Volunteering with IFLA provides you with opportunities to network with both experienced and new professionals, across our field and around the world. This network can support you with the work you currently do, expand your perspective, allow to you go further in an area of special personal interest or extend your professional aspirations to new sectors. 

These volunteer networks open doors to collaborations alongside professionals from across the globe, where you can learn about similarities and differences in regional priorities or discover different ways of working and providing services to patrons. You can volunteer informally as an individual or formally as a Committee, Working Group, or Special Interest Group Committee member. 

Informal volunteering as an individual

Check out the Projects page of the IFLA Professional Unit, Regional Division or Advisory Committee with which you are interested in volunteering to discover projects planned for the current term. Contact a lead from the relevant committee to see how you might get involved, and how your skills and expertise might contribute to the Unit’s work. In the case of our professional Sections, you can contact the Information Coordinator, and in other cases, the Chair or Convenor.

You may also want to sign up to one of our mailing lists in order to stay informed about upcoming opportunities.  

Formal volunteering through Committee membership 

To fulfil their potential, our committees rely on dedicated, insightful and expert volunteers, ready to give their time and energy. In turn, active engagement in an IFLA committee can be an excellent professional and personal experience, providing you with new knowledge, networks and friendships that you cannot access otherwise.

Collectively, IFLA’s committees – our Sections, Special Interest Groups, Advisory Committees, Review Groups and beyond – represent expertise in the library field. Individually, they each provide a unique platform for learning, exchanging, and developing work that advances every aspect of the global library field.

To volunteer as an official Committee Member, you will need to participate in the biennial election process.  The next elections will occur in 2023, and information will be announced on the main IFLA News page and on our IFLA Elections page.