IFLA conferences are a mixture of many things. Part educational event, part political summit, part trade show, part international spectacle, the IFLA Congress brings together a very diverse group of librarians. This year they represented 115 countries. The educational program encompassed 160 sessions, while the exhibit hall was filled with products from 122 exhibitors. The theme of the Congress, Libraries: Dynamic Engines for the Knowledge and Information Society, reinforced the close relationship between the international library community and the World Summit on the Information Society. As IFLA President Alex Bryne noted, libraries weren't front and centre in the original planning for the summits on the information society. He gave IFLA and its constituent organizations credit for bringing libraries onto the agenda.

As a follow-on to IFLA's involvement in the summit, the association and UNESCO announced the establishment of a strategic alliance 'to establish common strategic approaches and projects to implement the library-related parts of the Declaration of Principles and the Geneva Plan of Action adopted by WSIS in Geneva in 2003 and endorsed in Tunis in 2005.' The alliance hopes to keep the countries of the world on track to meet the timelines specified in Tunis. Another focus of the UNESCO/IFLA alliance will be digital library projects, although as one attendee said to me the notion of digitization varies significantly from one part of the world to another. If the alliance can, as it says it intends to do, establish some digital libraries that will present a more unified view as to what we mean by digitization, that would be beneficial to all.

A potential political hot potato involved Cuba. The Latvian delegation submitted a draft resolution to the IFLA Council condemning the 'ongoing persecution of independent librarians in Cuba and the seizure and burning of their library collections.' It also condemned the 2005 seizure by U.S. border agents of computer equipment on its way to Cuba. A similar resolution from the Lithuanian delegation was also on the agenda. However, before Council met, the Lithuanians withdrew their resolution. Since a resolution must have a second to come before Council and since Council considered the Lithuanian resolution to be a second to the Latvian one, that withdrawal effectively killed off the Latvian resolution. Several attendees thought this was political sleight of hand.

  I'm a Seoul Man (or Woman)

The educational program at IFLA is planned by the individual sections. Topics and speakers reflect both the conference theme and the interests of the sections, with special emphasis on including information from the host country. Thus, an enormous diversity of topics are discussed, including East Asian newspapers, private libraries in Japan (that paper was titled Bunko), multilingual access to moving image collections, Korean genealogy, copyright, providing agricultural information, Asian national libraries, the impact of emerging technologies on information policy, subject headings, art libraries, and knowledge management.

The Asia and Oceania Section had its session on the topic of open access. Keynoted by University of Hawaii's Peter Jacso, it also featured papers from Korean, Indian, and Chinese researchers. Jacso gave what he called a "bird's eye view" of open access, proclaiming that it's here to stay and to grow. Open access is free access, but for whom, how long, and where, asked Jacso. He distinguished open access from open source and reviewed what various associations (IEEE, ACM, AIP), publishers (Oxford, Elsevier, Sage), and facilitators (HighWire) are doing and noted it's not just the scientific literature that's going open access - Ariadne and First Monday are excellent examples of open access literature for librarians and information scientists. Jacso is particularly impressed with open access repositories from Brazil and India. "Digital and wireless technology makes the world go round," he said.

  Advocacy for Libraries

President-elect Claudia Lux held a planning session. More of an informal discussion than a session with prepared papers, it focused on advocacy, the theme of her presidency. Attendees sat at round tables with white boards scattered throughout. We were to come to some conclusions about how best to influence governments to support libraries. Much of the discussion was quite serious and thoughtful, although there was the suggestion that perhaps librarians should marry politicians to influence their thinking. Ideas that surfaced included working within the governmental structure (and understanding that structure), making the library more transparent, finding library champions, networking with politicians, concentrating on couching our arguments in the context of those we're speaking with, and involving the community.

Although the discussions were intriguing, the conclusions were hardly earth shattering. I was struck more by who wasn't in the room than in what the librarians who were in the room thought they could do to advocate for libraries. The room was filled with librarians from North America and Europe. Where were the Africans and the Asians? Perhaps they'd opted to attend one of the competing sessions: Libraries serving disadvantaged persons; or the IFLA-CDNL Alliance for Bibliographic Standards (with its intriguingly-titled paper "Tomorrow never knows: the end of cataloguing?"). They might also have gone to Forging partnerships between libraries and extension services for improved access to agricultural information; Metropolitan libraries as pools of innovations; or even Quality measure on a national scale.

Some sessions (not Lux's planning one) featured simultaneous translation in the IFLA working languages, this year including Chinese and Korean. This allows delegates to hear about projects in other countries, even when a common language doesn't exist. For example, the Division of Regional Activities sponsored a session on information literacy that had speakers from almost every continent. The other language-spanning feature of IFLA conferences are the poster sessions. These visual representations of library activities from around the globe were shown in the back of the exhibition hall. Each poster was self-explanatory, although the presenters were there in person to explain and answer questions. This is much less intimidating for those lacking fluency in English. It's much easier to talk one on one with colleagues than to stand in front of a packed room and give a speech.

  Seoul Searching

Offsite sessions are one of the more charming aspects of IFLA. The Library Theory & Research Section journeyed to Sookmyung Women's University for a session on library and information science research in Korea. After opening remarks from the section's chair, Ragnar Audunson, Kyung-Mook Oh and Yunkeum Kim Chang's paper on the Development of library science in Korea explained that public libraries were first opened in the early 1900s. The Korean Library Association was reorganized in 1955, following the Japanese occupation and the Korean War. Today there are 38 undergraduate, 22 masters, and 13 PhD programs in South Korea. The number of publications has been steadily increasing, primarily in the areas of information science and library management.

The second talk, by Soyeon Park, Assistant Professor at Duksung Women's University, analyzed log files from Naver, a major Korean Web search engine. Park found that Naver users typed in short queries, seldom use advanced search, and view few results pages. They are passive, rarely changing the search environment, even though this possibility exists. The trend is toward greater simplicity and one word searches. Park noted that this could be symptomatic of the Korean language, which has fewer synonyms than other languages. She also commended Naver for the efficiency of its unified search.

  Study Tours, Library Visits, and Cultural Opportunities

The IFLA congress also sponsors study tours and library visits. The library visits occur during the conference, so delegates must choose between attending a session and visiting a library. Visits to the National Library, the National Assembly Library, and the Supreme Court Library were well attended. Other visits included local public, academic, and special libraries. Delegates could also opt to visit the DMZ, a sobering trip. The study tours occur both before and after the congress and are frequently in neighbouring countries. For example, there were post conference tours to both Shanghai and Beijing, while several divisions held pre conference sessions in China. I always wonder, however, at people who can take that much time away from their jobs.

In the midst of politics, learning, and touring, IFLA touts cultural and social events. First was a gala reception hosted by Korea's Minister of Culture and Tourism; Tuesday's cultural evening was at the Sejong Center and featured a spectacular program of Korean music and dance; while Wednesday saw a somewhat short welcome reception hosted by Seoul's mayor. For those on a limited budget, which is many of the IFLA delegates, the inclusion of these evening events in the registration fee is an enormous help. Thus, it was disheartening that the cultural evening was entertainment only with no food on offer.

Several people mentioned to me that they saw fewer people in native dress at IFLA in Seoul than during previous conferences. I'm assuming they weren't talking about North Americans in blue jeans, a mode of attire that most young Koreans strolling the streets of Seoul seem to have adopted. My guess is that those in native dress are frequently from African countries. My next guess is that with the cost of travelling to and staying in South Korea for a week or more so high, it mitigated against a large delegate pool from poorer countries. I am hopeful that next year's venue of Durban, South Africa, will be more affordable.

As for spectacle, IFLA (and Seoul) did not disappoint. Meeting librarians from other countries and cultures, learning where their experiences coincide and diverge from your own, and setting worldwide library standards make IFLA a unique and valuable conference.