Thursday, January 30, 2020

ILI 2020 is announced today and we're looking for speakers

ILI 2020 is announced today and we're looking for speakers.

Taking place on 13 & 14 October at Olympia London, hundreds of information professionals from around the world will come together at ILI to exchange ideas, knowledge and experience under this year's theme - Strategies, solutions, stories, and strength.

The hunt is now on for speakers! We’d like to hear your strategies for the 2020s - case studies, great stories, personal experiences, and lessons learned from the ideas, strategies and practical implementations you’ve put in place. Our focus is on real-world library innovations, big or small, and we'd love to hear how you are making a difference to your organisation, clients and communities.

Our speakers come from all over the world - from academic and research libraries, public libraries, school libraries, corporate settings and more - to share their real-world projects, initiatives and transformations. Mostly they do this by presenting a 15-minute case study, but we're open to your ideas.

Read more at www.internet-librarian.com/2020/CallForSpeakers and submit your ideas by 3 April.

See you in October!

The ILI Team

*apologies for 

Thursday, January 23, 2020

SLIM FREE Webinar - By the People, For the People: Creating Community Profiles

Dear Fellow Librarians,

Continuing our free webinar series, I’m pleased to announce the following webinar by Jessi Barrientos from School of Library and Information Management (SLIM) at Emporia State University (ESU).

Title: By the People, For the People: Creating Community Profiles
Time: Jan 31, 2020 03:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting:

Westminster Public Library has taken a hyper-local focus and created innovative strategies to satisfy the needs of all patrons in our service area. Explore how to create a data-driven community profile and how to use profiles to advocate for inclusive collections, programs, reference and readers’ advisory services, and outreach that represent the needs of a diverse community. Take away the tools and resources to create your own profiles.

Jessi Barrientos is a librarian at Westminster Public Library in Westminster, Colorado. She is a book-loving, Broadway-singing, yoga-posing, collection development librarian who advocates for readers’ advisory, genre fiction, and relationship building. She has 10+ years of library experience and has worked for Jeffco Libraries, High Plains Public Library, and Westminster Public Library. For the last 3 years, she has been responsible for growing a collection to reflect the unique needs of the City of Westminster.


This webinar will be archived for future views as usual. Previous webinar archives are available at

Tuesday, January 7, 2020

Call for Photo Contribution 2020 Best Practices from World Libraries Photo Gallery

The International Connections Committee (ICC) of the International Relations Round Table (IRRT) at the American Library Association (ALA) cordially invites you to contribute a photo from your library that best demonstrates ALA President’s initiative this year, “the value of libraries in promoting social justice and inclusion” and help us build the “2020 Best Practices from World Libraries” photo gallery.  The photos will be displayed via our websites, publications and/or social media outlets. Selected submissions will be physically displayed at the 2020 ALA Annual Conference in Chicago, IL. June 25-30, 2020.

The deadline for photo submissions is February 15, 2020.
Please use the Google submission form to upload your image.  
If Google account is not available, please email your submission to irrt.icc@gmail.com following the instructions, requirements and format below.

General Email Submission Instructions/Format

Email subject title should read: 2020 Photo Gallery
In the email, please provide the following information:
a.           Project Title (a short title for your library’s project)
b.           Library and its Affiliation (example: Fogler Library, University of Maine)
c.           Library Location (State/Province, Country; example: Illinois, USA)
d.           Library Type (select from the following: Academic library, Public library, School library, Special Library or other)
e.           Project Description (in under 200 words, please describe why this project best demonstrates the value of libraries in promoting social justice and inclusion)
f.            Project Contact Person and Email (preferred but optional; the contact information will be publicly displayed)
g.           Preferred Attribution for the Image (name of image owner)

*Image requirements: please provide the image with the highest resolution you have; a horizontal photo that is at least 5400 pixels wide with 300 dpi is preferred.
**Notice - With this submission, you grant the ALA, IRRT and ICC full permission to distribute, edit and build upon your work with attribution.

Additional questions regarding this contribution can be directed to the Chair of the IRRT International Connections Committee at irrt.icc@gmail.com.

Call for Proposals (CFP) for Presentations at the ALA IRRT Chair's Program


 The American Library Association (ALA) International Relations Round Table (IRRT) Chair's Program Committee invites proposals for participation in a panel presentation that will take place at the annual ALA conference in Chicago, Illinois. The panel presentation will be featured in the IRRT Chair's Program session. Each year, the IRRT Chair's Program features speakers presenting on a specific theme related to international relations and the library. This year, the theme for the IRRT Chair's Program is: Libraries as Social Change Engines

Changes in social structures, behaviors, values and organizations are inevitable and libraries are not immune to those changes. Embedded in their unique communities, libraries are social change engines. At times, they are driving the change, and at others, they reflect and respond to the social changes affecting their communities. The IRRT 2020 Chair’s program will be a panel of library innovators who identified a problem within their community and responded through outreach, services, programming, or other actions and are able to talk about the impact of the response. The panelists, representing national, public and academic libraries around the world, will share their experiences leading social change or cultivating sensitivity to marginalized groups in their communities.

The Chair's Program Committee seeks proposals from speakers to be part of a panel that will describe and share the following:
Panelist presentations will discuss their individual library’s role in leading and responding to social change and the impact this work has had on their city/region/country. The best proposals will speak to specific actions taken by their libraries.
Examples of topics (presentations are NOT limited to these topics; creativity is encouraged):

          Providing programming or services promoting gender equality and empowerment. For example, reproductive education programs, or training to develop entrepreneurial skills.
          Providing programming or services that cultivate sensitivity and understanding to marginalized groups.  For example, a Human Library that creates safe spaces for dialogue and understanding.
          Providing programming or services that support access to information for immigrants, migrants and refugees. For example, establishing mobile libraries within marginalized spaces, and creating an inclusive and equitable space.
          Creating partnerships, programming, or services that contribute to a culture of welcoming for migrants, refugees and other marginalized groups. For example, serving as a meeting and activity point for welcoming initiatives.
          Fighting poverty and hunger, allowing all to live with dignity, by supporting community needs. For example, developing a community garden or helping to develop skills.

IFLA’s Library Map of the World Sustainable Development Goals Stories provides additional examples of topics of interest for presentations.

Presentation Format:
Each panel presentation will be between 10-15 minutes. Applicants are encouraged to consider creative and effective presentations to connect attendees with the topic and to share information that will let attendees know how they could implement similar solutions/programs for their library communities.

Deadline:
All proposals must be submitted by January 31, 2020 for consideration. Applicants will be notified by early March if their submission has been accepted for presentation at the conference.
Send submissions via email to Christina Riehman-Murphy, Chair, at cer20@psu.edu.

Submission Guidelines:
Proposals should include two separate documents.
1.      The first document should include:
              Title of the presentation
              A 150- to 250-word biography of the presenters/panelists (If program is accepted, biographies will be used in program advertising.)
              Name, title, institutional affiliation, and full contact information of the presenters/panelists
2.      The second document should not have any identifying information. This document should be an abstract of 300-500 words which addresses all of the following:
              describe the library and its community
              Identify the social problem or issue and its background
              describe how the library addressed the problem
              discuss the impact on the library’s city/region/country/community