III Encuentro de biblioteconomía. "Las bibliotecas: Cooperación al desarrollo y nuevas tecnologías"

Under the current social and economic context, university and national libraries, archives and documentation centres from all over the world pursue excellence and quality whilst at the same time competing in locating resources and trying to profit from those they already have.

So as to establish aims to achieve these goals, Casa África sets out this Seminar whose objectives can be summarised as:

• optimising resources by strengthening joint work
• favouring preservation and dissemination of African documentary and bibliographical heritage
• backing new technologies and promoting the updating of laws on copyright

The Seminars on Documentation and Library science, which will take place during the morning of Tuesday 29th November  2011 at Casa África, will develop around two themes , counting on expert panels in the different matters:

• Access to information and copyright. Libraries and archives as information portals for the dissemination and conservation of cultural heritage in open access and the problems derived from the management of copyright, updating the laws that regulate these rights. The investigation and transfer of knowledge as an instrument for cooperation.
• Cooperation for development and libraries. Libraries as agents for development and motors for training. Promote South-South collaboration to maximise resources that African states destine to training and culture.

The planned programme for these seminars can be downloaded in PDF

We will also present at these sessions the  Kuwamba multimedia portal, a Casa África initiative that was created to offer media library funds and this organisation's archives to a greater number of users and to encourage the investigation on Africa making the most of the incessant development of information technologies and avoiding the ultra-peripheral geographic barrier.

We will be able to have access to films, texts, reference websites and special funds as well as these contents, which will help to bring Africa closer to Spain through knowing about them.

During the afternoon session we will see the  WikiAfrica Workshop: "How to share your knowledge on Africa in Wikipedia?..." whose aim is to train volunteers to add contents on Africa to the Wikipedia information portal.

Key facts:

• Place: Casa África Calle Alfonso XIII, nº 5. 35003 Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
• Date: 29th November 2011
• Time: From 9:30h to 14:00h and from 16:30h to 18:30h
• Registration: Free entry. An attendance certificate will be handed over for the session by previously registering through the email mediateca@casafrica.es from the 21st to 28th November.