By Mikael Böök
As I previously told in this blog, I joined IFLA last summer as a personal member. Thus I had the opportunity to follow IFLA’s recent General Assembly meeting . IFLA’s General Assembly met in The Hague on 5 November. The meeting took place in the wake of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. I did not find out how many members were in den Haag, only a few I would think. Many more probably followed the meeting like myself, over the internet. In order for the votes to go smoothly, voting by proxy was allowed. The agenda had been reduced to a minimum, the main thing was to decide on the mandatory items and to award some annual honors. In addition, it was decided that IFLA will hold an Extraordinary General Assembly (in Melbourne, Australia on 12 February 2021) to decide on the adoption of new IFLA Statutes.
As a novice in this context, there was one thing in particular that I focused on and to which I will now devote a few lines, namely the operating grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The treasurer’s report showed that IFLA’s expenses in 2019 were € 1,654,982 compared to € 1,892,860 in 2018. The difference € 237,878, it was explained, was mainly because the IFLA Global Libraries Foundation covered the costs of the International Advocacy Program (IAP) in 2019 with € 245,139.
For me, this raised the question: what is the Stichting IFLA Global Libraries?
On IFLA’s webpages we learn that …