Federal Councillor Ignazio Cassis visits the Library Am Guisanplatz
High-level visitor at the Library Am Guisanplatz: Federal Councillor Ignazio Cassis pays a visit to the Federal Administration‘s information centre on 31 January.
The Library Am Guisanplatz (BiG) provides Federal Administration staff with complimentary meeting rooms. But it is not often that they are occupied by a head of department and his entourage. The working visit by Federal Councillor Ignazio Cassis on 31 January 2019, accompanied by the Secretary General of the FDFA and his closest associates, was a welcome opportunity to exchange views on digital transformation and the implications it has for the Federal Administration.
The guests showed a keen interest in the work of a modern information centre in a world where information is in abundance. During the brief introduction by Daniel Kohler, head of the BiG, the guests acknowledged how the Library’s expertise particularly in the age of electronic resources can help improve the efficiency of the Federal Administration.
Churchill, Einstein and the Korea collection
They then stepped back in time, with Philippe Müller, Head of Information and Documentation Services, presenting a few historical treasures from the BiG’s special collections, which includes documents dating back over five centuries with the handwritten signatures of Charles the Brave, Napoleon, Einstein, Churchill, Eisenhower and de Gaulle. The foreign minister was particularly interested in documents from the Korea collection, which provided a very personal insight into the history of this crisis region.
Swiss military personnel have been stationed in Korea since 1953, when Switzerland, Sweden, Poland and Czechoslovakia undertook the task of monitoring the ceasefire between North and South Korea after the Korean War.The documents on the Swiss Armed Forces’ oldest peacekeeping mission provided the foreign minister and his staff with a picture of the daily life of those taking part in the mission and the Korean people over several decades. After viewing the archive, there was a lively discussion between the visitors and the BiG staff.