For the position of Governing Board Member 2015-2017

Charles Kamdem PeoghelaDear colleagues, IFLA is our common home and it is in our interest that all members of the household help maintain our Association’s influence and keep alive the flame our predecessors lit in 1927.

IFLA adopted a strategic plan for the period 2010–2015 and the Association’s HQ, staff, Governing Board and committees brilliantly implemented the priorities formulated on a bi-annual basis. The next Governing Board will need to capitalize on what has been done and propose a new plan to the international library community, with new priorities to help develop our libraries by providing librarians with more tools and skills.

In Africa, as elsewhere, the library is capital. It must be or remain the ultimate place where generations may meet and mingle, where access to information is free, a place for cultural expression, for the development of local and universal heritage, a haven for debate, and an access point for digital content and the Internet. To summarize: our libraries must be the true "third place". To have such strong libraries, we MUST have strong librarians, trained to defend and promote our institutions, ethics and values. This is what IFLA does and must continue to do.

The continued promotion of multilingualism and therefore of cultural diversity within IFLA,  the defence of free access including electronic and digital content for all libraries in the world, the strengthening of librarians by means of training and/or the transfer of skills wherever necessary, active advocacy with the authorities to create many libraries worthy of the name in the South, the extension of IFLA values and activities in the South, support for North-South and South-South action; these are some of the areas I want to support, alongside other proposals in IFLA’s new strategic plan.

Charles Kamdem Peoghela
Founder and Director of the Centre de lecture et d’animation culturelle
[Centre for Reading and Cultural Expression] (CLAC)
Yaoundé, Cameroon