Art Libraries Section

Introduction

Reflecting the theme of the IFLA World Libraries and Information Congress 2012 in Helsinki Libraries Now! - Inspiring, Surprising, Empowering the Art Libraries Section of IFLA will be organizing a two-hour Open Session: Integrating Access to Art Resources - Boon or Bane?

With the growth of networked communication and data exchange access to information became easier, faster and more prolific. In the meantime we have become familiar with searching databases, digital collections, library catalogues, image archives, museum websites and in other sources, anywhere and at any time, irrespective of where the material is stored, by whom it is owned and in whatever format. In this environment the need to make cross-domain searches (for example in bibliographic and image data bases) quickly arose. One outcome was the integration of diverse library catalogues into metasearch environments. Recently discovery services have emerged in many fields. Their key goal is the integration of as many relevant resources as possible into one search process. On the one hand the increase in results is seen as advantageous, on the other hand the disparity of resources and data make their use, especially in academic context, challenging. The fact is that the structure, the formats, the intellectual input, the language and the description standards of resources can be very incompatible and the value of integration of the access to them can be questionable. Is integrated or federated search appropriate to the diversity of such resources? How useful can results be when a discipline specific or formal context is missing? It is obvious that acquiring useful results in discovery environments requires new skills from the user. They need new tools to assist with post-selective validation of the results. Do we have such tools and are they capable to selecting the hits effectively?

Aims of the Session

The IFLA Art Libraries Section conference seeks to be a platform for exchanging experiences in the field of the integration of information and resources for the arts. The specific solutions of individual institutions are welcome as well as generic overviews of discipline specific initiatives and developments. Furthermore, presentations of the experiences and needs of users will be highly appreciated. To promote a lively discussion the benefits and problems, as well as the phenomenon of 'integration' itself, should be examined and assessed critically.

Format

The Open Session will last for two hours. Four papers will be chosen for this session. Speakers are restricted to 20 minutes. Afterwards there will be time for questions and comments from the audience. All seven official IFLA languages are admitted for the presentations (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Russian and Spanish). Papers in English are preferred because no simultaneous translation is planned for this session.

Submission guidelines

The proposals must be submitted in an electronic format and must contain:

• Title of the paper
• Author(s) of the paper
• Abstract or summary of the paper (200-400 maximum words)
• Speaker's info: name, address, professional affiliation, email address, biographical note (40 words)

Important dates

• 15 January 2012: Deadline for submission of proposals and abstracts
• 01 March 2012: Notification of acceptance by the Review Committee of the Section
• 25 April 2012: Deadline for submission of full text of the paper

Please submit your proposals to:
Jan Simane, Chair of the Section
E-mail: simane@khi.fi.it
and
Martin Flynn, Secretary of the Section
E-mail: m.flynn@vam.ac.uk
and
Lucile Trunel, Information Officer of the Section
E-mail: lucile.trunel@bnf.fr

Please note

All expenses, including registration for the conference, travel, accommodation etc., are the responsibility of the authors/presenters. No financial support can be provided by IFLA, but a special invitation can be issued to authors.

Congress Attendance Grants

The Finnish National Committee and IFLA have worked hard to secure funds for Conference Participation Grants. Up-to-date information is available on our Conference Participation Grants webpage.