14 augusti 2011

Before the conference starts

Late friday night we arrived in San Juan, Puerto Rico. We = a small group of swedish and danish librarians travelling together from Copenhagen airport via Newark, NJ to San Juan.

Saturday was the day for standing committee (SC) meetings. The CPDWL (Continuing Professional Development and Workplace Learning) SC which is the one I'm a new member of had an interesting meeting. After the formalities, like electing new officers (I was elected Information Coordinator) we discussed the conference in Helsinki. We formed a work group for our session there and got a great overview of the work being done with our satelite conference, taking place in Tampere the days before the conference. The satelite conference is a joint activity with the Information Literacy SC.

After the SC meeting we had a meeting in the workgroup to plan the session for next year. We agreed on trying to move away from the more tradtional methods of the conference, towards some method allowing everyone in the session to be involved and share their knowledge. Will be interesting to continue to work on this. :)

The nordic caucus was another interesting meeting yesterday. President elect Sinikka Sipilä gave some information togheter with the other General Board members from Scandinavia. Of course we also got some information on the Helsinki conference. Mace Ojala told about the project cycling for libraries. Really a new way to make libraries become visible and really changing how libraries are perceived.

In between my meetings I went to the hotel pool to get some time off. First I had a swim with Agneta Olsson who chaired the conference committee of last years IFLA conference in Gothenburg. After she left Maija Berndtson, who is chairing the conference committee of the IFLA conference in Helsinki came. So my pool time was well covered with interesting discussions. :)

My day ended with a SC dinner in Old San Juan. We had some great local food. I recommend "Cafe Puerto Rico" for those of you who are here in Puerto Rico. :)

2 kommentarer:

ulrike lang sa...

Happy to have you in our committee Catharina!

Mama Helmer sa...

Wounderful if you manage to change the settings of the session! I keep my fingers crossed;-)