World Library and Information Congress: 74th IFLA General Conference and Council

"Libraries without borders: Navigating towards global understanding"

10-14 August 2008, Québec, Canada

Call for Papers

Management & Marketing Section; Statistics & Evaluation Section; and Library Theory & Research Section

Theme: Managing Libraries in a Changing Environment - Legal, Technical, and Organizational Aspects.

Aims and scope

All types of libraries - academic, public, school, special, and governmental - must respond quickly to many demands in a rapidly changing world. Some of these changes come from developing technologies, while others come from new and changing legal requirements, or from experiments in changing organizational structure. All these demands have a significant impact upon the management of libraries. In order to research and assess the impact of various management challenges, libraries must turn to benchmarks, standards, and guidelines, while working within the theory and principles of librarianship and governing laws.

Relevant topics for the Program:

Adjustment of general management principles to a changing library environment
New strategies for an effective organizational structure to advance the library's mission
Impact of a changing legal environment that affects the provision of services and resources of Libraries
Use of new technologies to advance the effectiveness and efficiency of Libraries.

Papers based on practical projects and experiences as well as research based papers are welcome.

Language of Joint Session

French or English, although any IFLA approved language is welcome. However, availability of simultaneous interpretation into other IFLA languages may not always be possible. Every effort will be made to provide simultaneous interpretation, or to provide a translation of the paper available at the presentation.

Important Dates and Information

Proposal submission - Must be in an approved IFLA language, with an abstract (maximum of 250 words), due February 18, 2008. The proposal must include the abstract, name, contact information and institutional affiliation of the author [authors].

Please send proposals including abstracts to each of the following people:

James L. Mullins (USA), jmullins@purdue.edu
Madeleine Lefebvre (Canada), mjlefebv@ryerson.ca
Michael Heaney (United Kingdom), Michael.heaney@ouls.ox.ac.uk
Ragnar Andreas Audunson (Norway), Ragnar.Audunson@jbi.hio.no

Papers due - Final version of the full paper must be submitted to the above contacts by May 20, 2008. Please note: selected papers will be recommended for inclusion in the IFLA Journal.

Depending upon time allotted for the program, four to six papers will be selected.

All proposals will be evaluated by a scientific committee representing the three sections: Madeleine Lefebvre (Canada) and James L. Mullins (USA), co-chairs; Ragnar Andreas Audunson (Norway), Raymond Berard (France), Dinesh Gupta (India), Michael Heaney (United Kingdom), Daisy McAdams (Switzerland), and Ruth Wuest (Switzerland).