Dear Friends,
Welcome to the second issue of the IAALD News: Central and Eastern Europe, which hopes to continue to foster conditions for co-operation of agricultural organisations and libraries in our sub-region. The first issue met with positive feed back from the IAALD Executive Committee and indeed the participants of the VI. Roundtable in Arizona, organised by NAL Beltsville.
It was a good experience for us to attend and take an active part at the USAIN/IAALD Regional Conference, where Toni Powell, Jan van der Burg, Pamela André and Barbara Hutchkinson created a wonderful atmosphere and working conditions befitting the conference motto: Linking People and Resources. Once again, many thanks to the organisers!
During the conference many challenging proposals that affect us directly came up. One is the upcoming regional conference in Beijing in September 1998, in whose preparation our team would like to take part. Another project is linking the intellectual and organisational potential of central and eastern Europe with that of Africa in preparation for the Xth IAALD World Congress in Dakar, Senegal. This idea holds great appeal for us and I hope the seed from Arizona bears fruit in Dakar in 2 and a half a years' time.
As well, IFIS showed interest in co-operating with information specialists from our team, which is a great honour for us. We believe that our joined work will bring concrete results and the co-operation with IFIS will become an example that IAALD thank to INTERNET has magnicifient chances to better the collaboration not only in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
Michal Demes