Kjell Aleklett, Fossil depletion and library economy.

http://aleklett.wordpress.com

Libraries need special storage conditions, and temperature. Most libraries are in warmer regions, and global warming will affect them too, energy costs will rise. Also, libraries are funded by national governments who will suffer from fossil depletion.
The future price of energy will be important for the future cost of libraries. Energy should be the base of everything we do, because it is. Everything we do needs energy. We are now at a turning point in society. The world runs, not on money, but on energy, which costs money. Looking at energy consumption word wide, most is oil, coal and gas. Solar and wind power make up an incredibly small amount of all the energy. We are addicted to oil, we all are. There is very much energy stored in oil, in one deciliter is one kWh of energy. In comparison, one day work for a human is 0.5 kWh. 50 liters of gasoline is equal to the work of 1000 people during one day.
After a talk about how fossil fuel is running out, that we are on our peak production, so we need to save energy to keep the economy going.
For libraries, he advises to, when building new buildings, to make sure we use the least amount of energy possible, because this will be the highest cost. He also pointed out the fact that libraries are mostly funded by governments who will suffer heavily from the peak in energy gathering.

Deborah Novotny, Fit 4 Purpose: The British Library Storage

The main building of the British Library is at St. Pancrass, the largest public building built in twentieth century, nine floors above ground, five below. The building is built for a hundred years cycle. They have a very specific green energy policy.
The new building is located at Boston Spa is for low use material. The building is build based on warehouse systems. The stacks are fully automatic, and there are no people working in that part of the building. The ordered books are automatically brought to a picking area where they are sorted and delivered. The area where the books are is completely dark, and is held at 15% oxygen, which is breathable but will prevent anything from igniting. For this solution the building needed to airtight.
There have been some teething problems with the building, to persuade the contractors that the building is safe to work in, with regards to the oxygen level. This has been solved now.
The current newspaper storage is no longer adequate. Provided funding will be given come September, there will be a new newspaper storage. This storage will also work with automatic retrieval and modern storage. We were shown a film clip how this retrieval and picking system will work. The new storage facility will greatly lengthen the life of the newspapers in the collection.
The next subject is the problem of the acetate microfilm, which is slowly degrading because it is releasing acid. They are now storing their microfilm at 5 degrees Celsius and 35% humidity. They, through a tendering procedure, award the contract to a pharmaceutical storage company, built them 10 special rooms. The move also gave them the opportunity to repackage the collection.

Jeanne Drewes, Increasing energy efficiency and reducing environmental impact

Miss Drewes is from the Library of Congress, and talks about the ideal storage and preservation condition they aim for at the LoC.
The John Adams building is a building from the thirties, which is still used and loved by the LoC. The stacks are situated on the inside of the building, with offices on the outside. One of the energy saving tactics they tried was to shut of the fans during the night because without people the temperature was lower anyway. This resulted only in a 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit lowering. But it did lead to a 33% savings in energy costs.
They are doing more and more to save as much energy as possible, including in their laboratories, their energy use for climate control, and even office supplies.

Henning Mankell, the famous Swedish author of the Wallander books, addressed the IFLA audience today. He starts his speech by talking about his meeting with street children Mozambique. He tells how they lied as much as told the truth, because lying brought in more money.
When he gained their trust, and asked what they wanted most in life, they said not a house, not shelter, not a car. What they wanted was an identity card with a photo, to prove who they are, that they cannot be replaced, that they are worth something. They wanted dignity.
When asked how they would do this, they said they had to learn to read and write. Unfortunately all these boys died very young of accidents, diseases and crime. Only one broke free from his life on the street because his mother was able to find him and take care of him. He did learn to read and write, and got his identity.
Illiteracy is still a sort of plague all around the world today, even in 2010. The worst thing is that it could have been solved ages ago. All it takes is money, and we have that money. It is the same story as with vaccines, with AIDS prevention etc.
How will people get information to prevent disease and disaster if they cannot get to the information, if they cannot read and write. Illiteracy can be deadly. It is shameful that we still let people be born without giving them the tools to survive, the tools to give them am identity.
In a country with more than 70% illiteracy the only book that is important is the ABC. After that they can get access to different books, and learn other skills like mathematics.
The developed of the public library is one of the most important developments in Sweden in the last hundred years. This enabled Sweden to lift itself from the poverty that plagued it just a few years ago. Libraries enabled those without money to acquaint themselves with world literature for free. It was even so for Mankell, who ran to the library when school was out, and he thinks he even learned more there than in school.
Books enable to you to learn. How many professionals today weren’t born poor, and gathered needed knowledge through books and reading.
This is mirrored in poorer countries today, such as Mozambique. Mozabique is a young independent county, on the brink of breaking away from poverty. Libraries and literacy skills are needed for this break. But not only these, also learned and skilled librarians to guide the people through the world of books and the library. If you only focus on one of these things, the library or the librarians, you risk falling over.
We must also realize that we western countries went through exactly the same developments.
And in Sweden the public libraries are threatened. Budgets are cut, opening times are restricted, authors cannot meet there public. It is sad. It is as if politicians are forgetting their history.
It is awful to say, but there are people high up who think it is good that people cannot read. Words are power. We have to be prepared to fight for our culture, and it doesn’t matter if it is in Sweden or Mozambique.
To talk about public library, you must say peoples library, the correct Swedish term. It must be accessible to all, to all layers of the society, not only the richer part.
Literacy enables people to find out why their lives are so hard. It guavas them dignity, an identity. The library is a temple for this, and if this true, then the librarian is the guardian of dignity.
The development of the computers and Internet enable access even in the African Bush if you have a connection and electricity. The British Library and the Wellcome library make books available online. So why do we still need the books and libraries? Because online cannot be the thing, we need more availability, and a librarian to guide us in our knowledge.
In the end, we have to fight to eradicate illiteracy. It doesn’t matter wether it is in Sweden or Mozambique. A famous African author says that a person is kore important than the race. It doesn’t matter where they come from, it matters who they are, their personal dignity. We must make sure that libraries are important to everyone, and that illiteracy is eradicated very very soon.

At the end of the talk the Henning Mankell award was awarded to a girl from Mozambique, Aisa. She is a librarian in the university of Mobutu.

From 10:00 to 11:00 there will be an informal talk with Mankell.

Here at the IFLA we are of course proud to be librarians. In Sweden there is the Library Lovers campaign, run by the Swedish Library Association. At their shop I have bought some buttons and pins as souvenirs from this trip. Right now they, and a button I got at the exposition, decorate my IFLA badge .

As a newcomer to the IFLA conference everything can seem a bit overwhelming. I mean, five official conference days, with satellite conferences, meetings, receptions and dinners, and some of it all at once. How do you keep track of everything, where do you go, where do you get your information?
For those questions and more there was a newcomers session today. It was in the same room as the opening ceremony this morning, and I think the room was still a third full, many newcomers.
The session gave us a bit of reassurance and introduction to the conference. The best statement was that everybody was a first timer once, even the IFLA president. The speakers encouraged us to join committees and sections and to sit in on meetings. They discouraged us to try to race between sessions and see both half, then you could better not see anything.
They also gave us an introduction to programs for students, the Adopt-a-student program and the student paper award.
The final speaker gave us an introduction to Sweden. In the IFLA documentation they encouraged us to speak to Swedes on the streets, because they all speak English. He ensured us however that this was not true, we needed to speak Swedish. He taught us the three most important words. Hei, which means hello, Tack, which means thank you, and Skål which means cheers.
On our way out (to cakes and coffee) we were given a First Timer ribbon so everybody forgives us for asking obvious questions, and a stress ball if it all gets to be too much.
It was a great session to get your feet wet for the rest of the week.

This morning the IFLA World Library and Information Congress 2010 was officially opened during a wonderful opening ceremony. We, and 3000 other delegates were welcomed into hall B with the wonderful guitar music of Thomas Andersson.
Agneta Olsson told us a bit about the difficulties, the sweat and tears of organizing this conference at such short notice (it was originally planned for Brisbane) and welcomed us to wonderful Gothenburg.
President of the IFLA, Ellen Tise held a speech about access to knowledge, but also about Sweden’s long history with and commitment to the IFLA. They have hosted four conferences now, more than any other country. At this conference there are 3300+ registered delegates, from 128 countries, which is simply amazing to me.
After the speech Sara Widén joined Thomas Andersson in some vocal and Swedish songs.
The next speaker was Jan Eliasson, international diplomat and former president of the sixtieth session of the UN general assembly. He held a speech about the power of words and of knowledge, and that access to knowledge is unfairly divided in the world, while organizations like IFLA are trying to change this. A powerful speech.
And then came the surprise of the morning. During the previous musical entertainment some people tweeter that they’d rather hear ABBA. They didn’t need to worry, because we were treated to a five song performance by ABBA cover band Waterloo, who did a great job in getting the crowd to move and dance. This bodes well for the dance night on Friday.
After the ceremony was over we were treated to a very nice lunch of salmon and potato salad.

As far as I understand this is basically a meeting for anybody who works in a Dutch speaking country, so people from the Netherlands, Belgium and Surinam attended.
We start the session with introductions of the new and old guests at the caucus.
We were then given an overview of the meetings and sessions which are interesting for us as Dutch speaking participants.
People report from visits to satellite meetings, some quite large and long, all very interesting.
The meeting is shortly but welcomely interrupted by Ellen Tise, the IFLA president who thanks the Netherlands for hosting the IFLA office.

As a Library Visit I chose to get most value for money, and did visit 26, three libraries. From the IFLA venue we took our favorite tram 2 to the University of Gothenburg school of economics. We were met there by a representative of the library of this school.

The first library we visited was the newspaper library, a Jugendstil building which was restored in 1995. We saw the gorgeous reading room and support desk.

The next library we visited was from the school of economics. This building was built in 1995 and had a gorgeous huge window in the reading room.

The last library was the library of the school of education. This building was really special because the old part was from the nineteenth century and the new part was very recent. The main stacks are in a open part between these two buildings with a glass ceiling.

Some general remarks about the libraries. The libraries are open stacks and all books are available on the shelves. They use a national Swedish classification system, but they are moving to Dewey. In the reading rooms it is not allowed to use laptops, only books. There are special facilities for blind and dyslexic students to help them with reading.

Göteborg University has ten libraries, three of which are learning centers. The three libraries we visited aim to be seen as one library, and are under one management. These libraries have many visitors, 4.500 per day during the semesters.
In the beginning there were a lot of misconceptions about the libraries amongst each other, but they worked hard to become one organization, one team. This also helped make the organization more efficient.
There are now four teams, self governing, who work for all libraries. The education team for internal education, the services team for loans and weekends, the media team for all acquisition and the IT team which goes across all teams. There are also location managers.
This reorganization took 1.5 years and was completed in march of this year. The team leaders are appointed for two years at a time, with a maximum of six years.
All team members work the reference desks for all libraries.

The education team consists of eight people, five at the school of economics, three at the school of education. They teach information literacy skills to students, mostly in classrooms but they are developing online courses. They have developed one now, to help undergraduates with citation skills. They integrate the lessons as much as possible into the regular curriculum.
The level of the student literacy skills progresses during their education.
The program is highly regarded by students and management alike, and even won the university pedagogical prize 2010 for it’s EU practice course about the evaluation of information and sources and EU documentation.

More information on http://www.gu.se