Welcome to Malmö!

IFLA Satellite Meeting
We in the IFLA Public Library Section are happy to welcome you all to the beautiful city of Malmö 7-10 August 2010. 
Malmö and the county of Skåne is located in the south of Sweden in the Öresund Region, a dynamic and beautiful part of Scandinavia.

How do we unleash the potential of libraries?
In collaboration with The Regional Library Scania, Malmö City Library and The Swedish Arts Council we are proud to present an interesting programme.



PLACE, PRODUCT, PROMOTION, PARTICIPATION, POLITICS
The five P:s!
We offer you plenary sessions with key-note speakers, sessions for discussion and networking. The discussions are organized around the five P:s  Place, Product development, Promotion, Participation and Politics.

Look at Finland!
What´s the secret behind Finlands successful libraries? 
What role does the political process and attention play in the context?

Frederik Tellerup ©Malmö Turism

Alexander Brandel ©Malmö Turism

Programme Highlights
We are glad to present some key-note speakers with international reputation; Sari Feldman, Bert Mulder, and Barbara Gubbins. They alla emphazise the vital role of the modern library but also the need for new approaches.

Frederik Tellerup ©Malmö Turism

The Darling Library
Elsebeth Tank presents the strategy for transformation of Malmö City Library that has gained a lot of attention. The challenge is to reach new targetgroups in a multiethnical city with 118 nationalities.

Alexander Brandel ©Malmö Turism

Study tours in beautiful Skåne
Welcome to a wonderful afternoon om Monday the 9th of August. On This day we will go by bus on an exciting studytour in Malmö and to some outstanding libraries in Skåne.

.... welcome to enjoy IFLA Public Section in Malmö

This conference is a unique opportunity to hear about,  Malmö
discuss and exchange ideas and inspiration with colleagues 
from all over the world. We also want you to enjoy yourselves
and we try to put special efforts in designing an excititing social 
programme.

Looking forward to see you!

Frederik Tellerup ©Malmö Turism

Green library

A green library is designed to minimize negative impact on the natural environment and maximize indoor environmental quality by means of careful site selection, use of natural construction materials and biodegradable products, conservation of resources (water, energy, paper), and responsible waste disposal (recycling, etc.). In new construction and library renovation, sustainability is increasingly achieved through Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification, a rating system developed and administered by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).

Green libraries are a part of the larger green building movement. Also known as sustainable libraries, green libraries are being built all over the world, with many high-profile projects bringing the concept into the mainstream. Along with library 2.0, green design is an emerging trend, defining the library of the 21st century. Many view the library as having a unique role in the green building movement due to its altruistic mission, public and pedagogical nature, and the fact that new libraries are usually high profile, community driven projects.

Library assessment

Library assessment is a process undertaken by libraries to learn about the needs of users (and non-users) and to evaluate how well they support these needs, in order to improve library facilities, services and resources. In many libraries successful library assessment is dependent on the existence of a 'culture of assessment' in the library whose goal is to involve the entire library staff in the assessment process and to improve customer service.

Although most academic libraries have collected data on the size and use of their collections for decades, it is only since the late 1990s that many have embarked on a systematic process of assessment (see sample workplans) by surveying their users as well as their collections. Today, many academic libraries have created the position of Library Assessment Manager in order to coordinate and oversee their assessment activities. In addition, many libraries publish on their web sites the improvements that were implemented following their surveys as a way of demonstrating accountability to survey participants.

Several libraries have undertaken renovation or expansion projects as a result of their assessment activities as well as enhance resource discovery tools, improve web site usability and stop redundant services.

In order to determine what is important to library users and how satisfied they are with services, resources and physical space, library assessment utilizes a variety of research methods such as: website usability testing, observation, 'In-Library Use' surveys, focus groups, interviews, wayfinding, balanced scorecard, furniture usability, photo and mapping surveys, organizational climate, statistics and satisfaction surveys. The most widely used library satisfaction survey is LibQUAL+, a service quality evaluation survey developed by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) based on ServQUAL. Other satisfaction surveys are: the SCONUL Satisfaction Survey, Insync Surveys (formerly Rodski), and Counting Opinions LibSat survey.

Although courses on library assessment are not commonplace on the curricula of library schools, in the past few years several schools have opened courses, such as: the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science and the joint Digital Library Program of Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Norway, Tallinn University, Estonia, and the University of Parma, Italy.

Library portal

A library portal is an interface to access library resources and services through a single access and management point for users, combining the circulation and catalog functions of an integrated library system (ILS) with additional tools and facilities.

In addition to the basic functions of access to the library catalog, and a user's subscription records, significant elements of a library portal normally include:

- "Metasearching tools, browsable interfaces, and online reference help," which aid in the discovery process, for example Knimbus, Mendeley, J-Gate, EBSCO Discovery services;

- Links to full-text articles, OpenURL,

- availability of interlibrary loan (ILL) or document delivery, for material the library does not own

- Citation management software, user preferences services, "knowledge management tools"

More recently, the focus has been on the discovery goal, which has led to even more difficulties in defining a library portal. The terms "discovery tool," "discovery services," "next-generation discovery tool," "next-generation OPAC" are used interchangeably.

There are no accepted standards for library portals. The only standards in the literature are the more general search and retrieval standards, including Z39.50 and ZING (Z39.50-International: Next Generation), the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting, and OpenURL.