Dear friends,

As is already known, the Ionian University is hosting this year the 13th Panhellenic Academic Libraries Conference.

The Ionian University has many reasons for showing a special interest in it and wanting to ensure the success of the forthcoming Conference, as it is an established scientific event not only for Greek Universities, but also for the Greek Librarian community at large.

First of all, any university is expected to fully appreciate the role and necessity of information resources as a supporting medium for both teaching and research activities. Furthermore, the Ionian University, as an institution of the Greek periphery, has come to fully recognize the value of well organized information resources in overcoming the problems faced by the teaching staff and students of an educational and research institution located at a distance from the capital.

The University undertakes both teaching and research activities in the field of modern Information Science, since one of its departments is the Faculty of Archive and Library Science.

The chosen central theme of the forthcoming Conference is interesting from both a theoretical as well as a practical perspective, in so far as it opens the discussion on what form the Library of the 21st century may take.

We believe that now is a most suitable time for this discussion to take place, given both a decade's experience in the field behind us, and the remarkable progress of Information Science.

Since we are more experienced and have acquired a broader and deeper understanding of the form, extent and importance of the achieved changes to date, and are aware of the changes which are foreseen, we can now initiate a discussion on Meta-Libraries. The Ionian University will host the Conference with pleasure and will make every effort to ensure its smooth running. On behalf of the University, I welcome the participants to Corfu, and I am certain that the conference will be fruitful and perfectly successful.

Professor Dimitrios Tsougarakis

Rector, Ionian University