By CHARLYNN SPENCER PYNE
Librarian of Congress James H. Billington was a guest lecturer at the first Council and General Conference of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) to be held in the United States in 16 years. IFLA last met in the United States in 1985, in Chicago.
During the conference, held in Boston, the Librarian also signed an agreement between the Library and the Open Society Institute (OSI)-Russia, a Russian branch of the Soros Foundation, to facilitate cooperation in various areas between the Library and OSI. He also led a delegation of Library staff members who served as faculty at IFLA satellite workshops, managed the Library's booth on the IFLA conference exhibit floor and represented the institution at dozens of IFLA section and committee meetings.
IFLA is the leading international body that represents the interests of library and information services and their users. The 67th Council and General Conference of IFLA convened this summer was the largest in history, with more than 5,500 registrants (the usual number of participants is 2,500) from 150 countries.
Founded in 1927 in Edinburgh, Scotland, IFLA was registered in the Netherlands in 1971, and is headquartered at the Royal Library (the national library of the Netherlands) in The Hague. IFLA is an independent, nongovernmental, nonprofit organization comprising more than 1,775 members from more than 150 nations. Voting members of IFLA are association members (such as the American Library Association and Special Library Association) or institutional members (for example, the Library of Congress and Yale University Library). Individuals may join as personal affiliates, and IFLA has more than 30 corporate partners who provide financial and in-kind support.
The theme of the 2001 IFLA conference was "Libraries and Librarians: Making a Difference in the Knowledge Age." Subthemes included "Advancing the Leadership Role of the Librarian in the Knowledge Age," "Managing Information and Technology in the Knowledge Age," "Developing Information Policies for the Knowledge Age" and "Forging Collaborative Partnerships."
Said Associate Librarian for Library Services Winston Tabb, who chaired the IFLA Standing Committee on National Libraries through the 1997-2001 conferences and is the new chair of the Professional Committee (see related story, page 226): "Because the IFLA conference was held nearby, and because the 2001 ALA Midwinter Meeting was here in Washington, we had the resources on this unique occasion to take to Boston an unusually large group that included our IFLA members on the IFLA standing committees—John Byrum, Nancy Davenport, Mark Dimunation, Wells J. (Brad) Kormann, Diane Kresh, Sally McCallum, Mark Roosa, Donna Scheeder, Barbara Tillett, Beacher Wiggins, Chris Wright, John Y. Cole and Peter Young—as well as staff to work in our exhibit booth and make our very popular in-booth presentations. More than a few delegates commented to me on the Library's impressive showing and our knowledgeable and professional staff."
Library speakers at IFLA included, in addition to Dr. Billington and Mr. Tabb, Daniel P. Mulhollan, director of the Congressional Research Service (CRS); Jill D. Brett, public affairs officer; Diane Kresh, director of Public Service Collections; Donna Scheeder, deputy assistant director of the CRS Information Research Division; John Y. Cole, director of the Center for the Book; John Celli, chief of the Cataloging in Publications Division; John Hébert, chief of the Geography and Map Division; John Byrum, chief of the Regional and Cooperative Cataloging Division; Barbara Tillett, chief of the Cataloging Policy and Support Office; Sally McCallum, chief of the Network Development and MARC Standards Office; Joan Mitchell, editor-in-chief of the Decimal Classification Division (OCLC, Forest Press); Helena Zinkham, head of the Technical Services Section in the Prints and Photographs Division; Judith Reid, head of the Genealogy and Local History Section in the Humanities and Social Sciences Division; and Rebecca Guenther, senior specialist in the Network Development and MARC Standards Office. Cassy Ammen, reference specialist in the Humanities and Social Sciences Division, and Allene Hayes, team leader for Computer Files and Microforms in the Special Materials Cataloging Division, gave IFLA "poster sessions" on the Library's Web project MINERVA: Mapping the Internet Electronic Resources Virtual Archive at www.loc.gov/minerva.
At the opening general session, IFLA President Christine Deschamps said, "Dr. Melvil Dewey, nous voilà [here we are]" and noted the appropriateness of IFLA convening in Massachusetts, the state in which library pioneer Melvil Dewey developed the Dewey Decimal Classification system while serving as librarian at Amherst College. Educator and author Jonathan Kozol delivered the keynote address.
Delivering one of four guest lectures at the IFLA conference, Dr. Billington's Aug. 21 lecture was warmly received by the standing-room-only audience in the ballroom of the Hynes Convention Center (see excerpts from speech on page 227).
Following the lecture, a large crowd gathered at the Library's state-of-the-art exhibit booth to witness the signing of the umbrella agreement to facilitate cooperation in various areas between the Library and the Open Society Institute related to the Russian-American digital library project, Meeting of Frontiers, at international.loc.gov/intldl/mtfhtml/mfhome.html.
Signing the agreement were the Librarian and Yekaterina Genieva, director of the Open Society Institute-Russia and director general of the All-Russian Library of Foreign Literature. An earlier, more narrow agreement was previously signed to enable OSI and the Library to work together for the establishment of a mobile digitization laboratory in western Siberia, headquartered in Novosibirsk, Russia. Three Library staff have already traveled to Novosibirsk for the installation of equipment and training of local OSI staff to perform the digitization. Further developments of this kind will now occur in the context of this new umbrella agreement.
During the signing ceremony, Dr. Billington said: "I want to thank Ms. Genieva for the wonderful work that she and the Soros Foundation are doing to foster an international appreciation for Russia's great book culture … so that the work that we are doing through the Meeting of Frontiers project will actually reach out into the interior frontiers of Russia as well."
Ms. Pyne is a network specialist in the Network Development and MARC Standards Office.