New Standing committee member introductions

New Chair: Ingrid Bon

Main occupation:
Senior advisor library services for children and young adults and reading promotion for Rijnbrink.

Working Experience:
Almost 40 year experience in public libraries, specialist in services for children and young adults. Active in several working groups on a national level. City Council member from 2002-2014. Trainer of LIS in Netherlands but also workshops in other countries like Peru, Uruguay. Presented several papers at international congresses (e.g. South Korea, Toronto, Uruguay, Peru, South Africa)

IFLA:
Present chair of the section Library Services for Children and Young Adults. Just ended full term of Governing Board member (2011-2015). Secretary and chair of the section Library Services for Children and Young Adults from 2003-2011.

Favourite proverbs:
It takes a village to raise a child.
If you want to go fast: walk alone. If you want to get far: walk together.

New Secretary: Ingrid Kallström

At the WLIC in Cape Town 2015 I had the honor and gained the confidence to be elected secretary of IFLA Section Libraries for Children and Young Adults. I have been a children’s librarian for more thirty years and I have been working both practical and strategic. I have been working on local, regional and national level in Sweden and internationally with IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) and with IFLA since 2008. It is my ambition to do my very best as a secretary of this section. I will try to be a “spider in a net” and help the members of this section. I want everybody to be able to take part in our sections work.

 

New standing Committee members
Note: A few new Standing Committee member's contact details are not public yet due to IFLA privacy policy.
 

Søren Dal Mortensen, Denmark

I am a librarian and I have a Master of Child and Youth Cultures. I have been working 26 years as a librarian in the Children and Youth department in Odense, Denmark.  Apart from daily library work, my main job functions also include developing and implementing various projects for children and young people.

Also for  12 years I have been the project manager for the Harry Potter Festival in Odense, Denmark. Odense Central Library organizes a very popular annual festival for young Harry Potter fans from across all of Denmark. The festival has existed for 13 years and it has grown continuously. The size and variety of the events have expanded, and in 2010 the author of the Harry Potter books – J. K. Rowling – attended the festival. In 2014 the number of visitors reached 10,000.

The Harry Potter Festival embodies the books and their fantastic universe, and the participants get the opportunity to visit shops known from the books as well as to meet some of the well-known characters. The festival incorporates the city as a playground, and official institutions such as city hall, the church, Odense Symphony Orchestra, the historical- and art museums and the library are integrated parts of the events and the festival.

I am 57 years old, married and have 3 children and 1 grandchild.

Cosmas Mabeya

Cosmas Mabeya is Executive Project Manager at The Bookery – an NGO in Cape Town, South Africa that sets up and supports school libraries across the country. With over 40 libraries reaching over 45 000 school children and more to come, The Bookery seeks to engender a love of reading in children and Young Adults in South Africa as a first step towards life-long learning and improved education.

The IFLA membership and the privilege to serve as a committee member in IFLA Section – Libraries for children and Young Adults not only gives me an opportunity to support international efforts to better education but also affords me the opportunity to share and learn from colleagues and experts from across the world. I hope that my little contribution informs and enlightens the immense expertise and experience of fellow members in the committee.

 

Emiko Goeku

Hello, my name is Emiko Goeku. I’m so honored and excited to become a SC member of this section. I would like to share experiences and ideas with people from around the world. I’m working at Tokyo Children’s Library, a special library for children and adults who are interested in children’s books and reading. I am in charge of book selection meeting for children’s room, and research room for adults. As a children’s  librarian, I enjoy reading, telling stories to children and sing nursery rhymes with them. Since 2012 I’m also working as a board member of children and young adults section of Japan Library Association. Except for books and library, I like tortoises, trains, coffee and dance.

Karen Keys, US

Karen Keys has been a librarian in New York City since 2006. Prior to becoming Coordinator of Young Adult Services at Brooklyn Public Library, Karen worked in a variety of positions at Queens Library, including YA librarian, outreach librarian, and assistant community library manager. She is dedicated to life-long learning and promoting a love of reading. Karen became interested in becoming more involved with IFLA and the Standing Committee of the Libraries For Children And Young Adults Section because her patrons in New York City are from all over the world and she wanted to be more in-tune with issues facing libraries and librarians internationally. 

 

Raneetha Rajaratnam, Singapore

Raneetha is a Deputy Director with the National Library Board in Singapore (NLB). Recognised for her innovative ideas, ability to motivate teams and enthusiasm for the field of librarianship, she has been given the tasked to lead the strategic direction, content development and implementation of nationwide reading initiatives targeted at children and teenagers. This encompasses the Early Read programme targeted at pre-school children from 0 to 6 years old alongside their parents and educators, the kidsREAD programme that promotes the joy of reading among young children between the ages of 4 and 8 from underprivileged families, and the Read@School programme that encourages students from 7 to 17 years old to pursue reading as a pleasurable activity. Her passion to share the joy of reading and best practices, is evident in her speaking engagements at platforms such as the Gifted Education Conference 2011, IFLA World Library and Information Congress 2013, Asian Festival of Children’s Content 2015 and Conference of the Library and Information Community of Québec 2015.

Being part of IFLA Children and Young Adults SC, provides me with the opportunities to create collaborative partnerships amongst libraries around the world; share best practices, as well as learn from the amazing work that takes place in many other libraries; and contribute to spreading news of events and innovative initiatives at multiple platforms.

Antonella Lamberti, Italy

I am a children librarian in the Public Library Tiziano Terzani, in Campi Bisenzio, a small town near Florence. I was born in a big family in Naples and I moved to Florence in the 1977.

The library where now  I work is a beautiful one, situated in an ancient house in the middle of a huge green park. I am a children librarian and a documentalist since the 1987 and so I've been cataloguing and reading children books since then. I also collaborate with the quarterly review Liber, that is specialized in  children litterature, and with Liber Database, the most complete Italian children litterature Database.

I am very glad to be in the Standind Committee and I'm sure that it will be a great experience that will give me the chance to learn a lot but that also will give me the opportunity to give my  personal contribution of experiences and ideas to the international group. It's really honourful for me  and I feel excited and proud for this. I'm looking forward to the moment in which I'll work side by side with so many interesting people!  If I think that just one year and a half ago, on 2014, August, I was attending at the 80th Ifla Congress in Lyon (France) as a volunteer, I can't believe it yet ! I would never imaged that I would have once come back as a member of the Committee ! And voilà, here I am !

 

Corresponding members

Irina Mikhnova, Russia

Ms. Mikhnova is a director of the Russian State Library for Young Adults (RSLYA) since 2006, a vice-president of the Russian Library Association and a chair of its YoungAdults Library Services Section, a member of the Russian Union of Journalists, Ph.D. ineducation. Ms. Mikhnova is a founder of the Library Marketing School in Russia. She is in chargeof some major internet projects, in particular, the National Information and Reference Portal LIBRARY.RU and the Libraries for Young Adults Union. She is an author of several books on librarianship issues (including library services and programmes for young adults) and has more than 230 publications in Russian and foreign professional journals.

Ms. Mikhnova was a member of the IFLA Section Libraries for Children and Young Adults Standing Committee 2011-2015 and looks forward for active and fruitful work and new projects within the Section as a Corresponding Member for the term 2015 – 2017.

Eva Fred

Ms. Fred is a children’s librarian since 1987 but now working as library advisor and assistant county librarian at Kultur i Väst. Kultur I Väst is administrative home for the County Library of Västra Gotaland and we support local libraries and their development through education, training and consulting. I am a corresponding member of IFLA Section Libraries for Children and Young Adults and I would like to open up for a discussion how we can work more strategically to strengthen children’s libraries and its librarianship.

 
Carolynn Rankin

Dr. Carolynn Rankin is a corresponding member of the C&YA Standing Committee.  I have a research interest in library services for children and the professional development of librarians. In  2011 I began an evaluation of the Sister Libraries project and am currently working on the revision of the IFLA Guidelines for Library Service for Children.