The President welcomed members to the second meeting of the Governing Board of IFLA.

Apologies had been received from John Day, Marianne Scott (who had received a special invitation) and Ross Shimmon.

The President requested best wishes to be sent to Ross Shimmon and to John Day on behalf of all those present.

The President welcomed Ian McGowan and Bob McKee, Co-Chairs of the NOC and Janet Liebster, LA Enterprises (the Professional Conference Organisers), who were present for this agenda item. They distributed a full written progress report and together gave a series of presentations.

Ian McGowan reported on the extremely good support, which was being received from local authorities, as well as from the authorities at the national level. The Scottish Executive had recently granted financial support for approximately 100 Scottish librarians to attend the conference.

Reminding the meeting of the subtitle of the Glasgow conference, building on the past, investing in the future, Bob McKee introduced the rebranding of the Library Association into CILIP, the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals as from 1^st April 2002.

Janet Liebster drew the attention to the fact that 26 different hotels were being offered to conference participants, including hotels at lower end price scales, all within two miles of the venue. At the moment of speaking there were actually more hotel bookings than registrations, specifically at the highest and lowest ends. Registrations then amounted to 201, with an additional 63 with payments in progress.

Glasgow Airport was 20-30 minutes away by road, and shuttle services were to be provided to all city hotels. Every conference participant would receive a 6-day train pass; the train connection between the conference centre and the centre of Glasgow was approximately 5 minutes at a frequency of 4 trains per hour.

Up to the present approximately GBP 184,000 had been raised from sponsors.

Bob McKee referred to the "Red Thread", which functioned to bring out the conference theme, Libraries for life: democracy, diversity, delivery, as strongly as possible. This included the plenary speakers – Seamus Heaney, Gerard Lemos and Anne Fine.

Derek Law added that on Monday 19 August there would be the IFLA Anniversary Lecture by Herman Liebaers (IFLA Honorary President) and, on Wednesday 21 August, another plenary speaker (name to be announced) on indigenous knowledge would give the "IFLA Lecture", chaired by President-elect Kay Raseroka.

The special guests ended their introduction by expressing their hope that everything would lead up to an increase in IFLA membership.

Thanking them for their presentations, the President invited the Glasgow NOC representatives to stay for the next agenda item.

It was noted that the (British) Library Association would unify on 1^st April 2002 with the (British) Institute of Information Scientists, to form the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP). On behalf of the board, the President offered the LA congratulations on the unification of the profession in the UK in its 125^th year.

Winston Tabb, chair of the Professional Committee, introduced this item by summarizing the discussions in the Professional Committee, earlier on the same day. The strategic plans of the core activities had been discussed within the framework of the professional priorities, and those of ALP, CLM, FAIFE and PAC had been approved, although in each plan some clarifications needed to be made. After some textual alterations to these plans, the final versions would be distributed to all GB members for approval.

7.2 Core Activities: report CDNL Working Group

Winston Tabb reported that, very shortly before the meeting, an extensive report had been received from the CDNL Committee chaired by Christopher Chia. This committee had reviewed the current focus of IFLA's Core Activities and was to devise new methods of support for these.

The report would be distributed in electronic form to all Board members. The Chairs of the Core Activity Advisory Boards would distribute the report among the members of their advisory boards and reactions would be sent to Winston Tabb and the Advisory Board Chairs by 1^st May 2002 at the latest.

Marian Koren remarked that the whole procedure and discussions around the Core Activities were not very satisfactory for her, because information was lacking when decisions were taken; and later on, information turned up, when these decisions were already taken. She recommended that a more thorough review should be undertaken next time.

7.3 Core Activities: other matters.

Sophie Felföldi reported that the transfer from the National Library of Canada to INIST (France) had recently been accomplished, according to plan. INIST had been very helpful. The transfer included a substantial number of IFLA discussion lists, which were now offered with interfaces in various different languages. After these, the website had been transferred successfully. Although there were still some problems (membership database; union catalogue database). These would be resolved shortly.

Sophie reported that she was very pleased both with the cooperation of INIST and the support received from the National Library of Canada. The President thanked Sophie Felföldi explicitly for her dedication and her commitment and the hard work she invested in the transfer of the IFLANET website from Canada to France.

The President reported that a draft agreement regarding the maintenance of IFLANET had been received from INIST. The text had been discussed in the Executive Committee and it was planned to have it signed in the course of May 2002.

These texts had been circulated in English and in several translations. Both these documents were approved by the Board, after some textual alterations had been made.

Alex Byrne clarified that the Glasgow declaration was basically a reworking of the original FAIFE Statement of 1998.

The Internet Manifesto paralleled the well-recognised Public Library- and the School Library Manifestos, which had become important in influencing the development of libraries in many nations. The Internet Manifesto was proposed a year ago and was discussed during the Boston IFLA conference. The events of 11 September heightened the need for these kind of statements.

The Board agreed that the text of the Internet Manifesto could go for approval by the Intergovernmental Council of the UNESCO Information for All Programme and then on to IFLA Council for formal adoption.

Alex Byrne sketched the international situation of an increasing number of catastrophes affecting the provision of libraries. The question was how IFLA could respond to these situations. FAIFE had so far been confronted with various requests to take action (Kosovo in the past, and recently there had been a challenging request from UNESCO regarding Afghanistan). It was Alex Byrne’s view, however, that basically this was not the business of FAIFE, and that a line needed to be drawn, but the question then would remain: how IFLA should respond in these cases.

It was agreed to set up a working party of representatives from FAIFE and PAC (Blue Shield) to come up with a proposal.

This concerned two requests here, one specific, one general.

IFLA had virtually no resources to respond to these appeals.

It was decided these requests would be referred to the working group mentioned under M 02-10.

Alex Byrne stated that FAIFE actions or projects could have greater force and impact if they came from a region. What was proposed in the presented document, was to set up a number of regional centres, at no cost to IFLA. One centre was already there: the Library for Foreign Literature in Moscow. The existing IFLA Regional Offices should be included in the proposed network.

Ellen Tise commented that a requirement should be that the library associations in the regions should be cooperating. Kay Raseroka added that the library associations could be asked which NGOs in their region were already known to them in the area that FAIFE covered; these could then be brought in contact with the FAIFE network.

The Board approved the proposals as formulated in the document.

Alex Byrne explained that this concerned an initiative which was started by the Open Society Institute (OSI) and supported by SPARC. The question was should IFLA endorse the Budapest statement.

Ingrid Parent added that the tone of the document was not helpful. It was her opinion that IFLA should not sign up, as IFLA was not involved in the development of the statement. She suggested that IFLA develop its own statement on open access.

Various Board members were of the opinion that signing by IFLA should be considered, as many IFLA members had signed and we ought to voice what our members want. Other Board members were concerned that IFLA’s endorsement would not be appreciated by some association members. Another group of Board members supported the idea of the Budapest Initiative, but advised not to take a position, as this was not IFLA’s own statement, because it had not been involved in its development.

Cristobal Pasadas said that a general statement of this kind would be helpful. He reminded the Board that the University Libraries Section workshop at Glasgow (15 August 2002) would have the issue on its agenda. This would provide an excellent opportunity to develop an IFLA statement.

After ample discussion it was decided that:

• the Board would not take action now, and defer signing of the Budapest Initiative;
• the Board would develop an IFLA statement concerning the issues of open access, raised by the Budapest Initiative, strongly addressing the needs of developing countries; a preliminary text would be prepared by Alex Byrne, Claudia Lux and Kay Raseroka, in consultation with the IFLA Serial Publications Section.
• the Board would consider the outcome of the Glasgow workshop of the University Libraries Section.

The minutes of the 4 December 2001 meeting were noted.

Ingrid Parent reported that the scheduled joint IPA/IFLA statement on archiving digital publications was not ready yet, as comments were still coming in. In general, IFLA members that had reacted were very supportive of the statement. Also from the IPA side there was general strong support; the only proviso that was made by IPA was that they do not formally represent publishers of audio-visual material and sheet music.

Ingrid Parent reported briefly on the outcomes of the IPA/IFLA meeting in the week prior to this Board meeting (22 March 2002). Participation at each other's general conference had been discussed.

Recently Ann Okerson (Yale University) had represented IFLA at the IPA Copyright conference in Ghana; IPA representatives had reported that they were impressed by her presentation and her knowledge of licensing and copyright issues. In return IFLA will invite IPA representation to the GB meeting as well as to a panel discussion in Glasgow (August 2002).

The IFLA/IPA Steering Group was planning to make a joint representation at UNESCO, in the course of June 2002

Having met at Geneva, the members of the IFLA/IPA Steering Group had used the opportunity to meet with officials of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It was hoped that IFLA would be able to sustain these contacts, most likely through CLM.

Kay Raseroka said that she was worried by the absence of the developing countries in much of these issues. Ingrid Parent replied that, at the WIPO meeting, there had been the copyright people of the regions, where WIPO works with governments. The IFLA representatives encouraged them to involve librarians and to contact them, via the library associations. It was recognised that training (on copyright issues) was really important.

This initiative had been taken by a group of which Graham Cornish had been a member. He had, however, retired and therefore new IFLA representation was being solicited. Alex Byrne stated that FAIFE was happy to take this on board, but suggested that the action plan had many deficiencies. He hoped that FAIFE would be able to come up with improvements.

Mary Jackson said that commitments should not be made for too long a period, and called for an evaluation after two years. Alex Byrne replied that IFLA or FAIFE was not committed to joining the alliance at this stage. Developments would be monitored, on which FAIFE would report back to the Board.

16.1 The minutes were approved.

16.2 There were no matters arising from the minutes or the action list.

17.1 The minutes were approved.

17.2 There were no matters arising from the minutes or the action list.

17.3 A discussion was held about the distribution of the minutes of this Board, in other words: who, apart from the members, are entitled to receive the minutes and whether they should be published. It was decided that the Secretariat would make a first draft available to the Board members, after including members’ comments a second draft would be made available to the members. After a certain reaction period these would be considered as the final draft, which would be posted to IFLANET (in English only). Exceptions would be made for personal and any other confidential information.

As soon as possible a press release should be issued.

In the interim Division chairs/secretaries could brief their sections and chairs of Core Activities’ Advisory Boards their Directors.

18.1 Minutes of the meeting of the committee held in December 2001

The minutes were noted.

18.2 Oral report on the meeting of the committee held earlier in the week: see under item 23.5.2 (below)

There was no report, due to Ross Shimmon’s absence.

20.1 Accounts 2001

The draft accounts 2001 were distributed in the meeting.

The Treasurer introduced Edwin Paul of IFLA’s auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC).

Edwin Paul summarized the financial year by stating that in 2001 IFLA for the first time had accounts which exceeded 2 million Dutch guilders. It was the last year that the accounts would be issued in guilders, as from the beginning of 2002 the transfer to the Euro had been accomplished in the Netherlands and other European countries. He then pointed to some highlights of the financial year, first the Balance sheet. The result was a healthy, but not excessive, balance.

The provision for doubtful debtors amounted to NLG 145,000. In fact this is a large loss and more successful chasing of debtors would generate immediate positive results.

IFLA’s general reserves amounted to 1.1 million guilders. The objective remained to establish a reserve equalling one year’s operating expenses.

The statement of Income and Expenditure showed an increase in membership fees and a decrease in sales of publications. Conference income had increased, thanks to a very successful conference in Boston and a change in the registration fee structure. The final accounts from the Boston NOC and Congrex Holland, the professional conference organisers, had been received, they were, however, not yet audited.

Staff expenditures showed a considerable increase, due to an extra staff member during the largest part of 2001. Under "Miscellaneous" a high expenditure was shown, but this would, according to expectations, be compensated for in future years.

20.2 Draft Management Letter for 2001

This document from PWC was distributed in the meeting.

Edwin Paul commented that actions had been taken on all items from the Management Letter of the previous year. He acknowledged that substantial progress had been made since a year ago and said that he was hopeful that all outstanding matters would be resolved by the end of 2002.

An internal audit questionnaire had been developed by PWC and IFLA/HQ. It had been sent to the ALP and PAC Core Activities. As the results had been positive, it was recommended that the questionnaire be sent to the other core activities as well.

Edwin Paul reminded the Board of the fact that PWC was doing a lot of financial advisory work for IFLA/HQ and that the situation would be more favourable for IFLA if the expertise could be made available within the IFLA office.

The Treasurer said that IFLA/HQ was about to select a new financial officer and will make sure that (s)he would have the required qualifications.

The Board then approved the draft Accounts and Management Letter as presented, unanimously.

Claudia Lux asked if it would have been possible to have received the discussed documents a week earlier. Unfortunately this had not been possible.

20.3 New Revenue Streams

This document was not discussed but deferred to the next meeting.

21.1 Appointment of a Core PCO

Representatives of two bidders for the position of IFLA Core Professional Conference Organiser (PCO) were present consecutively at this agenda item in order to make presentations about their firms and about their special views, ideas and features with respect to organising the annual IFLA conferences 2005 – 2009.

Ingrid Parent, Chair of the Conference Planning Committee (CPC), reported that a third firm could not be present on that day, but had given a presentation to the CPC, earlier during the week.

After the presentations, the Board meeting adjourned for lunch. During the break the CPC had come together to evaluate the three presentations made and immediately after the break CPC chair Ingrid Parent reported on the outcome of the CPC’s discussions.

The CPC recommended to the Board that it select Congrex Holland as the organisation that would be invited by IFLA's Secretary General to enter into negotiations with IFLA. It was the opinion of the CPC that Congrex, in its presentation, had had the most interesting proposals with regard to:

• IT applications
• paper handling
• combinations of fixed and variable conference fees
• conference management team
• submission of scope documents, including a business plan
• pre-financing (investments) could be discussed, depending on country
• help in process of fundraising from the corporate sector.

The recommendation of the CPC had been recorded.

The Board then decided unanimously to authorize the Secretary General to enter into negotiations with Congrex Holland. All three presenters would be informed in writing.

21.2 Boston 2001: final report and accounts

The final report was distributed at the meeting, but it was not discussed, nor noted. It was deferred until the next meeting.

21.3 Berlin 2003: update

The progress report was noted.

21.4 Buenos Aires 2004: update

The progress report was noted.

In addition, Ana Maria Peruchena reported that the Buenos Aires NOC had nominated a Professional Conference Organiser: Fundacion El Libro and that talks were going on with Rose International, in order to see if Rose could be involved with the organisation of the exhibition.

As concerned the political situation, she reminded the Board that Argentina had experienced a large number of crises, but had always been able to survive and to overcome those crises. Also she had to admit that the financial situation of Argentina was delicate.

The President said that earlier in the week, the Executive Committee had decided to have a go/no-go decision, at the latest during the 2002 Glasgow conference.

A site visit to Buenos Aires was planned for 15-19 April 2002 by Jeronimo Martinez, Derek Law and Josche Neven. They would report after their visit. The CPC would make recommendations, if needed, before Glasgow.

21.5 Future of the Conference

Ingrid Parent clarified that this was an interim report, which reflected the current thinking. She invited members to send reactions to herself and Winston Tabb.

Josche Neven would prepare options for conference schedules for the December 2002 meeting.

21.6 Meeting of the Conference Planning Committee (CPC)

Ingrid Parent reported that the only issue that was left on the agenda of the CPC, and not yet previously discussed during this GB meeting, was the selection of the host for the IFLA Conference 2007.

Originally there had been 4 submissions. In December 2001 two candidates had been short-listed and invited to submit their bidbooks. Both bidbooks had been received by the CPC and both will be site visited in the course of May 2002.

Both would be invited to make a presentation to this Board during the Glasgow conference, after which the Board would have to make the final choice.

22.1 Membership fees 2003: Proposal for Council

The Treasurer introduced this item. This proposal was basically intended to keep income from membership fees in line with inflation. The Board approved the proposal unanimously.

Alex Byrne suggested the introduction for institutional members, in addition to the regular bands 1, 2 and 3, three additional bands 1A, 2A and 3A, by means of which members could pay additional fees on a voluntary basis. This suggestion was taken forward for internal discussion.

The Treasurer reported that the present document did not yet include proposals regarding association members. Some of these were now institutional members, but there also was the growing group of consortia and a proposal would be forthcoming to cater for these by the enlargement of the category of national association members. The Board mandated the Treasurer to put a proposal accordingly forward to Council.

22.2 National Association Membership Fees

The Treasurer introduced the document. It had been discussed at the meeting with National Association Members in August 2001, that we would make progress on the issue of a new fees structure for this membership category. He reported that the Treasurer and Kelly Moore would develop a proposal along the lines of 02-041 and put that forward to the meeting of association members during the Glasgow conference (August 2002).

There was one special case, however. Hong Kong and Macau are Special Administrative Regions of China, following agreements between China and the United Kingdom and Portugal. The Special Administrative Regions had participated in many international organizations and kept their original status as "Hong Kong, China" and "Macau, China".

The Board agreed that IFLA could follow this practice and approved the according proposal unanimously, stating that this would be regarded as an advance on the forthcoming situation of the fees for association membership.

22.3 Membership Manager’s Report

Kelly Moore gave a brief clarification of her report, which was noted.

22.4 Corporate Partners’ Council

Kelly Moore reported that a pleasant and successful meeting had been held in New Orleans, during the Midwinter Conference of ALA (January 2002). This issue was ongoing.

22.5 Membership Development Committee (MDC)

Ellen Tise reported on decisions taken during the committee’s meeting, earlier in the week.

The MDC had decided that appeals for bequests would not result in a practical revenue stream.

The MDC had also decided to recommend that members be allowed to pay their fees in advance.

The MDC had discussed the category of schools of library & information science and how to target these.

For some further matters, members were referred to the forthcoming minutes of this meeting.

23.1 Round Tables into Sections

In its meeting in December 2001, the Professional Committee had approved the transfer of eight Round Tables into Sections. The question was whether we should call for nominations for the Standing Committees of the new Sections in the normal way in October 2002, or regard the existing Executive Committees as interim Standing Committees until 2005?

Following a proposal by Sissel Nilsen, it was decided that the new Sections would be given more time to recruit members and to transfer during an interim period. By the end of the Glasgow conference the Round Tables would become Sections. The existing Executive Committees would become interim Standing Committees for the period until the Oslo Conference (August 2005). At Glasgow the Round Tables would still have an opportunity to adjust their Executive Committees, in order to have a larger group of people to conduct the recruitment of Section members and to enable wider geographical spread. The Coordinating Boards of the Division would be in charge of approving additional Executive Committee members.

The Round Tables, and later the new Sections could start recruiting new members directly, and continue to recruit in the coming years. IFLA/HQ would support that process by organising advertisement opportunities (IFLA Journal, IFLANET etc.)

In addition it was decided that when the Round Table for the Management of Library Associations (RTMLA) would transfer into a Section, all IFLA association members would become members of that section automatically, at no extra charge. A new Rule of Procedure would have to be developed to regulate membership of association members of this new Section in the future.

23.2 Future Pattern of Meetings of the Board

The paper outlined how the traditional pattern of meetings had been in previous years and which changes in this pattern had been envisaged as a result of the creation of the Governing Board. It was questioned whether the meeting pattern which had been adopted for the short term (2001/2002) could be used in the longer run.

It was remarked that investing 3 weeks every year was normally too much for the average GB member (Derek Law) and that the order of PC first, followed by GB was questionable (Ellen Tise). Sissel Nilsen said that the duty of the EC was to handle business in between meetings, and that it did not need to meet in the weeks of the GB meetings. Alex Byrne referred to the mandate that was given to him by the IFLA members who elected him on the Board. He felt excluded when the PC and other committees held their meetings in December 2001 and he was not present. Sally McCallum and Sissel Nilsen said that they also felt that it would have been necessary to have been here in December 2001. Marian Koren gave her opinion that the Board should concentrate on discussions and do other business by e-mail. This way, meetings should be kept as short as possible.

After ample discussion it was concluded that the GB would go to a basis of 4 meetings annually: one in March/April, two during the annual conference, and one in November/December.

The March/April and November/December sessions should preferably fit in the following schedule:

Furthermore it was decided not to have "For Information" items on the agenda anymore; these documents would have to be distributed during the period between meetings and listed.

With regard to the above it was suggested by Alex Byrne that - in order to shorten the duration of a meeting - members could be invited to indicate their preference for specific agenda items by "starring" them.

23.3 IFLA Honours and Awards

The Treasurer introduced the paper and sketched the background. Proposals had been made to restructure the schedule of honorary fellowships, scrolls and medals to give them a more logical structure. Scrolls would be given to officers with substantial years of service.

The Board approved the proposals as they were formulated, with one abstention.

23.4 Campaign for the World’s Libraries

Claudia Lux said that progress was being made and that quite a broad interest could be reported. The campaign had so far been adopted in Canada, Turkey, Italy, Iceland, Mexico, Japan, Korea, Australia and Kazakhstan.

23.5 Committee reports

It was decided that the Treasurer would take this proposal and table it at the meeting of IFLA association members, which will be convened during the General Conference in Glasgow (August 2002).

The minutes of the meeting of 1 October 2001 were noted. Minutes of the most recent meeting (29 January 2002) had not been received.

The usual problem remained that no resources were available. It was noted that Blue Shield would be highlighted at Glasgow with a special Open Session.

The Board approved the proposal to nominate Gary Strong (Director Public Library, New York Brooklyn) as IFLA’s representative at the United Nations, with Winston Tabb as the deputy representative.

The Board approved and accepted the renewal of IFLA’s status with UNESCO.

Sjoerd Koopman reported that IFLA and IFLA/FAIFE had jointly managed to find IFLA representation at this meeting: Charles Batambuze (SG Library Association of Uganda) and Barbara Schleihagen (SG IFLA 2003 Berlin) had been prepared to go.

Ellen Tise reported that in the course of February 2002 a series of Consultation meetings had been held in Paris. IFLA had been represented in all four, by different colleagues. A fifth meeting would be held 22/23 April 2002 and Ellen Tise and Susanne Seidelin would attend. It was characterised as very important that IFLA would continue to be involved at a high level in these consultations and that we involve our Sections and Regions in the process which eventually would lead up to the World Summit in December 2003 (Geneva) and 2005 (Tunis).

In its letter the Round Table for the Management of Library Associations (RTMLA) urged IFLA to have representation at the upcoming summit at Johannesburg (August 2002). Winnie Vitzansky (Director Danish Library Association) was prepared to represent IFLA. The letter had a draft Position Paper as attachment. It was reported that the International Relations Committee of ALA was working on this as well and LIASA will have representation too.

It was decided that Winnie Vitzansky, Ellen Tise, Marian Koren and Alex Byrne would form a group to help the further drafting of the position paper. This could possibly result in a Council resolution at the Glasgow conference.

The list of invitations to international and other significant events was noted, together with the names of proposed representatives. It would be updated regularly.

The following reports were all noted:

• Wu Jianzhong, World Knowledge Forum, November 2001
• Claudia Lux, Korean Book Fair, October 2001
• Sjoerd Koopman, Rabat Conference September 2001
• ICA and IFLA Representatives at UNESCO, February 2002
• Sjoerd Koopman, DANIDA meeting Uppsala, March 2002

It was decided that the Governing Board would meet during the Glasgow conference on:

Friday 16 August 2002 (11:30-13:30)

Friday 23 August 2002 (a.m.) (+ representatives of other organisations)

Saturday 24 August 2002

During the following December, the meetings of GB, PC and other committees would be held on:

Thursday 12 December 2002

Friday 13 December 2002

Saturday 14 December 2002

Sjoerd Koopman read an e-message that had just been received from Ross Shimmon, in which he sent his greetings and thanked all those who had sent good wishes.

The President declared the meeting closed at 17:30.