World Library and Information Congress:
75th IFLA General Conference and Assembly
"Libraries create futures: Building on
cultural heritage"
23-27 August 2009, Milan, Italy
General Guidelines for Papers
Professional units of IFLA are calling for papers for the IFLA
General Conference. We have prepared these Guidelines to help those
intending to present a paper.
If you wish to present a paper, please
remember these requirements:
Papers should reflect the conference theme:
"Libraries create futures: Building on cultural heritage".
Thanks to libraries, civilisations have gathered and stored
evidence of their manual, scientific, artistic, literary, musical as
well as religious activity. Assuredly, libraries preserve the bases
and the roots of human knowledge. Knowledge transmission today has
radically changed: the scope of bibliography has widened immensely.
Libraries therefore had to update their role: preservation and access
are still the main points to be achieved, though in a new, critical
and professional way, in order to assure the adequate standard of the
service. In this way libraries keep pace with the change brought
about by history and technology, helping to shape the future through
the resources inherited from the past for example cultural heritage.
Century long traditions have created a vast and diversified context,
in which mediaeval libraries (mostly in monasteries and
universities), live together with Renaissance libraries as well as
modern libraries, whose efficient standards promote public reading
and research effectively.
Libraries keep the balance between past and present and they turn
roots into vital elements for the future, paving the way to the
development of society, to promote better quality of life and
encourage contacts between different civilisations and cultures all
over the world.
Today Italy on the Mediterranean coast is like a bridge between
Europe, Africa and the Middle East and plays a leading role for peace
and cooperation among the people. This enables libraries, through
their rich historic tradition and their technological developments to
be considered as a decisive factor to achieve this aim.
Proposals for papers need to be submitted for approval to the
IFLA Section or other professional unit by the date announced
by them.
- Speakers of approved papers
are required to send the full text of their papers, including an
abstract, to the officers of the Section sponsoring their session,
by the date announced by the Section.
- Officers should forward the
approved original papers to IFLA at papers@ifla.org in electronic
form. They should be single-spaced, A4 page size, 12 point font
size, in Word (doc) or RTF format.
- A conference paper consists
of:
- Title of the paper
- Name(s) of speaker(s), their Institution,
city and country
- Abstract of approximately 100 words,
summarizing the presentation
- Full text
- The layout of the "title page" will be created
by IFLA HQ, according to the data delivered, and PDF files will be
created to be used on the IFLA website and for the production of
the CD-ROM.
- If you are preparing a PowerPoint Presentation
with the paper, it should be integrated with the
paper into ONE SINGLE WORD document.
Please see an example
of such a paper on our website.
- PowerPoint presentations without
accompanying speaking texts, will be not accepted as
papers. Please note that the interpreters can interpret
only the texts of papers. They cannot reproduce charts, graphics or
PowerPoint presentation parts of papers.
- Papers may be written and presented in any of
the official IFLA
languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Russian
and Spanish).
- Translations should be provided into the other
languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Russian and
Spanish) whenever possible. Not all sessions have interpretation,
so written translations (with abstracts) are very important for
many conference participants.
- Please avoid using unexplained acronyms, sets
of initials, jargon and phrases which an international audience may
not understand.
- For publication on this website, the full text
of the paper with abstract must be submitted to the IFLA at papers@ifla.org no later than
June 15th 2009. Then it can also be included on
the conference CD-ROM.
Earlier submission would be appreciated.
Please note that this is not the
date to submit the paper to the section or professional unit. They
each have their own dates of submission, mentioned in their Call for Papers.
- Speakers are urged to comply with the
deadline.
Papers submitted after this date will not be posted on the IFLA
website until after the conference. They will not be included in
the CD-ROM. Therefore, Conference participants will not be able to
print them out at the conference.
- It is a long-established policy of IFLA that
speakers are responsible for all the expenses involved in attending
the conference. However, limited funds may be available to cover
the day registration fees (but not other expenses) of speakers from
other disciplines who would normally not attend an IFLA
conference.
Please contact the Section who sponsors your session for more
information.
- IFLA has first publication
rights to papers presented at the conference.
The quality of our conference as a whole vitally depends on the
relevance and interest of the papers, together with the standard of
presentation. Evaluations suggest that they are improving year by year.
Please help us make the conference the best yet!