Director-General of the National library of the RK (the NLRK), vice-president of the Library Assembly of Eurasia (LAE) Balabekova G.K. participated in the work of the 78-th IFLA General conference and Council and also in the Conference of Directors of National Libraries August 11-17, 2012 in Helsinki, Finland).

  The theme of the conference “Libraries now! Inspiring… Surprising… Empowering…”. The programme of the conference included the open sessions, seminars, poster sessions and satellite meetings before and after the congress. Within the framework of the conference there were discussed such themes like “Library collections”, ”Library services”, “Marketing of rare and special collections in a digital age”, “The new future for the bibliographical data formats” and others. There took place the annual exhibition of library materials, audio-visual equipment, computer systems, library equipment and publishers.

   IFLA President Ingrid Parent made a speech by the theme “Libraries today and tomorrow: the moving force for changes in the transforming society?” Society is changing and transforming quickly due to many external factors, in particular access and use of the information-communication technologies (ICT), mass democratic movements, multiculturalism and cultural integration, economic tasks in the widespreading and use of welfare. There at the sessions there was discussed how the changes in society today can influence the democratization of digital access in the future; the roles which libraries can play in the transformation of society.

   On August 11, 2012 there within the framework of the programme of the Congress took place the Regional council for the delegates of the Congress from the CIS countries (Caucus CIS), organized by tradition by the Library Assembly of Eurasia before the official opening of the IFLA conference. The council was chaired by Director-General of the NLRK, LAE vice-president Gulissa Balabekova. The agenda was: “The libraries’ legal field”. There at the caucus spoke Ya.L.Shreiberg – Director-General of the State public scientific-technical library of Russia, L.N.Tikhonova – deputy Director-General of the Russian state library, I.L.Linden - deputy Director-General of the Russian national library. There took place the discussion by the theme of the council and other issues of the libraries’ activity.

   On August 13, 2012 there took place the annual meeting of the Conference of directors of National Libraries (CDNL), in which there participated Director-General of the NLRK, LAE vice-president Gulissa Balabekova. In the course of the day the directors of the leading national libraries of the world  discussed the problems of development of the National Libraries.

   Detailed information about the work and the news of the Congress, access to the materials of the sessions (including the Russian translations), interviews, photographs, videos, blogs etc. one can find in the Internet “IFLA 2012 in the interactive regime”.

    The next IFLA General conference will take place in August, 2013 in Singapore.