Preservation and Conservation Section joint with Information Technology Section

The World Wide Web becomes more and more important as a source for cultural heritage testimonials, which have to be collected and preserved by national libraries and other legally mandated bodies. And increasingly this is not only an issue for large institutions but also for many smaller organizations with limited resources and very specific collection profiles. So the need to include Web-Sites in the collection of memory institutions is an increasing demand.

Contrary to physical resources, the initial step to ingest materials like Web-Sites is the most important one in order to validate the technical completeness and usability for the long run. Even small failures like missing information can lead to limitations, when one tries to open the file at later time. This means that the selection process has to be done carefully, taking into account technical and quality aspects. In the meantime, especially around the initiative of the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC) and several other (inter)national projects, powerful new open source toolsets are available, which facilitate the collection, preservation and access to web-sites. These toolsets largely rely on the existing web archiving standards.

For this session - jointly organized by the Preservation and Conservation Section and Information Technology - we are looking for good examples of services and solutions demonstrating the use and benefits of the current tool family which enable libraries – especially smaller institutions - to initiate new services with a limited amount of effort. 

Proposals for papers should be no more than one page in length. If selected, speakers will have 15-20 minutes to present their results and 5 minutes for a question and answer period during the conference session.

Submission Guidelines

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 synopsis 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 6 March 2015 to:
Dr Alenka Kavcic-Colic
Email: alenka.kavcic@nuk.uni-lj.si
The subject line of all submissions should be "IFLA_PCS_ITS_ followed by your last name". For example, "IFLA_PCS_ITS_Surname".

The contact person for each proposal will be informed by 14 March 2015 whether their proposal has been accepted or not. The authors will be required to submit the full paper, at least 5 pages in length for inclusion in the program. It must be written in one the official languages of IFLA  and is due by 15 May 2015.

Please note:

• The committee is looking for papers that present real-world solutions. Papers that focus on solutions that are usable in multiple library contexts will receive higher consideration for inclusion in the conference program. Papers that are strictly theoretical or inapplicable to other environmental contexts are less likely to be accepted for inclusion in the program.
•  Every paper accepted must be presented in person by one of the authors at the WLIC in Cape Town.
•  Authors are required to permit non-exclusive publication of papers chosen for this session on the IFLA website and digital library. Papers that are accepted but not presented in person at the conference will not be made available on the official conference website nor will they be considered for nomination as a best paper of the conference.

Important Dates

Please note

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.