Literacy, libraries and IFLA: recent developments and a look at the future

摘要

INTRODUCTION IFLA has been interested in the issue of literacy for about a decade. However as an organization, we haven't quite known what to do with the issue. I think that one reason for this uncertainty is a nagging belief on the part of many librarians that literacy is not, at heart, an important issue for libraries. I think the opposite: that it is not only an important issue but, when coupled with reading promotion, in many ways it is at the heart of librarianship. In retrospect it seems to me thatthe other problem within IFLA-and in some ways the reverse side of the coin-has been the earnest desire of some literacy advocates for IFLA to jump right in and perhaps try to do too much too soon. As an organization, IFLA has backed away from this approach. At the 1999 IFLA conference in Bangkok, IFLA's three-year-old Literacy Working Group submitted its final report and recommendations to the IFLA Professional Board. In her report covering the years 1997-1999, Professional Board chair Sissel Nilsen announced that in the future the Section on Reading, working with other groups, would "have responsibility for literacy questions-a theme that might well be one of IFLA's core activities in the future." The Working Group was disbanded and the Professional Board turned the report and its recommendations over to the Section on Reading for incorporation, as we saw fit, into our Action Plan for 2000-2001. This paper addresses the Section on Reading's plans for keeping the literacy issue alive within IFLA and for moving ahead with specific (if limited) programs and projects. First, however, I want to provide you with some historical background and context for the Section's approach to the topic. IFLA AND LITERACY Several forces converged between 1989 and 1995 to put literacy on IFLA's agenda. In 1989, IFLA sponsored a pre-conference in Paris on the topic of public libraries and the illiteracy problem.