Ftom the 24th to the 30th August in Athens, Greece, was held the traditional World Library and Information Congress of IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations and Instituions). This year it was titled “Libraries: dialogue for change”. Among the Bulgarian participants were also the representatives of the Central Library of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Dr. Silviya Naydenova, director, and Tatyana Stoyanova, Head of the Acquisition and catalogue processing of monographs Department.
3 680 delegates from 140 countries from all over the world took part in the meeting, which was held in Megaron Athens International Conference Centre (MAICC). On the first day they were greeted by Mrs. Lilian Agapalidou; Mrs. Alexandra Papazoglou and Mr. Filippos Tsimpoglou, co-chairs of the Greek National Committee, that had actively participated in the organization of the conference in order to make it as interactive and useful as possible; Mr. Gerald Leitner, Secretary General of IFLA; Mrs. Sofia Zacharaki, Minister for Education and Religious Affairs, that is responsible for the libraries in the country; Mrs. Eleni Agouridi, Stavros Niarcgos Foundation, which was the lead donor of the event and Prof. Lukas Tsoukalis, University of Athens. The meeting was officially opened by Mrs. Gloria Perez-Salmeron, president of IFLA. After that were presented the rojects of the organization and the new development strategy 2019-2014. There were thematic discussions and presentations, related to the inevitable changes and modernizations in libraries. In them participated presidents and representatives of several national libraries (Fiji, Canada, Chile and France) and also international associations (“Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation”, some libraies from Africa). They agreed that exactly libraries and library specialist have to initiate the change in order to be able to share it with the relevant societies.
In the frames of the annual meeting were also held different specialized sessions: work (about the new options and projects, developed by OCLC Industry Symposium, catalogues, public, scientific and technical libraries, management and marketing, bibliographies, library theory and research, etc.), special (about the IFLA strategy, conference of the directors of the national libraries, etc.) and congress meetings (integration and new technologies, standards and interaction, ethical and legal aspects of the open access), as well as several cultural visits (presentation of data bases and best practices, IFLA awards, Google Library Project, etc.).
All the participants had also the chance to see the new midern building of the National Library of Greece, which was opened officially in 2018. It was built especially for a library on a place in the frames of the former Olympic Village for Athens 2004.
