ABSTRACT
The complex of international library organizations in the first decade of the 21st century is larger than it has ever been in history, yet there have been startling changes due to economic, cultural, technological and political changes mainly toward the end of the 20th century. The International Federation of Documentation (FID), specializing in scientific and technical documentation, faltered and died after more than 100 years of service to scientific and technical documentation professionals. Its principal activity, maintenance of the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC), became the responsibility of the UDC Consortium in January 1992. (See www.udcc.org for more information.) The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), on the contrary, continues to flourish. A new entrant to the international library organization scene, EBLIDA, founded in 1992, shows powerful potential due to the strength of its funding source, the European Commission.
