Students of the Berlin School of Library and Information Science (IBI) at Humboldt University https://www.ibi.hu-berlin.de/startpage?set_language=en&cl=en are planning to give a presentation at the BOBCATSSS conference in Brno, Czech Republic in January 2015. The topic of the presentations will be:

“Challenge Accepted! Facing the Demographic Change: What does Demographic Change Mean for Libraries?”

Mainly they want to analyze activities of libraries and librarians facing the demographic change in different countries. The topic itself has its origins in a project seminar at IBI in the context of which a publication on the topic was produced; focusing on the situation in Germany. At the 2014 IFLA World Library and Information Congress in Lyon, this publication was presented in a poster session to an international audience. The resulting positive feedback confirmed that this issue is of great concern to many libraries and may affect even more in the future. For this reason, they decided to extend the project and take international perspectives and experiences on board.

In order to develop the presentation accordingly, they require further information about projects and initiatives which deal with demographic changes in countries other than Germany. This is where your support would make a real difference:

We are kindly asking if you could point us to any such project or initiative that you may know in your country, and/or to forward our request through your network, to share it with your national library association or with major libraries or to disseminate it via mailing lists, internet platforms and the like.

Your help would be highly appreciated!

For questions or further information about our project, please do not hesitate to contact us via e-mail :

Anika Wilde: wilde.anika@web.de

Marten Grunwald: marten.grunwald@gmx.de

We would be extremely grateful for initial feedback before 8th December 2014.

Thank you very much in advance for your efforts,

With kind regards from Berlin

Anika and Marten