Mexico, Japan join Campaign for the World's Libraries

Contact: Deborah Davis


312-280-2148



dedavis@ala.org

Josche Neven, IFLA


70-3140884


For Immediate Release


March 7, 2002

Mexico, Japan join Campaign for the World's Libraries

The Mexican Association of Librarians (AMBAC) and the Japan Library Association have signed on to The Campaign for the World's Libraries, a partnership between the American Library Association (ALA) and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA).

As part of its involvement in the world campaign, The Mexican Association of Librarians has asked ALA to provide advocacy training in Spanish for its upcoming annual meeting, June 5-7, in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon. The theme of the conference is "Democratization of Information Access." The training will be coordinated by the ALA International Relations Committee and the ALA Public Awareness Committee.

Mexico and Japan join Turkey, Iceland and Italy as international partners, as well as several Canadian library associations, including the Canadian Library Association, Library Association of Alberta, Ontario Library Association and Saskatchewan Library Association. All of these organizations have signed international trademark agreements to use the @ your library brand in their native countries. Australia, Denmark, Israel and Korea recently have expressed interest in the campaign, as well.

The Mexican Association of Librarians will use the translation that ALA developed with REFORMA (National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish-Speaking) - en tu biblioteca™ - to unify its communications efforts, while Japan has developed its own translation. All of the international versions of @ your library created to date can be found on the
campaign Web site under Download Logos. These include Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Vietnamese.

The world campaign was unveiled last August during the 67th IFLA General Council and Conference in Boston. It is based on ALA's @ your library™ initiative, a five-year public awareness effort to speak loudly and clearly about the value of libraries and librarians in the 21st century. Like the U.S. program, the goals of the world campaign are to raise awareness about the variety of programs and services offered at libraries worldwide; to increase use of libraries at schools, at colleges and universities, in government, at work, and in daily community life; to increase funding for libraries; to involve librarians as stakeholders on public policy issues, such as closing the digital divide; and to encourage librarianship as a profession.

For more information on The Campaign for the World's Libraries, visit the IFLA Web site at
http://www.ifla.org/. For more information on the U.S. program, the
Campaign Web site.