COBISS 2007 Conference "COBISS – SUPPORTING INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE"

The Annual COBISS conference"COBISS – SUPPORTING INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE" held its place in Hotel Habakuk, near Maribor, Slovenia (28–29 November 2007). I have participated at the conference in order to get an insight to the COBISS OPAC which is used by the National and University Library in Skopje.

To quote my colleague Alenka Kavcic-Colic from the National and University Library in Ljubljana, Slovenia “COBISS is a dinosaur!”. It seems that the Slovenian business lobby in Macedonia is still strong and that we wont have the opportunity to experience more advanced OPAC’s in the near future on the national level. As always, it is a real pity and shame that most of the important issues concerning the Information Science are made by unprofessional people who don’t seems to have a vision for the future development of the one of the most important sciences in the networked world today. The lack of knowledge management, i.e. information management professionals in my country will become a bigger problem for the years to come, and everyday work from my colleagues from the National University Library “St. Kliment Ohridski” are a real proof for my pessimist (but realistic) predictions.