I was yesterday at a meeting in preparation for the launch of the UNESCO
decade of education for sustainable development and the involvement of the
UNESCO national commission in Britain.
What is understood by SD, or CD, how those terms are linked, is real stuff
and it never ceases to amaze me how little the basics are understood, even
by very experienced educators. There is simply no tradition of
understanding the organisation of knowledge as a component of making things
work. Even the most elementary concepts have to be explained over and over
again.
Often at meetings of the information specialists in international
development the issue of relevance is raised and the eternal bleat that no
one makes use of the resources organised. This UNESCO decade is I think a
marvellous opportunity to do some shop windowing of all sorts of nice things
which should be grasped, but I know that only a few perhaps on this list are
involved or interested in SD or CD, so the rest, please bear with me.
I suggested before the IFLA congress in Glasgow that every library in the
world should support the Johannesburg world summit by an exhibition and I
think this stone dropped without a ripple. Now we are months before WSIS;
CILIP is well involved in the process, and the UNESCO decade launch provides
a real opportunity.
These issues seem to me absolutely central to our core professional
competence, and no one else is going to do it.
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