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.
