On 25-26 October 2018, the National Library of Estonia in Tallinn, held a conference on the occasion of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Library. The conference covered issues, which are not only of concern for national libraries, but for the library sector and society in general, contributing to the discussion of the resilience of libraries in our overall environment.
Some of the topics of the conference were: the challenges of the digital age; the interaction of libraries with society; the social role of libraries; the library as a space: physical and virtual; current functions and future perspectives of national libraries; and national libraries and cultural heritage.
The opening ceremony was presented by Eiki Nestor, President of the Parliament of the Republic of Estonia, and Gloria Perez-Salmeron, IFLA President, and followed with engaging speeches by Prof Riaana J Rudman of the University of Stellenbosch, Dr Janis Kreslins of the Royal Library of Sweden, Patrice Landry of the National Library of Qatar, Roly Keating, Director of the British Library and Chair of CENL, Kaja Kallas, Member of the European Parliament, Dr EJB (Lily) Knibbeler, Director of the National Library of the Netherlands, Dr Hans Petschar, Director of the Archives of the National Library of Austria, Andris Wilkes, Director of the National Library of Latvia and numerous others.
The conference certainly contributed to the creation of insights and knowledge of libraries, innovations, user orientation, cooperation, cultural heritage and national memory and reliability, through the vision of creating a new generation libraries in the educational and cultural fields of Europe.
Dr Ismet Ovčina, the Director of the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina, attended the conference, at the invitation of the Director General of the National Library of Estonia, Janne Andresoo, and with the financial support of CENL (The Conference of European National Librarians).
On this occasion, Dr Ismet Ovčina, met with Library Director Janne Andresoo and discussed possible avenues of cooperation of the two libraries, and gifted her a number of publications of the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
