The 2015 winner of the IFLA Professional Unit Communication Award is the Public Libraries Section. Marian Morgan Bindon accepted the award on behalf of the Section on stage in Cape Town during the WLIC closing ceremony. See the details and photographs of all honours and awards presented.

The jury and Professional Committee congratulated all four nominees on the way in which they have improved communication in a number of ways. The Public Libraries Section in particular has significantly developed its already impressive range of communication activities. This has been achieved through a communication strategy and roadmap which usefully involves monitoring the uptake of its growing number of imaginative communication initiatives. With a truly collaborative, inclusive and international approach, the Section shares important information and interesting stories with its members, other professional units and with IFLA in general, and it effectively reaches out beyond IFLA to numbers of libraries and agencies around the world. Importantly, the Section has encouraged all Standing Committee members to become engaged in its important communication work.

The IFLA Professional Unit Communication Award focuses on communication activities of any IFLA professional unit – Divisions, Sections, Special Interest Groups, or Strategic Programmes.  Many of the units have really engaged with social media in the last year and there have been a lot of efforts to improve web pages and to engage more actively in communication with the relevant community, whether that has been through those web pages, through Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, or through mailing lists and face-to-face discussions during conference.

This year the jury for the award comprised Maria-Carme Torras y Calvo, the incoming Professional Committee Chair, Andrew MacDonald, Chair of Division 1, and Anna Maria Tammaro who represented the winner of the award in 2014, the Library Theory and Research Section.

The criteria the jury used in its review of the nominees included:

  • Employment of a communication strategy that utilizes the functionality of the IFLA web site and the tools and new technologies available, or demonstrates improvements to previous methods of communicating;
  • Effective communication about the activities of an IFLA professional unit;
  • Regular dissemination of information or discussion via the professional unit’s IFLA web site or other communication tools;
  • Improved communication between members of the IFLA community in the areas of their specialization;
  • Innovative ways of reaching out beyond the IFLA community;
  • Improvements to the way in which the Standing Committee or other organizing committee members communicate.