This summer seems to have flown by - and all the ‘catch up' time I thought I had has gone!  Seems like it was ever thus - and I'm sure many of you feel the same as school starts (in Scotland) and the first day of term looms (in England and Wales).

I have just returned from a stimulating and invigorating IFLA World Library and Information Congress in Sweden.  The variety of libraries represented from all over the world makes this a fascinating and challenging experience.  The programme is still available to view and many of the sessions I attended, including the pre-conference arranged in conjunction with the Swedish School Library Association, are available to watch on the Nordic Ning for School Librarians - do have a look.  I also managed to visit an Upper School library (ages 16-19, equivalent to 6^th Form college combined with FE college), as well as a community library whilst in Sweden - and I am sure the pictures I took there and the information I gleaned will make an interesting talk for the future! 

One of the great advantages of this sort of conference is the opportunity to talk to colleagues from around the world.  To get an appreciation of the Herculean effort people are making the world over to get reading and literacy higher onto all government agendas and to show the immense value that libraries in general, and school libraries in particular, can have on enabling universal literacy.  Plenary speakers included Jan Eliasson, former President of UN General Assembly and Henning Mankell, author and campaigner, both gave impassioned and compelling speeches on the life giving necessity of literacy - you can see these and other presentations on the IFLA video stream.  This was the first IFLA congress where much added activity was available on line as blogs and tweets in multiple languages adding to sessions as they happened.  This all makes interesting reading on the website.

The end of the conference was overshadowed, for the UK delegates, by the news of Bob McKee's untimely death whilst attending the congress.  Bob has been a colleague, as CILIP CEO, for many years whilst I have been involved with Youth Libraries Group and also whilst at SLA - he will be greatly missed within the library community.  The fact that he was looking forward to his retirement from CILIP later this year and taking on new, exciting, different roles within the world library community makes his untimely death so much more shocking and sad.  I am sure you all join me in expressing our commiserations to Bob's family at this time.

Tricia Adams