A call for radical hope: IFLA Trend Report Update 2022

We are happy to publish the latest update of the IFLA Trend Report! Co-authored by the emerging leaders who attended our World Library and Information Congress last year, it’s full of ideas for how we – as a field and as a federation – can make ourselves ready not just to face, but to make the best of the future. 

Since the original version almost ten years ago, the IFLA Trend Report has become a platform for sharing key ideas and insights from exciting thinkers inside and outside of our field. Across this all, the key theme has been that of looking to the future, identifying emerging issues and how we can respond.

Crucially, it has been about promoting an active, rather than a passive response. The fact that libraries have been around for so many centuries does not mean we are stuck in the past or unable to change. Indeed, it is because we have been able to change that we are still here today.

The Trend Report is therefore also about stimulating positive engagement with the future, and aims to give the bases for librarians and libraries everywhere to do just this.

Taking the lead from the leaders of tomorrow

The latest update follows on from the theme of the 2021 Update in two key ways.

Download the IFLA Trend Report Update 2022

First of all, it looks to provide a response to the emerging issues identified in the last report by suggesting how it is that the global library field – and IFLA as the body bringing it together globally – can act.

Across 11 recommendations for our wider field, and 10 for IFLA, structured according to the four pillars of IFLA’s mission (inspire, engage, enable and connect), it urges a new focus on building sustainability and ensuring that we set ourselves up best for the future.

Secondly, it is again the result of the work of emerging leaders across the field – the people who will be leading our sector in years to come. It has been co-drafted, on the basis of the ideas that twelve people from five world regions shared during emerging leaders sessions at our last World Library and Information Congress in Dublin, Ireland, in July 2022.

IFLA is very grateful to the authors: Waleed Al Badi, Laurie Alvandian, Anna Au, Magdalena Gomulka, Esther Bravo Govea, Louise-Anne Charles, Fatima Oury Sow Gueye, Jemmimah Maragwa, Michaela Mrázová, Damilare Oyedele, Rabab Shaker, and J.M Shalani Dilinika

Over to you

As is the case for the whole Trend Report series, this edition is there to be used. The Report contains a section with just some ideas of how you can integrate its contents into your own thinking – individually, or within your institution or association.

We encourage you to engage with the recommendations, to think about how well you are doing on each, and even of course to disagree with them!

Let us know how you use the report!