Africa Section with Libraries for Children and Young Adults Section

For the first time, IFLA Sections Africa and Libraries for Children and Young Adults join forces to work on the crucial question of services for young people in African countries.

What are young people's needs and are libraries meeting them? How are public libraries, school libraries and community libraries working today? What are the challenges they face? What are successful policies and programs meeting the challenges at all levels: national policies, library models, equipment, training, collections, programmes, partnerships, funding...? An assessment of trends and recommendations for an Action Plan should be an outcome of this session.

Audience

The expected audience is likely to include

• librarians working in public and school libraries in African countries and in other countries,
• organisations and professionals working in partnership with African libraries,
• professionals working on : Action for Development through Libraries, Continuing Professional Development and Workplace Learning, Education and Training, Information Literacy, Literacy and Reading, LIS Education in Developing Countries, National Information and Library Policy,
• other professionals working on children's and young adult's reading, students and university professors.

Themes & Topics

We are particularly interested in presentations on the following topics in the specific context of services for young people in African countries:

• Young people's needs, from toddlers to young adults
• National policies for services for children and young adults; planning and implementation
• Partnerships: professional and financial; local, regional, national, international
• Building and equipment, physical and digital
• Librarians for young people today: required skills; training: challenges and successful schemes; associations and networks; professional and volunteer work
• Collections: collection management and development; physical and digital collections; the question of languages; traditional knowledge and cultural heritage; creation of content…
• Programmes for babies and toddlers, for children and for young adults and their families; with physical or digital resources; with important, little or no funding; young people's involvement in the library
• Programme evaluation, especially on effects of programs promoting reading for children and youth
• Promotion, marketing, lobbying
• New, performing library models; the influence of services for young people.

Submission Guidelines

Proposals must be sent before 31st January 2014 via email to:

Kirsten Boelt
Email: [email protected]

and to:

Rosemary Shafack
Email: [email protected]

They must include (in English or in French ) :

• Title of paper
• Summary of paper (up to 500 words- ½ page)
• The speaker's name, address, telephone and fax numbers, professional affiliation, email address and biographical note (40 words)

Papers can be delivered in any of the seven IFLA official languages. Simultaneous Interpretation will be provided.

The abstracts will be reviewed by the Review Committee. Successful proposals will be identified and announced by 28 February 2014.

Full text papers should be provided by 30 April 2014; papers should be 3-20 pages long, in a Word file. They must include an abstract and an appendix "lessons learnt": succinct recommendations derived from the paper content.

Oral presentations of papers will be of 15 minutes + 5 minutes for discussion with the audience. Texts of oral presentations must be sent to [email protected] before 1 August 2014, so that translations can be prepared.

Important Dates

Expenses

One-day registration fees will be waived for the speakers. However, it is the speakers' responsibility to find funding for travel, accommodation and associated costs, which IFLA and its Sections are not in a position to fund.

Contacts