Service Point 93.pdf - CILIP

IFLA Mobile Library Section
I was Chair of the last ever Mobile Library Section presentations and
we had four very different ones. Following IFLA guidelines, we had done
a call for papers. This is to get away from the same people doing
speeches at every IFLA. It worked reasonably well for us but there were
some problems.
One prospective speaker was a sham and had not been to the
country concerned for ten years. It did however unearth us a legitimate
speaker from that country.
We got three speakers from the same province of China and the ones
we chose had a different idea on mobile libraries. They gave us a speech
on delivering requests by van round the branch libraries
Three speakers were in the Tsunami hit area and regrettably I never
got any more communications with them.
Despite these problems – all of which were sorted out before the conference
– we got five good speakers for this session and the mobilemeet
from countries we wouldn’t have been able to get.
Added to these were some good English speakers at the mobilemeet
and an excellent paper from Mercedes Sprouse, an American living in
Lithuania, working with Budapest for a group of mobile libraries in
Eastern Europe – Kosova, Albania, Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia etc.
Truly international and an excellent speaker.
Ian Stringer
IFLA 2005 Oslo
by IAN STRINGER
Mobilemeet
This years IFLA conference in Oslo started with a mobilemeet. This was
held at Holmenkollen Ski Jump and Museum. An excellent venue and
we attracted 32 mobiles from seven countries including the UK and
there were about 160 delegates.
The vehicles arrived on the Friday and we had an opening party. As
chair of the mobile section I spent much of my time showing round the
National Librarian of Nigeria.
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