Wednesday, December 07, 2005

The Gathering of Librarians

I attended a dinner organized by PPM last Friday. The dinner was a farewell dinner for the retired x-presidents of the association as well as a Hari Raya gathering for librarians. To me it was another occasion to meet old friends as well as to tighten my social networks among librarians. I sat at a table next to somebody that I knew but the person did not have a clue as to who I was. That was until I said, ‘Wah! Jannah you tak ingat I lagi ye?’ She turned towards me with her surprised look and soon gave a small yell mentioning my name. She was asking what had happened to me I looked thin. I said I must congratulate my doctor. Well that night was not about me. When I looked around there weren’t enough young bloods within the PPM. I wish there were as I love to see more of them to come forward to push for new things. Even the young ones that were there that night were the ones that either work for the National Library or the Ministry libraries. Only one or two escaped librarians that potentially could play a bigger role were there. Probably they have a valid reason to escape…….

Saturday, December 03, 2005

Talk by Alex Byrne, IFLA President

Talk by Alex Byrne, IFLA President

I went to hear Alex Byrne, the current IFLA President, yesterday at UiTM and I was somewhat disappointed with the talk. My fault actually as I was expecting a different thing from him. There were three parts to his talk, first was on IFLA and its activities. Second, was on World Summit of Information Society (WSIS) and the third on digital library. Although all of them are valid and still relevant but there isn’t anything that really new that he was talking about. I was expecting new thinking, direction and initiatives maybe. I guess in the world of librarianship past issues are still current issues. Again this doesn’t mean the world of librarianship is way behind in thinking and progress it is just that the issues are just still relevant no matter what the era or environment. I guess that is why I saw not many ‘excited’ and ‘interested’ people there. I guess that is why there are quite a number of escaped librarians like me ())) Indeed most of my batch mates are now escaped librarians. All was not lost for me as I got to meet old friends that I have not a chance to meet. I got to know, at least comforting to my ego, that quite a number of my former students are lecturers now. Some of them are leading quite interesting interest groups like CI.

As planned I met my old buddy ARM and meeting him means a blast. Even though it was a short meeting we never have had such a good laugh for a long time