What Do You Get When You Take 3300 Librarians...

What do you get when you put 3300+ librarians from more than 120 countries in one place for almost a week? A truly amazing conference! I spent last week in Gothenburg, Sweden in IFLA's (=International  Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) 76th World Library and Information Congress. As you may guess from the figures above, the annual congress, which is also the IFLA General Conference and Assembly, is a huge operation! It was also professionally very rewarding! I spent six days listening to numerous presentations, subjects of which ranged from human rights and censorship to copyright, smartphone applications, multicultural services, and digitalizing 18th century book collections, to name just a few. I also heard some really excellent plenary speakers.

On the IFLA website you can find many of the papers presented during the conference & also some videos. Here's just a few, well, let's make it 6 :) links that you might find interesting:

1. IFLA helps the libraries that were hit by the terrible earthquake in Haiti earlier this year. I attended an update session on what the situation in Haiti is at the moment and what ILFA is doing there to help the Haitian colleagues. Here is a video compiled of the National Library of Haiti's security camera footage filmed during the earthquake.
2. The IFLA World Report has loads of information about terms of freedom of access to information, freedom of expression and related issues around the world.
3. World famous Swedish writer Henning Mankell gave a plenary speech about To Be Able to Read and Write -a Question of Dignity. Watch the video here.
4. Emeritus Professor and a member of the Swedish Academy Sture Allén talked about the Nobel Prize in literature. Watch the video here.
5. No doubt the most fascinating presentation of all was, however, Professor Hans Rosling's talk about A Fact Based World View. You simply have to watch this video! You'll never think that statistics are boring after that!! He was given a standing ovation after his speech.
6. An interesting paper about minority ethnic gender fiction in the UK public libraries by Lecturer in Librarianship Briony Birdy from the University of Sheffield, UK.

Being true to my profession I am a fervent book lover (and now also a proud owner of a bright purple "Jag är en bokkramare" (that's "I am a bookhugger" in English :)) wristband!) and I love to visit bookstores when ever and where ever I'm travelling. (I actually don't very often visit libraries, if I'm on holiday, but if, like on the IFLA Congress I'm on a work related trip then library visits are, of course, on the agenda.) I managed to add no less than 5 books to my collection during my six days in Gothenburg! And four out of five are in Swedish. I am rather fluent in everyday situations in Swedish, which is the other national language here in Finland, but I guess I have read maybe one or two books in Swedish before. Well, the books I bought are by Swedish authors and are not (at least not yet) available in either Finnish or English. They all also seemed really interesting, so, I will get good language practise trying to read them in original language! :)

I actually started this post intending to say just a few words about the conference and then finally post my review of The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue, but this ended up being a whole post about the IFLA Congress. Nevermind, I hope you find the info interesting. I'll post the review either tomorrow or on Sunday.

Oh, and next year the IFLA Congress will be held in Puerto Rico and (drumroll, please!;)) in 2012 it will be here in Helsinki!! It will actually be held in the Helsinki Fair Centre just across the street from our library! I can hardly wait! It will be very, very exiting!

Have a great weekend everyone!