Information Technology Section

While much emphasis has been placed by libraries on developing digital collections and services, there have been few studies of how to keep these digital collections and services functioning in the case of a disaster or some other disruption to normal library operations. Whether due to natural or man-made events, advance planning for disruptions to services and collections is critical in our increasingly digital age.

In response to this critical need, the Information Technology Section is seeking proposals for papers on best practices and tools that relate to the facilitation, implementation, or planning for disaster recovery and business continuity of digital libraries.

Areas of interest

Areas of interest for papers include, but need not be restricted to, the following:

• Developing effective disaster recovery and organizational continuity models
• Implementing effective disaster recovery and continuity strategies for digital repositories
• Minimizing risk in developing and implementing digital libraries
• Solutions for promoting collaborative services to enable digital library continuity
• New organizational models to support an emphasis on library organizational continuity
• Case studies and lessons learned from successful efforts in recovering from a disaster

Submission guidelines

Proposals for papers should be no more than one page in length. If selected, speakers will have 15 minutes to present their results and 5 minutes for a question and answer period during the conference session.

Proposals should include the following information:

• Name, title, and institution of speaker(s)
• Title of proposed presentation
• Address and email address of speaker(s)
• Brief biographical statement about each speaker including information about the qualifications of the speaker to address the proposed topic
• One or two paragraph discussion of the main points of the paper including an outline of the takeaways a conference attendee will obtain by having the topic presented at the conference
• Language of presentation
• Contact information for response to the proposal

Proposals should be sent by 11 February, 2012 to:

Frank Cervone,
Secretary of the Information Technology Section,
E-mail: fcervone@purduecal.edu.

The subject line of all submissions should be "IFLA ITS Proposal - " followed by your last name. For example, "IFLA ITS Proposal - Cervone"

The contact person for each proposal will be informed by 10 March, 2012 whether their proposal has been accepted or not. Papers selected for inclusion in the program must be submitted in one the official languages of IFLA by 15 May, 2012.

Important dates

• 11 February 2012: Deadline for submission of proposals and abstracts
• 10 March 2012: Notification of acceptance
• 15 May 2012: Deadline for submission of full text of the paper