IASL 2002 Conference Logo

The 2002 IASL Conference

Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, 4-9 August

OFFICIAL OPENING CEREMONY
Speech by IASL President
PETER GENCO

Selamat Datang, Welcome, Willkommen!

Honorable Tan Sri Dato Seri Musa Mohamad, Minister of Education, Malaysia,
Dato Haji Ambrin Buang, Secretary General, Ministry of Education, Malaysia,
Dato Abdul Rafie Mahat, Director-General, Ministry of Education, Malaysia,
Datin Dr. Nor Hayati Abdul Rashid, Chairperson, IASL 2002 Organizing Committee,
Honorable Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I would like to express my appreciation to the Honorable Minister for attending this Opening Ceremony and for hosting this dinner. Honorable Tan Sri, I would also appreciate very much the Ministry of Education for sponsoring a number of teacher-librarians from schools and education officers to attend this conference.

I would like to thank Dr. Diljit Singh for his many years of continued dedication to IASL and for the past six years serving on the Board of IASL. I would also like to thank Datin Dr. Nor Hayati Abdul Rashid for her leadership in organizing this year's planning committee.

I am pleased to welcome delegates to the 31st Annual Conference of the International Association of School Librarianship. This year's theme, School Libraries for a Knowledge Society, is a stepping-stone for us to make global connections, share ideas, and become involved in today's knowledge based society.

IASL is honored to return to the beautiful multi-cultural Malaysia. The 18th Annual IASL Conference was held in 1989 in Subang Jaya. That theme was The School Library: Centre for Life-Long Learning. Since 1989, our world and profession has changed. As indicated by the 1989 and 2002 conference themes, we have built our internal infrastructures and it is now time to look and to think globally.

I am honored to be the same age as Malaysia. I was born exactly two weeks before Malaysia became and independent nation in 1957. A human spends his or her life learning and contributing to society and especially to our knowledge society.

A nation gathers information to help make the society of that nation better and year after year, decade after decade, century after century, when the individual human is no longer there, his or her contributions to society and knowledge remain in that nation.

Centuries from now, my hope is that Malaysians will look back on our contributions to society and knowledge and will consider us to be the initial builders of school libraries in a youthful nation.

We should be proud of what we contribute to school libraries and what we contribute to our knowledge society.

Thank you once again Honorable Minister and Officials from the Ministry of Education for your continued support.

Last Updated 8 April 2003 (LAC)