Presidential Newsletter
No. 3 November 2007
Dear IFLA Members,
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October started with a visit to the IFLA
Headquarters on the 4th and 10th of October to talk with the
staff about the structure of the headquarters to accommodate
our future activities. IFLA staff was very active in
brainstorming and we decided to have a second session one week
later, where the President and the Secretary General talked to
each of the staff personally about the issue. |
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For those unable to be present, the president and the Secretary General
talked with each over the phone or in person at another occasion.
I also took part in a conference '
Building for the
Future' organized by IFLA Library Buildings and Equipment
Section at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) in The Hague. Sjoerd
Koopman talked about 25 years of IFLA at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek
and I personally thanked the KB for its gracious support for so many
years. Karen Latimer gave a presentation on the recent publication '
IFLA
Library Building Guidelines: Developments and
Reflections', a result of the fruitful work of the
section.
From October 11 - 14, I attended the International Frankfurt Bookfair,
where Sjoerd Koopman and Cynthia Mouanda from IFLA, together with our
current conference organiser, Concorde Services Ltd, and supported by
Hella Klauser and Barbara Schleihagen from Germany, staffed a small
IFLA Booth. I was present when a library professional signed up as a
personal member of IFLA! Besides other activities and discussions, I
attended a session of the International Publishers Association (IPA)
and took part in a panel discussion at the FOCUS Booth, a German weekly
political journal "The Google Library and its impact on the book
industry". My contributions focused on open access.
October 24 is library day in Germany, because the first library was
opened to the public on that day in 1828 in Großenhain. At this year's
activities, the President of Germany, Mr. Horst Koehler, reopened the
new renovated Anna Amalia Library in Weimar three years after the
terrible fire, which destroyed the old library building and many
valuable books and manuscripts. While I was honoured to take part in
the first group visiting the library with the president, his speech on
the importance of libraries was very powerful. It culminated in a
sentence, which stated that in his view libraries need to be on the
political agenda in Germany.
http://www.bundesregierung.de/nn_1514/Content...
(in German only, english is coming soon)
With best wishes to all of you
Claudia Lux
President of IFLA 2007 - 2009
November 2007
The Letter of the President
"LOP" is distributed by e-mail at least once a month to
provide an overview of some of the current activities of the IFLA
President, President Elect, the Governing Board and the Headquarters.
It contains LINKS for further consultation and will be sent to IFLA-L
and all other mailing lists organised by IFLA.