When it was announced that the 2018 IFLA World Library and Information Congress was to be held in Malaysia, the Art Libraries Section thought it important that IFLA acknowledges the Islamic heritage of its host country. As art has a unique power to promote cultural understanding and interchange, we thought that our section should take the initiative and organise a Satellite Meeting on the theme of Global arts and the Islamic world. We approached the Scholars Library at the Islamic Arts Museum of Malaysia (IAMM) in Kuala-Lumpur who were similarly enthusiastic about this project and with whom we worked as partners.

Papers were invited from a wide range of distinguished international speakers and given on the day by Fionnuala Croke (Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, Ireland), Elizabeth James (National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, London), Dr Vandana Sinha (Center for Art & Archeology, American Institute of Indian Studies, Gurugram, India), Christine Ferret (National Institute of the History of Art, Paris, France), the contemporary Malaysian artist Dr Sulaiman Esa, Susan Parker-Leavy (Museum of Islamic Art, Qatar), Rana Abdulrahman (Qatar National Library, Qatar) and René-Vincent du Grandlaunay op (Dominician Institute for Oriental Studies, Cairo, Egypt). The afternoon session of the Satellite Meeting was held in cooperation with IFLA Relindial SIG.

The Satellite Meeting was organized as a free event, with registration through a website constructed for the purpose. The meeting was attended by 55 delegates, who came from Australia, Brazil, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Qatar, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Thirty-one of these delegates also attended the main IFLA congress.

Some of the Satellite Meeting papers are going to be published in the Art Libraries Journal.