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IFLA Conference

World Library and Information Congress: 75th IFLA General Conference and Assembly

"Libraries create futures: Building on cultural heritage"

23-27 August 2009, Milan, Italy


Spanish translation

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!