13th IFLA Interlending and Document Supply Conference

Last week I travelled to Beijing to attend the 13th IFLA Interlending and Document Supply Conference.  It was a three day event held at Peiking University.  The event was hosted by China Academic Library and Information System (CALIS) who provided a consistently welcoming and professional experience for those in attendance. I will be writing a full report of the conference that should be published in the FIL Newsletter (with the editor's blessing).  The conference was a great way to learn more about interlending practice, developments and issues.  22 papers were presented with a reasonable number of these being speakers from China.  This provided a fascinating insight into the world of Chinese interlending, systems and collection development.  There were also speakers from Italy, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Canada, USA, Germany, Australia and elsewhere. Translations of all presentations were also provided in Chinese as an abstract by the presenter (or for those that couldn't speak Chinese - a translator). In all, 150 participants attended from 20 countries. It was a great opportunity to share perspectives and thoughts.  It became very apparent to me by the end that  international interlending is very varied and as much as we share some common practices, we share as many (if not more) different ones .

For those able to stay over on the Saturday there was the opportunity to visit the Great Wall of China. 

The conference website has abstracts, presentations (ppt.) as well as photos.

http://ilds2013.calis.edu.cn/

As a member of the IFLA Document Delivery and Resource Sharing Standing Committee I seek to engage the committee with the interests of FIL and the UK interlending community in general.