Scottish Libraries, Column 3
President's Perspective
This is a strange Presidential column to write because this issue is reaching not only fellow members of the Institute but several thousand IFLA delegates who will find it stuffed in their conference pack and no doubt use it as a riveting antidote to jetlag. It’s a bit like being promoted from the Sunday Post to the New York Times. I’m writing this column with a couple of weeks to go and the excitement is mounting. By the time you read this, IFLA will have finally arrived, five years after the bid to hold the conference was accepted. At least for a week Glasgow is the centre of the library universe, with record breaking numbers of conference delegates– at least for Europe – confounding the prophets of doom. The pace has been quickening for the last month or so for my bit of IFLA. For the last fifteen years I’ve made friends and received hospitality, faithfully attending every conference from Tokyo to Boston. This year it’s a pleasure to offer a little in return. The questions have flowed in from colleagues in over a dozen countries seeking advice on hotels, restaurants, the best whisky to buy, room hire, kilt hire, the need for raincoats, presents for IFLA’s 75th birthday, where to hire a pub to drink in (sic - ok so I have some funny friends), where to visit in Scotland after the conference, how to reclaim VAT and many more. And remember the party line is that the Loch Ness monster does exist and yes we all go commando when wearing the kilt.
At the same time wearing my IFLA Treasurer hat a daily stream of messages has been flowing out from The Hague with questions, exhortations, instructions, advice both minatory and mandatory, timetables, guest lists, news and numbers. It’s nice to see that Ross Shimmon has made such a speedy recovery, even if it is made manifest in e-mail volume.
Ross’s first engagement after his spell in hospital was, of course, at Peebles at positively the last event of the SLA and the first annual conference of CILIPS. That was a wonderful and memorable week for me, as I hope it was for those who attended. A great programme put together by those nice people in Hamilton and a grand dinner enlivened by Colin Will’s latest poem (see page ???). And since then there’s so much to gossip about: the appointment at NLS; the hundred bursaries for Scots delegates to IFLA, funded by the Scottish Executive; the move of CILIPS offices from John Street as staff numbers expand to deal with all the grants and programmes being newly funded; Robert Craig’s announcement that he is to retire. But this month’s column is resolutely international so that will all have to keep.
In amongst all the excitement of old friends and an intoxicating and non-stop week, it’s easy to forget that this is an amazing professional event with hundreds of papers being presented from all over the globe. The National Organising Committee has made several notable innovations, not least announcing much of the programmatic content before the conference so that delegates know what to expect, as well as planning plenary sessions related directly to the conference theme and with an astonishing cast-list of speakers and papers covering an almost as astonishing range of topics. Then there’s the concert, the Tattoo, the mobile library meet, the fun run, the poetry, the meetings formal and informal, the debates, the I-Max, the exhibition and the sheer adrenilin rush of feeling part of such a large, vibrant and successful profession.
That vibrancy is everywhere. This column is actually being written in mid-flight on the way back from a conference in Shanghai reflecting on the role of digital libraries in major cities. I was there to speak for the Glasgow Digital Library and met old IFLA friends describing what was happening in Berlin, New York and Brisbane. I met new friends describing what was happening in Shanghai, (a small city of sixteen million people!), Tokyo and even a city I didn’t know existed, namely Dundee, Illinois. It was fascinating. We may like to think that what we are doing is innovative, but it’s certainly far from unique. There was so much to learn from other experiences and ambitions, from other combinations of activity, but all with a common ambition not just to serve but to better communities.
I quite gratuitously decided I’d like to finish this column with three wishes. First for the two hundred or so Scots IFLA first timers: may you have fallen in love with IFLA, made new friends and feel able to part from them with the traditional IFLA farewell – “See you next year in Berlin”. For IFLA delegates from furth of Scotland: thank you for joining us and may you feel able to look back on IFLA Glasgow as one of those memorable conferences to be recalled nostalgically in years to come. And thirdly for everyone filling in the conference evaluation forms: may you feel moved to use that ultimate Scots (or at least Arbroath) superlative to describe the week – “Nae bad. It was nae bad”.
And just a wee PS for volunteers, National Organising Committee, British Council, host libraries, IFLA HQ staff and anyone else I’ve forgotten
“IT’S SHOWTIME!!!!!”
P.S. See Terry Pratchett? See the Carnegie Medal? Magic.