Women
& Information and Libraries Special Interest Group

Date

11 – 12 August  2015

Venue

University of South Africa (UNISA) Library, Pretoria, South Africa

The IFLA Women, Information and Libraries Special Interest Group (WIL), in cooperation with the University of South Africa (UNISA) Library and the UNISA Women’s Forum, have the great pleasure of inviting colleagues to submit proposals for its satellite meeting.

This is an official United Nations Beijing +20 event, part of the thematic events related to women issues being held around the world leading up to the UN Global Leaders’ Commitment Forum to Achieve Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in September 2015.

Background information

The UN sustainable development goals (SDGs) are a new universal set of goals, targets and indicators that UN Member States will be expected to use to frame their agendas and political policies over the next 15 years. The SDGs follow, and expand on, the millennium development goals  (MDGs), which were agreed by governments in 2000 and are due to expire at the end of this year.

The Millennium Declaration, also adopted at the Millennium Submit on 8 September 2000, confirmed Member States’ resolve to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women and to stimulate truly sustainable development. It highlighted the importance of ensuring equal human rights of women and men and implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

This event follows on from the inaugural IFLA Women, Information and Libraries conference session Women, Information and Libraries in relation to the UN Millennium Development Goals which took place at the World Library and Information Congress in Durban, South Africa in August 2007.

Scope / Objectives

The purpose of this event is to encourage robust discussions and stimulate critical debate on how the Library and Information Services profession can contribute to the UN post-2015 sustainable development goals related to women.

Proposals can cover areas closely related to the Conference aims, which are:

• To evaluate the impact that Library and Information Services professionals have had towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals related to women.
• To review what kind of best practices have been implemented in different countries to support achieving gender equality and women empowerment.
• To discuss potential contributions that Library and Information Services professionals can make to the achievement of the Beijing+20 Campaign and the Sustainable Development goals related to women. 

The outcomes emanating from the meeting will be compiled and published locally.

Submission Guidelines

Proposal should include:

• Title of the paper.
• Abstract of approximately 150 words, summarising the paper.
• A summary of the author(s) details (name, institution, position), contact email address and brief biographical statement of no more than 50 words.

Proposal should be submitted electronically to:

Beba Stankovic
Email: bebapozarevac@yahoo.com

Copy to:

Maria Cotera
Email: wilsig@googlemail.com

Nthabiseng Kotsokoane
Email: nthabiseng.kotsokoane@monash.edu

Full papers

The deadline for the final version of the full papers is 1 June 2015.

Papers should be in English (or in the one of the official IFLA languages - Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Russian or Spanish with the English translation attached. Conference presentations will be made in English. They will be no longer than 20 minutes, with extra time for discussion at the end of the session.

Proposals and presentations should be unpublished, original works. IFLA has first publication rights to the proposals selected.

Deadlines

30 April 2015	Deadline for submitting proposals
5 May 2015	Authors of selected abstracts will be notified
1 June 2015	Deadline for the final version of the full paper

 

Please note

At least one of the paper's authors must be present to deliver a summary of the paper during the Satellite conference. 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.