The Carmelite Librarians’ Association (CLA) met from July 24 to July 27, 2012, in the city of Prague, Czech Republic.

There were 22 participants, including  two members of the General Council, Fr Josef Jancar (Procurator General) and Fr Desiré Unen Alimange (General Councillor for Africa). The meeting was welcomed and generously assisted by the General Delegate of Bohemia and Moravia, Fr Gorazd Pavel Cetkovsky.

In 10 working sessions, the meeting dealt with several issues pertaining to our Carmelite Libraries in various parts of the world. Particular attention was given to understanding some of the new, and future technologies and applications pertinent to library science. The Association is particularly committed to the formation of our young candidates by assisting new libraries in emerging parts of the Order. To this end, the Association is willing to send specifically requested books and is preparing a type of Manual for incipient, non professional librarians in the Order. Many of our libraries have catalogues which are now online and the service of digitizing rare books and manuscripts is available for all those who request it. In between working sessions, we were able to visit, under the very erudite leadership and guidance of Fr Gorazd, some of our former Carmelite churches and also the famous Premostratensian Strahov Library.

Since the Association meets every 18 months, it was decided that the next meeting will be January 6 (arrivals) to January 11 (departures) 2014,  in the city of Nairobi, Kenya.