President's annual report to the 67th IFLA Conference in Boston

摘要

Dr Melville Dewey, nous voila - here we are... The health of an Association can be seen above all in the number of its members and the active part they play in its affairs. On this point, I think we have no reason to worry. When I became President of IFLA, we had around 1450 members (and I would like to remind you that a large association like the ALA which itself has 65,000 members is only one IFLA member), whereas we now have more than 1775 from over 150 countries. Similarly, the best annual conferences welcomed around 2500 participants, while we expect the final figures to be well in excess of 3000. There is no need to labour the point; the figures speak for themselves. IFLA is developing well and perhaps thanks to the important decisions made or implemented over the course of the year. This has been indeed a year of great change. After the adoption of the new Statutes, we still had many things to do: hold the first elections by postal voting, invent procedures, implement the new structures, find a new annual timetable for meetings, establish new relationships between the elected members, etc. ... All that, of course, had to be done to a very tight timetable, since the elections had to be held not later than a specified time before the Conference, since in order to form thenew Professional Committee we needed the results of the Section elections, and since we could not set up the new Governing Board until the chair of the Professional Committee had been elected ... And then, how could we hold meetings of the Governing Board without forcing members to fund an extra trip to The Hague in the (Northern) autumn? We have to confront these simple yet unavoidable questions, at this time of comprehensive renewal. I am pleased to be able to tell you today that the number of votes cast in the elections by postal ballot was particularly high.