To this end, he visited Vilnius, Lithuania, earlier this year, and it is hoped that another colleague, currently in Namibia, may be able to contribute her experience in southern Africa to t his study. The study should be concluded later this year and will be published in due course. Two interesting papers are to be presented at the Section's Programme session later this week. One is by Samuel B Bandara of the University of the West Indies in Jamaica and will describe the project to establish a Caribbean Books in Print. But bibliography is not the prerogative of nations that can trade with hard currency and communicate with one another by electronic means.
Bibliography is about being able to access the national memory as it has come to be recorded.
If we do not have the means to find out what happened in the past, we have little chance to understand the future. I have no doubt whatsoever t hat those skills are more necessary than ever before if we are to cope with the amounts and varieties of published information and attempt to organize it for the users in our libraries. That is no less true of areas such as Latin America and the Caribbean than it is of anywhere else in the world. My Standing Committee and I look forward to meeting as many of you as possible and sharing our experience during the coming week.