NCSLA President,
Eliza Robertson

Letter from the President,
October 2006

Hello, NCSLA members,

Eye-popping, mind-broadening experiences are rare in our lives, but I have to tell you about one for me: the IFLA World Congress conference that Dav and I attended in August in Seoul, Korea. We had been Peace Corps Volunteers in South Korea waaaaay back when, and we jumped at the opportunity to return while attending our first IFLA.

The conference was held in Seoul at the impressive, world-class COEX center near the Olympic Park area. That area south of the Han River epitomizes the transformation that has occurred in Korea while we were looking the other way. It is modern, efficient and lively, and carries an expectation that those are just the beginning of more wonderful changes for the future. Five thousand librarians and library association leaders attended the conference, including Rebecca Vargha, Janice LaChance, and Doug Newcomb, representing SLA at the association level. Many other SLA members, including North Carolina's Anita Oser, have committee roles or, like us, gain value by attending and networking at an international level.

Among the most moving experiences for me was hearing the conference keynote speaker, Nobel laureate Kim Dae-Jung, former president of the Republic of Korea. As a young politician he worked to bring true democracy to the country, which caused him to be placed under lengthy house arrest by the ruling party, but which he overcame to lead the country and pursue more vigorous efforts at reconciliation with North Korea. At IFLA he minced few words in calling on the leaders of Judeo-Christian-tradition countries and Muslim-tradition countries to reconcile their differences so that they don't pull the rest of the world behind them into global conflict.

Americans were in the minority in attendance (10 percent), and I think that most of us, including me, don't have much exposure to the opinions of people of other nationalities in our profession. I learned that, as in international politics, American legal decisions or corporate practices often are the tail that wags the dog in international libraries, influencing the practices and policies of others, and that, no surprise, some resentment follows. In particular copyright and the upcoming legislation about media product ownership spill over to affect librarians in other places. On the other hand, the dialogue is civil and our other contributions are praised and appreciated.

Networking with international librarians was by far the most valuable aspect for me. At lunch on a tour of historic Kangwha Island, I was seated on a floor cushion by the director of the National Library of Belgium, who had assisted one of our former fellows in her research on World War II. At a reception given by the Information Resource Center of the U.S. Embassy, the Embassy's public affairs officer proved to be the good friend of another of our fellows, both having experience in Viet Nam. Others I met had connections with the National Humanities Center, too, reminding me of the diversity of scholarly research and the people who make it happen. In addition, from the academic library world, several librarians from universities we rely on attended, including from UNC-CH and Duke. On the bus to tour the National Library of Korea, Dav met the director of the National Library of Sri Lanka and discussed recovery after the tsunami. Networking at the international level is an experience like no other!

We'd been interested in getting to one of the International Federation of Library Association annual meetings for years, sparked by SLA's membership and talking to many people at the SLA annual conference who make it a practice to attend IFLA, usually paying their own way, as we did. I can see how attending once would spark a certain loyalty to repeating it regularly. Beforehand I knew little of IFLA, beyond the creative IFLA Vouchers, which make paying for interlibrary loan and document delivery a matter of exchanging mailable chits internationally, and the amazing area studies resources that university libraries support. Our expectations were met and exceeded by this experience, and we're considering attending next year's conference in Durban, South Africa. You come, too!

Take care,
Eliza