My initiation into the library world accelerated fast in 1994. To my surprise I was elected President of EUROLIB, the informal grouping of EU institutional libraries, at my first meeting of the group – a meeting which it was the Commission’s turn to host.

This helped me to feel at home at my first meeting of LIBER (the prestigious League of European Research Libraries), which my predecessor had chosen as his main annual professional event. That meeting was held at Göttingen University, near the former Eastern border of Germany, where there was a fine and recently completed university library. I mixed pleasantly with a number of directors of leading university and national libraries and greatly enjoyed the day’s excursion which traditionally concludes the LIBER conference. The excursion that July was to the city of Weimar.

I went to LIBER on my own but, later in the year, Anne and I again went to the United States, joining our friends the Jonietzs, and mutual friends the Callaghans, for a few days in Seattle, before returning with the Jonietzs to Kansas for an extended holiday.

Now, as head of a large and active unit, I had a great deal of freedom to pursue worthwhile ideas in the interest of improving access to information and making maximum use of new information technologies. Thanks to the work of an interested stagiaire (an intern), with the backing of niece Ruth in the Audiovisual Production Unit, I was able to see through to completion a short video: “How Can I Find Out about Europe?”

Read more: 1995 – A Sense of Mortality