More than 40 Australians attended the annual IFLA Congress which wrapped up in Quebec City, Canada, on Thursday. I was thrilled to be able to attend for the first time and see what happens when more than 3300 librarians from around 150 countries get together. As a member of IFLA’s staff, I worked behind the scenes away from the sessions, but was able to attend a couple of sessions other than the 6 meetings I spoke at, so I’ll add a few links to what others were seeing and doing.

Like many other groups attending, the Australians got together at a dinner organised by ALIA to catch up with colleagues and to hear how preparations for Brisbane in 2010 are progressing. It was wonderful to see so many other Australians in one room after living away from home this year!

American Libraries Direct reported on the first few days, including the opening ceremony and some of the major award winners this year.

Bob McKee, a member of IFLA’s Executive Committee, reported daily on his experience at the Congress. He gives a great insight to the responsibilities that IFLA’s governing groups have throughout the year.

Ivan Chew from Singapore is a member of the Children and Young Adults Section standing committtee. He also provided a daily report on meetings, sessions, and the Congress in general at his blog, Rambling Librarian. I’ve been following Ivan’s IFLA reports for a couple of years, so it was great to finally meet him there!

Other bloggers on the scene include Epist, Information Access Avenger, The Cataloguing Librarian, and ALIA Executive Director, Sue Hutley at the ALIA Board Blog.

From the sessions

In addition to the sessions, meetings, committee meetings and other events, there were well over 100 posters at this year’s Congress. The posters are a great way to see at a glance some of the hot topics in libraries around the world. Some of them took at look at blogging, community, and professional development, such as “A Librarians’ community in search of self on the web” [PDF] which took a look at use of technology in Romania.

One of the sessions I was able to attend (though briefly) was the Web 2.0 Discussion Group’s session on freeing data, and bibliographic data exchange moderated by the group’s chair, Patrick Danowski of Germany. The group assembled an excellent panel to discuss some of the issues including cost, ownership, formats, and interoperability. Although a little too North America-focused at times, this was actually one of the best ’2.0′ discussions I’ve attended at any conference – it didn’t shy away from asking the difficult questions about how to make data portability happen. The input from Patrick Pfeiffer from Creative Commons Luxembourg was excellent – he challenged us to have more of these discussions and make them more sophisticated. Karen Calhoun was one of the panelists and reported on the session with a link to her slides from the presentation.

Another session I went to briefly was the New Professionals Discussion Group’s session on how to benefit from being involved with associations. Jesus Lau, Mexico Library Association president and member of IFLA’s Governing Board, discussed how some of the structures in associations can limit participation by new professionals and described how they seek to change that. Robyn Ellard described the many things ALIA is doing to help new graduates develop their career, such as the New Librarians Symposia and the New Graduates Group.

Milan 2009 and Brisbane 2010

After the Congress I left enthused and honoured to have had the opportunity to talk to so many librarians from around the world. Some are dealing with problems that may seem simple to us, others are developing very forward-thinking services, but all are willing to spend time to talk about it. Attending the Congress is a wonderful experience and I urge you to think about attending Milan next year or closer to home, IFLA will be in Brisbane in 2010.

Look for ways you can get involved with organising Brisbane soon! Quebec had some 270 volunteers and no doubt Brisbane would love to hear from you when the call for volunteers goes out.