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

"Libraries without borders: Navigating towards global understanding"

10-14 August 2008, Québec, Canada


Spanish translation  

General Guidelines for Papers

Professional units of IFLA are calling for papers for the IFLA General Conference to be held in Québec, Canada, 10-14 August 2008.

We have prepared these notes to help those intending to present a paper.

If you wish to present a paper, please remember these requirements:

Papers should reflect the conference theme: "Libraries without borders: Navigating towards global understanding".
Libraries play an extraordinary role in educating and empowering citizens. They help individuals and communities to become more knowledgeable, aware and imaginative. At the heart of the drive to-ward global sharing, libraries transcend economic and social disparities. They promote the values of democracy, equality and basic freedom and reject discrimination.

Libraries are a passport for crossing all borders, the key to opening all gateways to knowledge. A true hub, libraries seamlessly incorporate information technology. Their heritage mission is to promote the value of their documentary resources, from textual to image, sounds and multimedia resources. In so doing, they touch on disciplines such as archives and museum studies.

Libraries are the crossroads for intellectual and cultural diversity, the locus of exchange and dissemination. Libraries are also the best defenders of access to information. More than ever, access to knowledge determines the quality of political, economic and social governance. Workers, students, researchers, parents and teachers alike can, through libraries, grow and develop their own vision of a just society, express themselves, and act.

Proposals for papers need to be submitted for approval to the IFLA Section or other professional unit by the date announced by them.
  • Speakers of approved papers are required to send the full text of their papers, including an abstract, to the officers of the Section sponsoring their session, by the date announced by the Section.
  • Officers should forward the approved original papers to IFLA at [email protected] in electronic form. They should be single-spaced, A4 page size, 12 point font size, in Word or RTF format.
  • A conference paper consists of:
    • Title of the paper
    • Name(s) of speaker(s), their Institution, city and country
    • Abstract of approximately 100 words, summarizing the presentation
    • Full text
  • The minimum length is 3 pages and the maximum length of papers is 21 pages (single-spaced A4).
  • The layout of the "title page" will be created by IFLA HQ, according to the data delivered and PDF files will be created to be used for IFLANET and the production of the CD-Rom.
  • POWER POINT PRESENTATIONS, without accompanying speaking texts, will be not accepted as papers. Please note that the interpreters can interpret only the texts of papers. They cannot reproduce charts, graphics or power point presentation parts of papers.
  • Papers may be written and presented in any of the IFLA working languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Russian and Spanish).
  • Translations should be provided into the other languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Russian and Spanish) whenever possible. Not all sessions have interpretation, so written translations (with abstracts) are very important for many conference participants.
  • Please avoid using unexplained acronyms, sets of initials, jargon and phrases which an international audience may not understand.
  • For publication on this website, the full text of the paper with abstract must be submitted to the IFLA at [email protected] no later than June 15th 2008. Then it can also be included on the conference CD-ROM.
    Earlier submission would be appreciated.

    Please note that this is not the date to submit the paper to the section or professional unit. They each have their own dates of submission, mentioned in their Call for Papers.
  • Papers submitted after this date will not be posted on IFLANET until after the conference. They will not be included in the CD-ROM. Conference participants will therefore not be able to print them out at the conference. Speakers are therefore urged to comply with this deadline.
  • It is a long-established policy of IFLA that speakers are responsible for all the expenses involved in attending the conference. However, limited funds may be available to cover the day registration fees (but not other expenses) of speakers from other disciplines who would not normally attend an IFLA conference. Please contact Sjoerd Koopman [email protected] or Josche Ouwerkerk [email protected] for details before you confirm an "outside" speaker.
  • IFLA has first publication rights to papers presented at the conference.

The quality of our conference as a whole vitally depends on the relevance and interest of the papers, together with the standard of presentation. Evaluations suggest that they are improving year by year. Please help us make the conference the best yet!