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

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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