IFLA 2009 in Milan: impressions part 1

From the 21st of August until the 27th, I attended the IFLA conference in the beautiful city of Milan. A short summary of my impressions.

This year’s conference started for me the 21st of August with the KM-section's preconference which I co-organised. The central theme for this day was  ‘Removing Barriers to Knowledge Sharing: How can social tools be used to facilitate knowledge management in order to improve user services?’
The first speaker Giuseppe Vitiello (Knowledge Management as the new frontier in library work) focused on the knowledge management efforts of the NATO college library.  In the afternoon, I gave a short presentation on how my own library uses socials tools in order to improve customer service.  In the same context I also talked about the different types of wiki users in our library and about the stages people go through when using the wiki.
Afterwards, there was a very lively discussion with the participants of this conference. What really struck me is the fact that many librarians are aware of the many social tools that are on the market, but what they really struggle with is not the tools, but the people that are supposed to use them. For example: how do you stimulate people to contribute to a wiki or any other tool is a question that frequently arises.  From my own experience, I advise people not to focus on ‘forcing’ people to share, but better is to ask yourself the question: how do I stimulate social behaviour in general?  Next to that there also simple tips and trics that are helpul when implementing social tools in your organisation. If you want to find out more, please take a look at my presentation for that day.

After meeting my own section and the official opening of the conference on Sunday, I attended an interesting session on Monday, Framing the future for a new agenda for public libraries, organised by the Public Libraries and Metropolitan Libraries section. I was very impressed by the presentation by Thomas Galante, from the Queens Library (New York).  Despite the fact that 48% of the local population is foreign-born, the library succeeds extremely well in getting engaged with the local community. The secret of their success is being where the people are – they have a library building in every neighbourhood, they are present in government job agencies etc. – closing partnerships with other local partners and having an engaged team. They even have a number of Teen Mentors that coach other local teenagers. Maybe a useful tips for librarians complaining about the low number of youngsters making use of their services?

To be continued...