Indigenous Knowledge Matters at IFLA Conference in South Africa

The 73rd World Library and Information Congress of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) convened August 19 in Durban, South Africa, with a new emphasis on indigenous knowledge and oral history in relation to “Libraries for the Future,” the conference theme. The five-day conference offered some 3,100 delegates from 116 nations an opportunity to witness firsthand the transformations that have occurred in South African libraries and in the nation itself since the end of apartheid in 1994. The conference also served as a backdrop for the announcement of the annual $1-million Access to Learning Award by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and a surprise award of another $1 million to IFLA to support its advocacy work.

Welcoming the delegates to South Africa, IFLA President Alex Byrne of Australia noted, “Drawing inspiration from the extraordinary commitment to making a new start in this country, we say that we stand . . . for truth and reconciliation, for libraries and information services that will help all to discover the truth for themselves and thereby bring people together.” Byrne alluded to the life of Mohandas Gandhi, whose civil rights struggle began in Durban in 1891, when he was thrown off a segregated train for attempting to sit in a first-class compartment.

Keynote speaker Albie Sachs (right), a crusader against apartheid and now a Constitutional Court justice, had attendees glued to their seats as he talked about being held in solitary confinement for two prolonged spells of detention beginning in 1963. In 1988, he was severely injured by a bomb placed in his car by South African security agents, losing an arm and sight in one eye. He dedicated his speech to “the unknown librarian” who provided books to him during his confinement. “If I had two hands, I would applaud you,” he said, noting that reading saved his sanity.

“Our most magnificent libraries walk around on legs,” Sachs observed, adding another thread to the recurrent oral-history theme that wove its way through this IFLA conference: “I am a library,” he said, urging that the stories that live in every individual are worthy of preservation.

President Byrne also announced the establishment of regional IFLA offices in Pretoria, South Africa; Alexandria, Egypt; Dakar, Senegal; and Moscow, Russia. Representing the host institutions, Buhle Mbambo-Thata of the University of South Africa in Pretoria; Marietou Diongue Diop of the Bibliothèque Centrale, Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar; and Galina Kislovkaya of the Russian State Library, signed the agreement in Durban, as did Sohair Wastawy for the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, calling the new center “a major step for Arabic-speaking countries.” The new offices’ primary role will be “reaching out to language communities that could not be reached with the existing language infrastructure (with a predominant position of English).”

Nearly 300 people crowded the room for the announcement of the 2007 winner of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Access to Learning Award: the Northern Territory Library, a regional public library system based in Darwin, Australia. The $1-million award honors the library system’s innovative approach to bringing technology to remote indigenous communities. Microsoft will also donate $224,000 in software and technology training curriculum to upgrade the library’s 300 computers.

At a meeting of delegates representing national associations, Choe announced an additional award of $1 million from the Gates Foundation to IFLA for its library advocacy efforts. Claudia Lux of Germany, who will succeed Byrne this year as IFLA president, noted that the gift will enable IFLA to add an advocacy position to the headquarters staff in The Hague. “Our partnership with IFLA will help more public libraries provide free public access to computers and the internet,” said Choe, emphasizing that the foundation’s guiding belief that “every life has equal value.”

OCLC CEO Jay Jordan announced the IFLA/OCLC Fellows for 2008, five library and information professionals from Morocco, India, Nepal, Uganda, and South Africa. The first-place winner of the IFLA International Marketing Award, sponsored by SirsiDynix, was also announced: Olga Einasto, representing University of Tartu Library in Estonia. The Shawky Salem Conference Attendance Grant for 2007 was awarded to Randa Al-Chidiac of the University of Balamand Libraries in Lebanon.

Plenary speakers included Ntombazana Botha and Adama Samassékou. South Africa’s deputy minister of arts and culture, Botha reported on a partnership between the governments of South Africa and Mali to preserve the medieval manuscripts in the Ahmed Baba Library in Timbuktu, Mali. Also a leader in the struggle against apartheid, Botha emphasized that Timbuktu is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, not the cliché of remoteness it has come to represent in Western thought. Samassékou, president of the African Academy of Languages, talked about his work in establishing the World Network for Linguistic Diversity MAAYA.

Speaking at a program focused on a public access to HIV/AIDS information in Africa, Kingo Mchombu of the University of Namibia noted that the “information industry is rooted in the economy.” Those most in need are least likely to have access in any form and less likely to have it in their native language, he said, and knowledge management means “leveraging collective wisdom to increase innovation and responsiveness to a problem.” The solution to the AIDS crisis in sub-Saharan Africa (with 11% of the world’s population but 75% of its AIDS cases), he observed, is “the collection of knowledge and the systematic sharing of that knowledge linked to action.”

Traditionally, the IFLA host nation uses the conference as an opportunity to showcase the national culture, and South Africa treated delegates to a beach party on the sandy shores of the Indian Ocean, complete with local music and cuisine. OCLC hosted a customer reception for several hundred people at the Wreck Aquarium at uShaka Marine World. And a gala, themed “Cultures of Africa,” was scheduled for August 22 at the Durban City Hall, with entertainment showcasing a “cross spectrum of South African cultures.”

During the conference, the Library and Information Association of South Africa joined 30 countries participating in the American Library Association-initiated Campaign for the World’s Libraries. LIASA is the interracial post-Apartheid national organization representing institutions and workers in library and information service throughout the country.

The conference concludes August 23 with a session of the IFLA Council, followed August 24 by some 55 business meetings in which members of sections, divisions, and committees will discuss global issues facing every type of library—from art libraries to children’s and young adult services.

Ellen Tise, new president-elect of IFLA and chair of the conference organizing committee, told American Libraries that she was gratified by IFLA’s strengthened emphasis on the value of indigenous knowledge and hoped that it would grow as a platform for the federation so that librarians can understand how important it is to the developing world in a global context. “If you know yourself, if you know where you came from,” she said, “you can understand how you got where you are today.”

ALA President Loriene Roy, the first Native American to hold the elected post, echoed Tise, as she participated in a panel discussion of the questions “What is traditional knowledge? Who owns it?”

Natalie Sunker, deputy director of intellectual property for South Africa’s Department of Trade and Industry, announced during a program sponsored by the IFLA Committee on Copyright and other Legal Matters that indigenous communities fearing that their traditional knowledge will be misused can look forward to new protection in South Africa under a new bill in parliament, the Intellectual Property Rights Amendment Act of 2007.

A report on the IFLA conference is also scheduled for the October issue of American Libraries.

Posted August 22, 2007.