Who goes to IFLA?
A study of participation

Who goes to IFLA?

Among the semiprofessions, I believe librarians are exceptionally global (or horizontal) in their professional lives. Horisontality can be expressed in many different ways. In this study I focus on IFLA and its annual conferences.

To learn more about the global aspect of the profession, I have started to analyze the persons - or rather the national delegations - that actually go to IFLA.

The following notes are based on data from the 69th IFLA Conference in Berlin:

1. Local and global identity
2. Rich, mature and academic
3. The twelve corners of the world
4. Data and methods

I use only public data: professional titles, institutional affiliations and addresses as published in the list of participants.

New data from Oslo added August 15, 2005

Studying IFLA

The annual IFLA conferences is the central meeting place for the global library profession. Every year, several thousand library people attend. The venue moves from country to country, and from continent to continent: last year Glasgow, this year Berlin, next year Buenos Aires.

IFLA is a complex organization and the conference is a complex event. The IFLA conferences are fairs or arenas. I attended the conferences in Beijing (1995) and Berlin (2003) - but I could hardly use my experience to analyze them. Hundreds of parallell processes run concurrently - before, during and after each meeting. There is no single focus and no central story.

I want to look at IFLA as a whole. The conference documents provide a path.

Please note that the project is a small and personal undertaking, to be pursued when I happen to have the time. Thus - no deadlines.