IAALD NEWS   Central and Eastern Europe

Leading article Michal Demes, President of Central and Eastern European IAALD Chapter

    After 8 years work at ISTIA Nitra, 7 years of which were as its director, I received a demanding task: to try to stop the decline and stagnation of libraries and information centres and to introduce the quality that must accompany the use of the new information technology in the information society. In the year 2000 the specialists at FAO want to use our working capacities for the transition to the new millennium. Through these next two years I have to do work whose essence lies in activities we carried out together over the last years.
    Allow me to pause at some activities which have enduring value. After 1989 it was the activity of the great personality of global informatics, President of IAALD and the director of National Agricultural Library USA in Beltsville, Mr. Joseph Howard, who very positively influenced the development of agricultural informatics in Central and Eastern Europe. I first met him at the VIII IAALD World Congress in Budapest at the very beginning of my professional life. The series of Roundables followed: 1991 in Beltsville, 1992 in Budapest, 1993 in Warsaw, 1994 in Nitra, 1995 in Prague, and in 1997 Arizona with the excellent management of Barbara Hutchinson, Pamela Andre and Toni Powell. The organisation of the 4th US/Central and Eastern European Agricultural Library Roundtable with the help of the director of NAL Pamela Andre, Joseph Howard and the management of NAL, as well as key persons of Central and Eastern European agricultural informatics, was a good experience for us and what principally changed the scope of our activity from a national to an international level.
    The personality of Slovak agricultural informatics, Blanka Bajankova, navigated the activity of  ISTIA towards close co-operation with FAO. The founding and the development of the AGRIS/CARIS Centre, the Depository Library, involvement in AGLINET, the establishment of the selling outlet for FAO literature, the Partnership Program and the work of our Webmasters in Rome, and the organisation of workshops in co-operation with FAO significantly raised the prestige of ISTIA.
    And again it was the IX IAALD World Congress in Australia, Melbourne, in 1995 where Mr. Howard introduced me to a top manager, Dr. Anton Mangstl, at that time the director of ZADI Bonn. This introduction has developed into close collaboration with this presently most influential personality in world informatics - the Director of the Library and Information Systems Division at FAO Rome and Vice-President of IAALD. The effects of this co-operation have already been felt by J. Gogora, J. Bartko and P. Holak, each of whom worked in WAICENT FAO for 4 months under the Programme for Cooperation with Research Academic Institute. It is expected that they will implement their knowledge and experiences not only at home in Slovakia but especially in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
    Distance makes people closer, and thus in the remote Australia a new contact with another significant world and European personality in informatics, Mr. Vyacheslav Pozdnyakov, the director of the Central Scientific Agricultural Library in Moscow, was established. He has been working in the informatics of the former Soviet Union and the world for 17 years and morally supports the young team of information workers in Nitra. His influence was also felt in 1996 on Agroinfos, where Dr. Anton Mangstl and Mr. Jan van der Burg were also present, and where the IAALD Central and Eastern European  Chapter was established.
    The precious (for it is rare) agreement from different civilisations (Rome, Moscow, Washington, Bonn, Paris and Central and Eastern Europe naturally) was achieved that the Central and Eastern European IAALD Chapter with its seat in Nitra is indeed in the right place and in the hands of the right people. To reach such ambitious targets, it was necessary for IAALD to express IAALD institutionally and therefore NitraNet Citizens' Association was founded by transforming and expanding the ideas of the Nitra Foundation. I am convinced that it will play its role in further agricultural informatics in the Central and Eastern Europe region. I dare to state this thanks to the fact that such specialists as Jan van der Burg, President of IAALD, Anton Mangstl, Director of the Library and Information Systems Division at FAO UN Rome, Vladimir Libant, Mayor of Nitra, Jan Plesnik, Academic of the Agency of the Slovak Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Prof. Jozef Bulla, Chairman of Agency of the Academy, and Maria Kadlecikova, the director of Agroinstitute, accepted places on the Honorary Board of Directors.
    Finally I would like to paraphrase Carnegie's thought: "I give thanks for everything I have achieved to the fact that I was able to surround myself with people cleverer than me."
    Good work of benefit to all people under the difficult transition conditions in Central and Eastern Europe - that is what is expected from us.

    Thank you to all for your cooperation and I look forward to more of the same in the new shape.