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2 Austl. L. Libr. 338 (1994)
Cuban Cocktail: IFLA in Havana

handle is hein.journals/auslwlib2 and id is 352 raw text is: Cuban Cocktail: IFLA in Havana Gayle Davies1 Director, Library Services Family Court of Australia The IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations) 60th Conference was held 21-27 August 1994, in Havana, Cuba. The theme of the Conference was Libraries and Society. The Conference was attended by 1500 delegates from all over the world, from a huge variety of libraries, including United Nations libraries, national and parliamentary libraries. I was the only Australian law librarian attending. Other attendees from Australia included the National Librarian, the Librarian of the National Gallery Research Library, and several academics from Schools of Library and Information Science. Librarians from the US Library of Congress had to obtain special permission from the State Department to attend. There were also difficulties for other American librarians in travelling to Cuba, as a plane was turned back from Miami with a suspected bomb on board. The Conference was very well organized. As part of the preparations, recognizing that communications with Havana might be difficult, IFLA, with the assistance of the National Library of Canada, established an e-mail link on the Internet. This will be expanded across the broader membership, to form IFLANET. A full set of Conference papers was provided to every delegate on arrival. This was a significant achievement, given the acute shortage of paper in Cuba (the Swedish Government donated a million sheets of paper), and is something that Australian library AND law conferences would do well to emulate. All papers were available in either English or Spanish. Simultaneous oral translations were provided into English, Spanish, French, German and Russian. The Conference was well covered in the Cuban media, as there is a great interest and emphasis in Cuba on education and universal literacy. Overseas delegates were met by IFLA representatives at the airport, and were well looked after by guides from the Cuban government tourist agency, who were available in every hotel. Delegates were quite free to walk around and explore Havana, and the taxi service was excellent, as drivers will turn the meter off if they have to wait for you! Hotel standards are very similar to ours, although 1 Gayle Davies can be contacted on fax no. (02) 212 4761 or e-mail NFCA@slim.slnsw.gov.au. Australian LAW LIBRARIAN 2(6) December 1994 338

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