International Cooperation- Excuse for posting at several list

Map and Geography Libraries and librarians have several places to cooperate in more or less formal ways.

We have local, regional, national and international agencies such as Liber, ICA, SLA, ALA , ICHC etc and also on a specific library basis IFLA with its subsection Geography and Map Library Section.

International cooperation is absolutely necessary but the limited number of staff in Map Collections makes it important to choose only the necessary organizations to work in.

So first question- do we still need this IFLA Geography and Map Library Section.

It has been extremely difficult just to have 40 members of the section, difficult to have standing committee members and even more difficult to find officers that have the time to work in between conferences.

It seems that only a very limited number of Map Collections wants to spend work here.

As new chair of the section since august, I therefore would propose to close the section and find other ways of international cooperation.

The former officers have spent so many hours in just getting people to become members and then many more hours to make a program at each years programme but with very few people attending.

There must be better ways of having international cooperation.

Second questions to head of map collections or staff:

How could and should we organize cooperation in the future ?

Is Maps-L, Lis-Maps, Maps Hist list enough ?

Best regards

Henrik Dupont

Chair of Geography and Map Library Section IFLA

Henrik Dupont

Forskningsbibliotekar | Map Curator

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