Margreet Wijnstroom and Library Associations

Although IFLA is an acronym for the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions and although its policies are generated by library associations and individuals in membership of them and their implementation is undertaken by library associations and the individuals in their memberships, IFLA’s specific concern for the organization of associations and management was almost negligible until recently. When Gotthard Ruckl, President of the DDR Library Association, Bob Wedgeworth, Executive Director of the American Library Association and I met to consider the machinery that existed within IFLA for specific LA concerns (as opposed to the professional matters with which associations are so involved) we discovered there was little sign of any central focus for them within IFLA. Discussions then, and subsequently, suggested that some of the hopes and aims of library and information workers for the improvement of the services they operate and of Unesco for the implementation of national library and information policies and UNISIST-type programmes for the improvement of services, were hampered for the lack of strongly-organized and well-managed professions. Somehow the idea seemed to be about that economic planners and civil servants responsible for the development of national development plans and interested politicians rather than librarians could be persuaded that a nation’s development could be furthered by the establishment of strong library and information services. Time has proved that this approach was wrong. With few exceptions library and information services in most countries are given low priority in terms of funding and resourcing. The status and reputation of library and information workers remains little higher than teachers (and why they should so often be at the bottom of the social pecking order is not easy to understand). An alternative strategy was envisaged. It grew from the realization that nobody would fight for resources for library and information services more strongly than would those whose jobs commitment and ambitions rested upon them. Economists, for instance, would not fight the librarians’ corner, they had to fight it themselves. But to do so they needed to be well organized and, like any fighting force, well-armed. Looking at countries round the world it was easy to identify where library and information development had had some success. In them there normally existed a strong, well-organized and efficiently-managed library association. This was not always true but generally it appeared to be the rule. When we examined where in IFLA’s organization some focus existed to provide assistance to help library associations achieve such levels of development none could be found. What was to be done?