Section of School Libraries and Resource Centers

The minutes of the Amsterdam Standing Committee Meetings 1998

Saturday, August 15

Glenys Willars, chair of the committee welcomes the members.

Approval of agenda

The agenda was approved. Comment from Torny Kjekstad about the scheduling of the meeting being at such an early time of the day (8.00 am); also about its scheduling one day before and one day after the conference. Glenys Willars, will request a later time for next year’s meeting; she explains that the meetings before and after the conference’s duration cannot be avoided due to the very many activities during the conference. She asks for item 12 to be discussed right after item 8 in order for the committee members to prepare for the workshop on the Unesco School Library Manifesto.

Apologies for absence

Apologies from Paulette Bernhard, she will attend the second meeting on the 21^st.

Members of the Standing Committee

Present at the meeting are Colette Charrier, Paola Faundez Garcia, Teruko Horikawa, Torny Kjekstad, Dianne Oberg, Inci Önal, Alexandra Papazoglou, Ann Symons, Thelma Tate, Glenys Willars, Blanche Woolls.

Congratulations to Blanche Woolls for becoming president of IASL, to Ann Symons, president of ALA, to Torny Kjekstad for becoming director of the Public Library of Baerum and to Colette Charrier for becoming president of FADBEN.

Attendance of observers

Marie Faulkner and Rita Schmidt, observers from the Children's Section, Margaret Tye, former member of the section.

The Section has a total of 99 members.

Approval of the minutes held in Copenhagen, August 1997

Approved

Matters arising from the minutes

Glenys Willars was asked by school librarians from Argentina, to query the status of the school library profession with their library association (ABGRA), because their qualifications as school librarians are not recognized. As a result, they cannot participate in the library association, have no voice and no vote; there is no other professional forum to raise their concerns. Glenys wrote to ABGRA, the Argentine Library Association, but received no answer so far. In the meantime she has had contrary evidence to the above complaint. Ann Symons promises to talk to a librarian from Argentina

Staffing of IFLA booth.

The exhibition will be held open for three days only during this conference. Torny and Colette volunteer to represent the section at the IFLA booth on Wednesday the 10^th.

Scheduling of meetings and programme of the Open Sessions and Workshops

The section has a very rich program during the conference:

• Monday 17 August 8:30 - 12:30 Workshop on the UNESCO School Library Manifesto
• Tuesday 18 August 12:00 - 14:30 Statistics browsing session on school and children's libraries
• Wednesday 19 August 12:00 - 14:00 Open Session with the theme: Reading Promotion and Information Technology
• Thursday 20 August 9:00 - 12:30 Workshop on the role of the Principal in an information literate school community -offsite at Hotel Mercure

The section received five papers; four were selected for presentation (see attached abstracts)

Colette has prepared a French translation of the abstracts to be distributed.

Blanche comments that we should also publish in the educational community.
The PB did not approve the workshop on the "Role of the Principal". It was discussed again at the CB midwinter meeting and was finally approved given that it was going to be held offsite and at no cost to IFLA.

The rejection was also based on the evaluation of the previous year's workshop on the "Role of the Principal". According to the evaluation forms, the change of time, had turned away many people. In addition, although it was supposed to be going for the whole day, it turned out that the second part was a meeting addressed to the working committee.

This year participation will be open to the general public.

An announcement regarding the workshop will be published at the IFLA Express in order to inform interested delegates.

The User education group asked Glenys for a joint open session at the next IFLA conference. The SC members prefer to keep a separate open session for the section.

UNESCO School Library Manifesto

A final draft of the Manifesto was sent to all the members of the SC. It incorporates comments that have been made by members of the SC and other prominent members of the library community.

A point of general concern is the length of the Manifesto:
it has to be shorter for use by the politicians; it must be no longer than the Public library Manifesto;Torny adds that the text should not be ambiguous and it should translate easily in other languages. It ought to be translated in as many languages as possible.

Dianne, expressing also the views of IASL, remarks that there are many references to other documents in the introduction; best if removed.

Ann: the introduction is not strong enough; it should state what the rights of the children are; the document should be closer in style to the Public Library Manifesto.

Glenys reports that a joint presentation of the Public and School library Manifestos will be scheduled for the IFLA 1999 conference in Bangkok.

Finally the meeting closes with an update from the CB meeting presented by Glenys.

Sad news: Mrs. Deschamp,the IFLA president, lost her son in a road accident. She wishes no sympathy expressed to her during the conference.

New issue raised: the use of the sign language as an IFLA conference language. So far no solution was offered to the problem.

Conference evaluation: this year the evaluation will be done individually and not during the SC meetings. Delegates are kindly requested to answer them for the benefit of better future conference organization.

Contributed papers: their quality has not been very high, so there will be none included in next year's conference.

SC Meeting, Friday 21 August 8:00-9:50

Present at the meeting are: Paulette Bernhard, Colette Charrier, Vesna Kranjek Cizmek, Paola Faundez Garcia, Teruko Horikawa, Torny Kjekstad, Dianne Oberg, Inci
Pnal, Alexandra Papazoglou, Ann Symons, Thelma Tate, Glenys Willars, Blanche Woolls.

Observers: Anne Clyde, Lynn Hay, Ken Haycock, Ann Galler, Margaret Tye.

Chair's Report

• New leaflet: Glenys Willars presents the new leaflets of the section produced in English and translated so far in French and German.

• Books for all: Glenys, who was elected by the School Section’s SC to represent the section on the Books for All advising board, attended the meeting. Lioba Betten presented the annual report. Books for All collects money for countries that need books. The books are bought in the countries.

  The main concern of the advising board, is the criteria for selection of the awards (who gets what amount). Most of the money comes from Germany. USA collects only a small amount of money.

  Request from the project: to encourage people in every country to collect more money for this purpose. Some countries did not receive their share, some remote areas do not apply for the funds. During the next three years emphasis will be given to Asian countries; until now they had not received a lot of attention. Individuals and individual libraries can apply to Books for all. Right now the Project is being evaluated and the evaluation will be presented to the PB in November.

• Invitations and conferences: The Section was invited by the Cameroon Association of Librarians, Archivists, Documentalists and Museographers to present a paper on school libraries ( date Nov. 1998); they would like a French speaker. Unfortunately no one from the SC can represent the section

  IASL conferences : May 1998 : School libraries beyond the year 2000

  Nov. 1999, in Alabama, joint IASL and HAYA.

Alexandra Papazoglou, secretary, had during the previous year numerous communications with the IFLA headquarters for administrative purposes and with several people interested for information on the section. She has also been in contact with IASL representative Dianne Oberg and FADBEN representative Colette and of course with the chair Glenys. Two newsletters were produced during the year with reports on issues of interest. In her capacity of information officer she also produced a promotional presentation for the section that the HQ have published in the IFLA newsletter. Dianne suggests that someone can help Alexandra with the information officer duties; Alexandra thanks and thinks that it would be a good idea for the following year.

Progress report on Projects

• Research Project on the role of the Principal and School Librarian in an information literate community.

  Lynn Hay reports that research was completed. Dianne and Lynn will evaluate the results and will compare the reports of the participating countries; they will produce a set of guidelines on how teachers and principals can work together with the librarians. The final presentation is scheduled for the IASL conference (Nov. '99).

  Lynn expresses concern on the difficulty faced reporting on the project, given that reporting was a requirement from IFLA. Working on the international level was a challenge. A data collection site was developed to receive the data.

  Japan was not able to finish the qualitative instrument.

  Dissemination of the results to both the library and educational communities is important.

  Glenys and Torny comment on the great length of the questionnaires.

• UNESCO School Library Manifesto

  Paulette, Gwynneth Evans (National Library of Canada) and Glenys worked and consolidated all the comments expressed on the Manifesto during the SC meeting and the workshop. The Unesco Council will have to approve it in their December 1998 meeting; then it can be presented at the Unesco 1999 conference. A final version had to go to the PB meeting for approval. It has been initially approved but it will also have to be formally approved at the last PB meeting. The final version will go to Unesco. It will be translated in all the languages of the Council and will be distributed to all the members six weeks before the General Council. Glenys asks the SC to approve the Manifesto as it stands now. It is possible that Unesco will use a professional writer to rewrite it. Ann Symons asks if it will be considered an IFLA or Unesco manifesto. Paulette answers that it will be a Unesco manifesto produced though and endorsed by IFLA. The SC unanimously nominates Glenys to take care of all the necessary further work on the manifesto; she will see the final version before it gets published.

  Ann Galler congratulates the chair, the secretary and all the members of the SC for successfully passing the manifesto.

Future Conferences

• Bangkok 1999
  Open session: Section's theme: The School library a place for discovery (different kinds of learning, personal growth, information literacy linked with current learning theories.
  Workshops: Glenys suggests a common workshop for the implementation issues of the Public and School Libraries manifestos.
  Proposal approved

• Jerusalem 2000:
  Open session: Section's theme: How school libraries access information from the global network. How can we learn from others? (Resources-facilities-services) Workshops: Workshop on the new Guidelines of the Section approved

• Boston 2001 : Libraries and librarians making a difference in the knowledge age.

• Glasgow 2002

  25^th Anniversary of the Section: SC authorizes Glenys to work with her colleagues for the preparation of the section's anniversary celebration. The section will plan a publication with its history. Ann Galler, Blanche Woolls, Margaret Tye and Rob Palmer will work on the project. All SC members to write something about the school library.

• Guidelines for School Libraries - consideration of revision.
  Dr. Frances Laverne Carrol has suggested a revision of the guidelines. SC decides that Glenys and Alexandra will work on them. A focus group will be established. It will function as an advisory and validation board.
  
  
• Other projects:
  - Translation of the section's brochure in Spanish and Russian
  - Proposal for the publication of the Manifesto
  - Revision of the Resource book
  - Publication of the Principal's research project. A proposal is necessary by the researchers in order to discuss it at the next SC meeting and then the CB meeting.

Dianne suggests a listserv for the SC. Implementation will be investigated. Alexandra suggests closer cooperation with the educational community. Dissemination in the library field is important but should be supported by more active collaboration with the leaders in education in order to make the school library an integral part of the curriculum.