General Guidelines for Papers

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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:

Open access to knowledge - promoting sustainable progress

The theme chosen for the World Library and Information Congress in Gothenburg 2010 energizes and supports the Presidential Theme of IFLA President, Ellen Tise: Libraries driving access to knowledge.

The 2010 theme is therefore centered around the following:

Free access to knowledge, as important as freedom of speech
Accessible for all, including the visually impaired and others with reading difficulties
Open and inclusive, no matter who you are or where you come from
Public domain, a place on the net or in a physical space, where people contribute and socially share content produced and owned as a public service
Open for ideas with user driven innovation, where the user might as well be the producer
Open access publishing for further knowledge building and a better balance between copyright laws and freedom of information

Why is this so essential? Access to knowledge opens the world of imagination and creativity, thus progress for one individual becomes progress for the society.

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 not be 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 14th 2010; it can then 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 Calls for Papers [link].
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 this conference the best yet!

Last update: 17 February 2010