university campus as part of a campus-wide strategy, provided strategies for raising the profile of academic libraries, and discussed developing a marketing plan. Library education Sp eak ers from the United States, Canada, Austra- lia, and Mexico addressed vari­ ous aspects of educating people for the library and information p ro fe s s ions in “Library Educa­ tion: Assessing Outcomes for the ortunity to visit interesting Professionals in der checks out the camel University and Research Librar­ ies” and “What Do We Want for Library Edu­ cation.” Presentations covered the needs for and status of information Professionals and specific competencies needed by Profession­ als to prepare them for the 21st Century. Speakers included Ken Haycock from Canada, Sharon Hogan from the United States, Jesus Lau from Mexico, and Alex Byrne from Australia. Copyright issues “Copyright: A Question of Balance” addressed Copyright management in an Open Univer­ sity, as well as European and U.S. perspec­ tives on Copyright. Also discussed was a third draft of the “IFLA Licensing Principles” for electronic information. The University and General Research Li­ braries Standing Committee continues to deal with vital and important issues of concern to C&RL News ■ O ctober 2000 / 811 academic librarians throughout the world. From the many discussions it is apparent that most of our academic library issues are shared with academic librarians throughout the world.1 A number of cultural events sponsored by the conference featured such sites as He­ brew University and the Israel Museum, hold- ing the Dead Sea Scrolls. Hebrew University was founded in 1918 and opened in 1925, awarding its first degrees in 1931. It is now a well-established teaching and research Insti­ tution with 23,000 students and a beautiful setting on top of Mount Scopus. Its library features 735,000 volumes, 37 librarians, and 8,000 users a day. Another view from the conference It w'as my great pleasure to serve as a first-time delegate to the 66th General Conference o f IFLA. and to serve as the liaison to IFLA on the New Members Round Table o f ALA. IFLA is a federation o f library associations, thus IFLA mem­ bers might typically be bodies such as ALA, the Library Association o f the United Kingdom, or the Association of Christian Librarians. Delegates at the IFLA conference in- cluded the entire IFLA headquarters staff, traveling from The Hague, Netherlands, directors o f national libraries from all over the world, international, and na­ tional library associatio n m em bers o f IFLA, institutional members o f IFLA, and personal affiliates (individual members) o f IFLA such as myself. W hat w as the conference like? If you have been to an ALA Midwinter Meet­ ing, that is what it was like: mostly meet- ings (o f sections and round tables), with relatively few programs to attend. In addi- tion, the conference sponsored two outings in Jerusalem: an outdoor dinner social on the campus of Hebrew University and a mu­ seum trip and reception at the Israel Mu­ seum . I w as a lso a b le to do som e sightseeing, taking tours to the Old City of Jerusalem, to sites in the New City, and to the tow'n of Bethlehem. I am indebted to and would like to thank ALA for selecting me as the recipient of this year’s award from the Bogle/Pratt Interna­ tional Library Travel Fund, a grant from ALA’s International Relations Committee to enable a librarian who is a member of ALA to attend his or her first international con­ ference. For further information on the Bogle/ Pratt International Library Travel Fund, see the AIA awards, grants, and scholarships Web page at http://www'.ala.org/work/ awards/index.html.— P en elope Papangelis, W estern K en tu c k y University L ib raries, p en n y .papangelis@ w ku.edu The city Jerusalem is a fascinating city, filled with his- torical and religious sites of enormous interest to most visitors. The old city, the markets, and the religious and historical sites are im- pressive. Being in the Holy Land and see- ing such famous locations as Bethlehem, Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee, the Dead Sea, the Jordan River, and Jericho was an unfor- gettable experience. Note 1. Many of the IFLA papers resulting from the programs will be available on the IFLA site http://www.ifla.org. ■ Ne w From ACRL: Library Web Site Policies, CLIP Note #29 Je ri Traw, Compiler Typical issues addressed are use/standardization of headers and footers; navigational elements; date files are updated; format/type of information to include; indication of page authorship, Submission and contribution procedures, proofreading for errors, testing prior to uploading, browser compliance, and Server access. Selected bibliography. 0-8389-8088-0, $ 2 5 .0 0 ; A C RL m em b er $ 2 2 .5 0 ,1 04p ., 2 000 To Order, w rite : A LA F u lfillm e n t, 155 N. W acker Drive, Chicago, IL 6 0 606, call: 8 0 0 -545-2433, (press 7), o r f a x : 312-836-9958 http://www'.ala.org/work/ mailto:penny.papangelis@wku.edu http://www.ifla.org