Library and Research Services for Parliaments Section

The IFLA Section on Library and Research Services for Parliaments invites proposals for papers to be presented at its open session during the IFLA World Library and Information Congress in Cape Town, South Africa 15-21 August 2015.

Session Theme

The session will focus on the theme "Parliamentary Libraries – Evolving to Meet the Challenges of the 21st Century" and will address the strategies that parliamentary library and research services put in place to remain relevant in the evolving political, social, institutional and technological context in which they act.

With this focus, the Section is looking for papers that may:

• Show how library-supported technology can enable clients (such as MPs and their assistants, parliamentary staff, citizens). Examples might include increasing clients’ ability to enact more relevant and effective laws or furthering communication between clients and their constituents.
• Illustrate library programs that have increased transparency between the public and the legislative branch.
• Share an experience in which a library had to reposition itself and its role, for example through opening its services to a wider audience, if not the general public, or through offering new services.
• Show how a library has made better use of its resources, meeting users’ demand and  offering new, more dynamic products, while adjusting to budgetary constraints.
• Demonstrate new tools for evaluating services to clients, and libraries’ impact on client’s work.
• Share innovative services that demonstrate parliamentary libraries’ evolving function into information or communication units and data centres.
• Offer valuable investigation of the theme for example through comparative analysis between programs or parliamentary libraries.

This session will provide an opportunity to identify best practices in responding to the challenges and opportunities that the 21st Century presents. Highly engaging papers will be selected with the goal of sharing knowledge as well as encouraging strategic planning, long term vision, and innovative thinking in other parliamentary libraries.

Papers should also reflect the WLIC theme, "Dynamic Libraries: Access, Development and Transformation".

The program will feature up to five presentations of 15-20 minutes each with additional time for questions.

For information on IFLA’s general guidelines for papers see: http://conference.ifla.org/past/2013/general-guidelines-for-authors-of-papers.htm .

Language of the session:

Papers should be in one of the seven IFLA official languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Russian and Spanish.

However, abstracts should be in English or French or Spanish

Important dates and submission details

15 February 2015:  Deadline to submit proposals/abstracts. 

Proposals should include:

• Title of proposed presentation
• Abstract of proposed paper (no more than 300 words)
• Name(s) of presenter(s) plus position and/or title
• Affiliated institution
• Contact information including e-mail address, telephone number
• Short biographical statement of presenter(s)
• Language of final presentation

Send proposals by email with a subject heading  "IFLAParlSession"  followed by  your name, to:

Lillian Gassie
Email: lgassie@crs.loc.gov
and

Hannah Fischer
Email: hfischer@crs.loc.gov

10 March 2015: Proposals will be reviewed and successful candidates will be notified.

30 May 2015:  Deadline for selected presenters to submit formal paper (for inclusion on the IFLA conference website and the Section’s website).  Details regarding the format and length of the final paper will be sent to candidates whose abstracts are accepted.

Please note

At least one of the paper's authors must be present to deliver a summary of the paper during the program in Cape Town. Abstracts should only be submitted with the understanding that the expenses of attending the conference will be the responsibility of the author(s)/presenter(s) of accepted papers.

All papers that are presented at the WLIC 2015 will be made available online via the IFLA Library under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Authors of accepted papers must complete the IFLA Author Form.

All expenses, including registration for the conference, travel, accommodation etc., are the responsibility of the authors/presenters. No financial support can be provided by IFLA, but a special invitation letter can be issued to authors.

Congress Participation Grants

List of opportunities for support is available on our Conference Participation Grants webpage.