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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 41 | October 1999


NLA and the library community

65th IFLA Council and General

Management of Libraries Assoc.

Amelia McKenzie (left) pictured with workshop speakers U Thaw Kaung, former director of the Universities Central Library, Yangon, Arlene Cohen, Pacific Islands Association of Libraries and Archives, Harrison Perera, British Council Library, Colombo and Belsie Kaltabang, Vanuatu Reserve Bank

This year’s IFLA Conference was held in Bangkok from 22–28 August, with a record number of Australians attending.

The conference drew over 2000 delegates from 151 countries and took place in a new conference centre on the southern outskirts of Bangkok. As promised, Bangkok’s newly-completed expressways meant travel to and from the centre was (mostly) trouble free.

The National Library was well represented at the conference, with new Director-General, Jan Fullerton, and seven members of staff attending, some at their own expense.

Australian participation in programs
This conference was notable for the level of participation by Australians in pre-conference and actual conference programs. An important pre-conference meeting was held in Khon Khaen, north-east Thailand, on the preservation of oral cultures. Kevin Bradley of the Library’s Sound Preservation Section travelled to Khon Khaen to give practice-based sessions on the preservation of sound recordings. These were well received by the international audience. During the conference proper, Peter Haddad, Director Technical Services gave two papers—National Bibliography in Australia: Moving into the Next Millenium and The National Library of Australia’s Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection, with Special Reference to the Asia–Pacific Region. Andrew Gosling, Manager Asian Collections spoke on Access to Asian Serials in Australian Libraries while Amelia McKenzie gave a paper entitled A Window on to the World: Australian Newspaper Collecting in the National Library of Australia. Oliver Mann, the Library’s regional officer in Jakarta, gave a timely review of Indonesian publishing in Current Publishing and Information Trends in Indonesia.

Annabelle Herd, at that time copyright adviser to the Australian Libraries Copyright Committee and based in the National Library, spoke at a well-attended session of the IFLA Committee. Other Australian colleagues were also active during the week, with papers presented by Margaret Shaw, Joye Volker, Kerry Smith, Robert Pestell, Bill Lamble and Edward Lim. Alex Byrne, chair of the new IFLA Committee on Free Access to Information and Freedom of Expression (FAIFE) led an open session and organised a workshop attracting 60 representatives of library associations. The workshop identified 20 strategies which associations could employ to further the work of FAIFE with their members.

Amelia McKenzie of the National Library’s staff was elected for a further two-year term as chair of IFLA’s Regional Section for Asia/Oceania. She addressed two IFLA Newcomers sessions on IFLA’s work in the region, and chaired an open session on the theme of the Internet in developing countries. At this session a very good paper from Malaysia on Internet training models for academic libraries aroused great interest. Amelia also organised and led a work-shop on managing library associations in developing countries (see picture).

Future projects of the Regional Section include a conference on networking to be held in Sri Lanka in October 1999, and a three-day workshop planned for March 2000 in Beirut, on regional resource sharing. Part of the impetus for planning the Beirut meeting is the fact that some regional colleagues will not be permitted by their governments to attend the 2000 IFLA Conference in Jerusalem, Israel.

Finally, Warren Horton, former director-general of the National Library of Australia and a well-known figure in IFLA circles, was presented with an IFLA Honorary Fellowship in recognition of his contribution to the work of IFLA. An honorary fellowship is the highest award IFLA can bestow, with only two such fellowships awarded this decade.

Papers from the conference can be found at http://www.ifla.org

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