Stuart's blog

So I think the session went pretty well. The rooms at the ITU are quite big (see pic, taken from the stage at the beginning of the session) and at first glance it can look like you have very few people in the audience. It’s only once I counted that I realise that we had, at various times, between 45 and 60 people in the room, all listening intently via earpieces (this is pretty good, as we were up against competing sessions).

Audience at Libraries Driving Access to Knowledge, ITU, Geneva, May 21st 2009

Both our physical presenters were fantastic. Kari Lamsa from Library 10 in Helsinki gave a great presentation on his library – an innovative combination of music, information technology and library service that is extremely well-used by young and old alike. Tullio Basaglia from the Scientific Information Service at CERN presented on the work being done on Open Access publishing in the particle physics community – it sounds highbrow but his presentation easily got across the importance of the library’s role in advancing new paradigms of publishing, and he received a number of questions from interested folk at the end. Check the SCOAP3 project for more information.

Our video presentations were less well-behaved, although we got there in the end. We had some sound problems which meant at one point I was going to offer a running commentary on the Vasconcelos Project’s movie but luckily our Swiss library colleagues and the ITU IT support resolved things. Vasconcelos got a round of applause, as did the video from the Global Libraries Latvia team (which can be seen here). Both projects really show what libraries can do with new technology.

So we got out there and gave some examples of libraries driving access to knowledge. I have no idea at this point if the audio feed on the Forum website worked but I am told that UNESCO will include mention of our session in the overall Forum report (which I don’t think happens to every session). Not a bad day’s work…

One thing did come up which got me thinking however. We wanted to show short movies on projects to do something different with our time. In doing so, we forgot that representatives from visually impaired groups were in the audience. This was a little poor on our part, and I wonder if we could have done things differently. Does anyone know of any way that the visually impaired could have felt more included here, is there some sort of software that is needed to bring out the soundtrack more? We did have sound (eventually) but a representative from the audience mentioned he was giving a running commentary to his blind colleague next to him on the images. Any thoughts on this appreciated – should we abandon visual presentations? Luckily I was able to point out during the Q&A that IFLA has been working hard in association with VIP groups to push for action at WIPO in relation to more access to published works and norm setting in copyright exceptions and limitations.

Finally, huge thanks to Danielle Mincio from IFLA’s Governing Board for laying the groundwork for the session and organisation, and all of our Swiss colleagues for coming along and giving support (including much needed support with the IT!)