October is the International School Library Month. We need to let the world know the importance of a well functioning school library. The situation differs from country to country. Right now school librarians in Italy are working very hard for their libraries as the government is threatening to exclude the school librarians. I wish our colleagues in Italy good luck in their struggle.

The International Association of School Librarianship (IASL) conference will take place in Doha, Qatar in November. A workshop on advocacy for school libraries is on the program. This is a joint project between IFLA SLRC and IASL funded by IFLA. A similar workshop is also planned for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at a post/pre conference to IFLA WLIC in Singapore 2013 and IASL in Bali 2013. Dianne Oberg is the Chair of the project. She will conduct the workshop in Qatar together with our Secretary Barbara Schultz-Jones and Standing Committee member Luisa Marquardt.  It will be interesting to hear about the experiences from the workshop in Qatar.

Our joint session with the Public Libraries Section on collaboration was quite a success and very well attended in Helsinki. We are now starting our collaborative work with the Information Literacy Section for a 3 hour joint session in Singapore. The call for papers will be issued soon.

A mid-year meeting for our section in Oslo in April 2013 is in the planning stage. I hope to see you there. More details will be provided very soon. I wish you all the best, Randi Lundvall, Chair