ASDAL 2006 - Day 1, pt.2

Keith Clouten leads off the presentations today. He's been active in ASDAL since the start, I think, and has served in nearly all of the available offices. So he's well qualified to speak about the history and his hopes for the future of ASDAL. He has retired from active librarianship, but is spending his time travelling and helping out other libraries around the world. So we were lucky to get him, I think.

I first met Keith at the 1993 conference at (then) Canadian Union College, the first ASDAL conference outside of the US. It's amazing how much has changed since then. We were impressed by the fact that they had an online catalog, but we still had to go to their library to use it. And we did. Lee and I were trying to find some call numbers for some Adventist materials, so we took advantage of our opportunity to check the call numbers that had been assigned by the guy who invented the SDA Classification Schedules. Now, of course, I can just bring it up on my desktop, and I don't have to travel to Canada. It's kind of a pity, since the scenery around there, and especially in Banff, was spectacular. I must go back sometime.

But I'm getting distracted from Keith's presentation. It's actually about change, and how the demographics are shifting from a US-centric church to a more broadly-based world church. There are many more universities and university library springing up all over the world, and the internet is enabling them all to be connected. It's time for ASDAL to take advange of this broadening base.

Ah, I have also been given a charge by Keith. He is relating a dream he has of the future, where ASDAL has helped provide information services to all SDA libraries. And apparently I have designed the portal to all of those resources just before I retired. That's probably what did me in, I'm guessing. But it sounds like a good idea. Multi-language capable, unified databases and catalogs, and several other functionalities built in. I'll have to give it some thought.

The challenge is to grow, to help libraries develop all over the world, and at home. We have alot to give, and much to share. We're doing some, we can always do more.