Friday morning: making poverty history

I chose the evidence-based practice stream for my first session this morning,and was rewarded with two excellent presentations, one by Josephine Kavanagh of the wittily-named EPPI-Centre on systematic reviews in education and related social policy areas, and Maggie Haines, who gave an extraordinarily wide-ranging paper on applying evidence-based practice in higher education. It was billed as a case-study, but was actually far more.
After coffee things became even more exciting, with Ross Shimmon, former General Secretary of IFLA reporting on the Byzantine politicking of the preparations for the World Summit on the Information Society, and IFLA's role in lobbying. In the discussion someone suggested that a motion should be put to the plenary this afternoon to make the link between information and the eradication of poverty, and Bob McKee and I both started scribbling at the same time. It was just like being in a compositing meeting at an NUS conference c 1974.
I'll give the text of the motion once the final version appears, but it will say something like "noting popular support for Make Poverty History and the contribution of library and information services can make to eradicating poverty, we call on the British government to use its influence in international fora to ensure that the role of libraries is acknowledged".