Edited text of an interview with Joseph Soosai, former Chief Librarian, Rubber Research Institute of Malaysia, about his seventeen years' involvement with the regional activities programmes of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). Discusses the origins and organization of the programme, the establishment of the Regional Development Fund and IFLA's core programme for the Advancement of Librarianship in the Third World (ALP). Emphasizes the important contribution which regional and subregional library associations can make to library development in the Third World and proposes the establishment of a worldwide network of national, subregional and regional associations, with IFLA at the apex.