During one of the IFLA sessions here in Gothenburg, Sweden, I took a seat in what turned out to be a lousy place for the acoustics. Major programs during this year's World Library and Information Congress were largely in English, which is a second language to most Swedes, but listening to speakers of other languages communicate in English is like listening to a stunning variety of dialects, each with its own quirky set of accents and grammatical gymnastics. At this particular program, I realized I was missing roughly every second word, so I moved to a better spot—where I only missed about every fifth word.
Yesterday’s program on Haiti was conducted largely in French. I love listening to French, but without headphones I understand only about 25% of what is being said. Afterwards, I went up to Françoise Beaulieu-Thybulle, director of the National Library, and asked her in halting French if she could spare a few minutes to talk with me and if she could speak English. She replied affirmatively in elegant, perfect English.
American librarians who speak other languages in addition to English do exceptionally well at IFLA because librarians from non–English speaking countries are so astonished and grateful when an American is fluent in another language. But Americans who speak only English also do well because it is the dominant language. For everybody else, there are the translators, who can be seen at every program, earphones strapped to their heads, seated alone in one of the booths located at the back of the room, their mouths contorting into a microphone as they struggle to put together the sounds that delegates hear on their headsets, the sounds of another language being translated instantly into their own.
One of the tricks to really appreciating an IFLA conference is to recognize what a daunting task it is to sustain six days of communication with every major piece of it done in seven languages at once. Often you will see moderators passing little messages to speakers; in almost every case, it’s a plea from the translation team to PLEASE SLOW DOWN!
IFLA translators also produce daily editions of the conference daily, IFLA Express, in all the IFLA languages—English, French, Russian, German, Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic. Ultimately, this international conference and the work of librarians around the world is about language, or as keynote speaker Jan Eliasson said earlier in the conference, it’s about The Word—how we use words and how we hear them.
In the exhibit hall, with more than 80 companies, universities, and nonprofits showcasing their offerings, the din was spectacular, especially during the opening reception. But when it came to doing business, English dominated again, as exhibit personnel from the countries most represented—U.K., U.S., Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, and the Netherlands—used the language they have in common. It was impossible to find exhibitors who didn’t speak English, even those from France, Spain, and as far from Sweden as Thailand, Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.
The Axiell Library Group, supplier of IT systems and services to the European market, sponsored the popular IFLA Night Spot at the Gothenburg Public Library, where delegates were invited to network over food and drink at the end of each day. Axiell was promoting a new smartphone app called My Library, which allows an end user “to go to the virtual library, wherever he is—24/7.”
Axiell was also one of the organizations that raised 100,000 euros to bring some 40 colleagues from developing countries to the conference—15 from Africa, 17 from Asia and Oceania, and 10 from Latin America and the Caribbean. The other sponsors were the Swedish Library Association, Walter de Gruyter Stiftung of Germany, NBD/Biblion and FOBID of the Netherlands, Shawky Salem of Egypt, Henning Mankell of Sweden, and the Stichting IFLA Foundation.
Other offerings on the exhibit floor had a distinctly international flair.
- Nonprofit ARTstor announced that it is developing Shared Shelf, “a web-based image management software service that will provide support for cataloging, editing, storing, and sharing images.”
- Nonprofit OCLC was touting its Web-scale Management Services to “early adopters” in a special “IFLA Edition” of its What’s New at OCLC newsletter.
- Gale Cengage Learning hyped Gale Digital Collections and offered an iPad to one lucky winner who asked for a demonstration of any Gale online resource.
- ProQuest unveiled “upcoming technologies,” including Extended Search, “which will enable libraries to connect other non-ProQuest content to its all-new platform.”
- HK Systems displayed design for a new automated library system being installed at the University of Chicago library and said a merger may be coming for the company.
- Atiz offered “a better way to scan” with BookDrive.
- SirsiDynix called PocketCirc "a librarian's dream tool" that allows remote checkout with this handheld device.
- And not to be outdone, Innovative Visionary Systems asked, “Are you sure your book is clean?” with the suggestion that the Book Shower sterilizer could be just what you need if you have ever “seen twisted pages of saliva when going over the pages.”
Yes, it’s all about language.
