Sorry for forwarding this, but I thought it was worth it.
Aubrey
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se Date: 2012/5/15 Subject: [cultural-partners] IFLA
In August, the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) holds its 78th annual conference, this year in Helsinki, Finland. Does the Wikimedia Foundation have any representation there? I guess not, or that it is very limited. When I look at the program, I'm surprised how they can fill a week with program details about everything from literacy and reading to statistics and evaluation, all aiming to supply information and knowledge services to the common people, without being more in touch with Wikipedia. At best, we can hope that there are wikipedians in residence at a handful libraries and museums worldwide.
http://conference.ifla.org/**ifla78/programme-and-**proceedingshttp://conference.ifla.org/ifla78/programme-and-proceedings
Surrounding this full week August 9th to 17th, are satellite conference and pre- and post-meetings. What caught my eye was one across the water, in Estonia's capital Tallinn, on August 17-18, on the topic of "subject metadata in the digital environment and semantic web".
http://www.nlib.ee/index.php?**id=17763http://www.nlib.ee/index.php?id=17763
The letter sequence"w-i-k" doesn't appear anywhere in these two programs.
Is Wikipedia a marginal, fringe interest, similar to Esperanto poetry or scale model trebuchet competitions? If Wikipedia were the largest encyclopedia ever written, one might guess libraries would show interest.
If we were at war with libraries, bitter enemies, trying to put them out of business, the lack of contact between our communities and our lack of presence at the global library conference couldn't be any greater. So if it looks like a war, is it a war? Even if we haven't realized it yet?