I am very happy to make the announcement that the new SIG (Special Interest Group) RELINDIAL, group of libraries containing funds for dialogue between religions and cultures, has just been approved by the Governing Board of IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions). This project will bring the theological libraries in a worldwide association from which they were missing. Supported by the Catholic University of Paris, and especially by Mgr François Bousquet, member of the International Commission for Peace Research from the UNESCO, RELINDIAL can now grow up.

The considered activities of the SIG RELINDIAL are:

1. Facilitating access to patrimonial and religious digitized funds
2. Developing the knowledge about online resources serving religious thoughts
3. Developing the knowledge about the research centers working on dialogue between religions
4. Initiating an international collaboration for a sharing of experience on studying sacred texts and traditions
5. Working on indexation languages, so that the evolutions of the web can take into consideration the subtlety of religious concerns
6. Cooperating with different IFLA working groups, to benefit of experienced librarianship:
   1. Libraries for children and young adults, for a sharing of experiences through the “Sister libraries” activities
   2. Social sciences libraries
   3. Digitized libraries
   4. Literacy and librarianship training
   5. Classification and indexation
   6. Semantic Web

I do hope that you will join RELINDIAL in Helsinki in August 2012 or will work on specific groups by mail during the year, to show how strong our network is, and to learn from this wide pool present during the World Library and Information Congress.

Happy Easter to all of you.

Odile Dupont
Chargée de mission pour la promotion et les réseaux de bibliothèques
Présidente de l’Association des bibliothèques européennes de théologie BETH
Membre du Comité permanent de la section Sciences sociales de l’IFLA