A common international standard for rare materials cataloguing? Why? And how?

The Rare Books and Special Collections Section of IFLA (RBSCS) invite paper proposals for a one-day conference being held at the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal (Lisbon) on the 22 February 2016, sponsored by the IFLA RBSCS and the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal.

This conference will aim to bring the discussion of changing trends and standards for the description of early printed books and special collections in all formats, for instance archives, audio-visual and born-digital material, to an international stage. In an age when catalogues and metadata are shared across libraries, systems and borders, should there be a common international standard for the cataloguing of rare books and special collections? Is this a desirable or attainable goal? What might such a common standard look like, and how might it be achieved?

Possible topics:

- existing national and international standards
- case studies of the adoption, adaptation or rejection of particular cataloguing standards at institutional or national level
- methodology and delivery of shared cataloguing programmes and data interoperability
- integrating standards for different formats
- theoretical, methodological or historical perspectives
- the needs of researchers and other users, or of cataloguers and other data creators

Papers should be 20 minutes in length and can be in any of any of the seven official IFLA languages.

The committee will also accept proposals for posters (maximum width of 80cm) which can be displayed in the conference venue on the day of the event.

Please submit abstracts for papers or posters of up to 500 words to Daryl Green, Section Information Coordinator, dtg4@st-andrews.ac.uk

Deadline: 8 January 2016