**** Forwarded by [log in to unmask] ****

Date:         Wed, 23 Jan 2002 16:09:13 +0000
From:         Barbara Lincoln <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      Heaney and Fine to address IFLA 2002 Conference
To:           [log in to unmask]

Apologies for cross postings.

Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney and UK Childrens Laureate Anne
Fine will be special guest speakers at the 68th General Conference of
the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
(IFLA), to take place in Glasgow, Scotland  from 18-24 August.  Mr
Heaney will deliver the opening lecture and novelist Anne Fine will be
presenting a guest lecture.

For many of us, IFLA 2002 will be the most diverse and wide-ranging
library and information event to take place in the UK during our
professional lives, says National Organising Committee Co-Chair Ian
McGowan.  The opportunity to take part, meet colleagues from all parts
of the world and benefit from the perspective they bring to our
professional concerns, learn from others and pass on what we have
learned - all these make IFLA a top priority for hard-pressed
conference and professional development budgets.

With a conference theme Libraries for life: democracy, diversity,
delivery, there is also a sub-theme Building on the past - investing in
the future, which will provide a common thread for the plenary
sessions, such as those to be addressed by Seamus Heaney and Anne Fine.
Satellite meetings will also reflect this theme, Mr McGowan says,
providing an opportunity to consider, for example, how librarians help
young people to recognise when information is needed, and then how to
find, evaluate and use it effectively.

Social events will have a distinctively Scottish flavour, with
receptions at Glasgow's newly opened Science Centre and Edinburgh's
Museum of Scotland, and the option of a seat on the Edinburgh Castle
esplanade for the Military Tattoo.  For representatives of Carnegie
libraries from around the world, a special programme will commemorate
the Scottish-born philanthropist's extraordinary impact on public
libraries.

With a major international trade exhibition, visits to a wide variety of
library and information centres in the central Belt of Scotland, and the
staging of one of the largest ever meetings of mobile libraries, it
seems excessively modest to describe IFLA as a single event, Mr McGowan
concludes.  In fact, many of IFLA's constituent parts could plausibly
claim to be conferences in their own right.=

IFLA 2002 is doubly significant because it marks the 75th anniversary of
the foundation of the Federation, in Edinburgh in 1927, and it also
coincides with the 125th anniversary of the Library Association and the
year of its unification with the Institute of Information Scientists to
form CILIP: the Chartered Institute of Library and Information
Professionals.

Contact: Josche Neven  IFLA HQ
Tel: +(31) (70) 3140884
Email: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>

Alison Minns  UK
Tel: + (44)(0)1273 643942
Email: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>

Notes

Further information on IFLA can be found on its Website - www.ifla.org.
Contact The Library Association at [log in to unmask] for further
details on the professional programme and practical information on
registration and accommodation.

The Library Association, which is managing the 2002 IFLA conference and
exhibition on behalf of IFLA=92s National Organising Committee, is a
major Membership body for library and information professionals with
approaching 24,000 Members.  In April, it unifies with the Institute of
Information Scientists to form CILIP: the Chartered Institute of
Library and Information Professionals.  Further information is
available on its Website - www.la-hq.org.uk.