The fourth IFLA Global Vision regional workshop, this time for the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region, just took place from 8 to 9 June 2017 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. 27 senior representatives of library associations and national libraries were gathered by IFLA to discuss how the challenges of the future can be anticipated and addressed by a united and connected library field.

The Global Vision discussion is just getting started: Next stop Singapore!

After two days of inspiration and though provoking discussions, the LAC region colleagues asked IFLA Secretary General Gerald Leitner to forward the following messages to the colleagues in Asia Oceania, now passing the torch of IFLA’s Global Vision Discussion from LAC to Singapore:

IFLA Global Vision regional workshop participants in Buenos Aires, Argentina

I feel that I carry a tool bag that I take to my country to improve the library sector.

This workshop is an opportunity to meet and replicate in the countries.

This is a great way to break down barriers.

Open mind for the colleagues in Singapore, and a big hug.

I am very excited, deeply moved. I have much hope of what is going to happen. I think there could be a before and after for IFLA. I’m not aware if IFLA had thought or dreamed this before. I have confidence, security, that this is going to be a great success. I am very happy and very hopeful that starting in this new stage great things will happen, including us all as protagonists of this time.

This IFLA vision of going to the regions to learn what is happening to us in our reality and that practice of listening to us, putting the ear first, and then solving it, I think it gives to IFLA a much stronger authority to decision making that the one it had before. That real and complete knowledge of what each of us think, will give IFLA, in the voting stage, an intellectual and moral authority for what is coming.

Work hard! Everything you will see these days is the product of many people, hard work and much love.

The next IFLA Global Vision Regional Workshop will take place from 28 to 29 June 2017. We look forward to continuing this exciting Global Vision journey in the Asia Oceanian region!

Stay tuned for more: globalvision.ifla.org

About the IFLA Global Vision

IFLA is facilitating a Global Vision discussion through a series of high-level meetings and workshops in different parts of the world following our kick-off event in Athens, Greece on 4 April 2017.  Face-to-face and online, future-oriented conversations will be taking place throughout the year. See the Global Vision discussion website: globalvision.ifla.org for more details, and join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram using #iflaGlobalVision

Together we create the future: Join us!