Conference organized by the Rare Books and Special Collections Section of IFLA (RBSCS) and  the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal (Lisbon) on the 22 February 2016.

This conference aims 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?

The conference will address topics such as:
- 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