IFLA Newsletter, September 2025: Celebrating cultures

The message below accompanies the September 2025 edition of the IFLA Newsletter.

Cultural heritage envelops us. It is our literature, art, buildings, landscapes, language, documents, and tools. It is our stories, rituals, food, theatre, craft, and knowledge. It tells us who we are.

While cultural heritage is flourishing on many fronts, it is simultaneously, in peril. Wars, fires, floods, new technologies, climate change, threats to free expression, to access to information, and to the veracity of the historical record jeopardize its preservation and use.

Access to the world’s cultural heritage promotes a broad understanding of other cultures and ways of being. Most countries of the world adhere to two United Nations treaties, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, that guarantee everyone access to information in print and orally, in art and other media, and the right to take part in cultural life. Libraries and information organizations have an essential societal role in ensuring that people can access, create, share, and learn from culture and heritage works.

This September, Ministers of Culture will come together in Barcelona for the World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development – MONDIACULT 2025 – the world’s biggest cultural policy conference. It is a special opportunity to have conversations around culture’s role in sustainable development, including building a strong consensus around the need for a culture-specific goal in the post-2030 UN Sustainable Development Framework.

For libraries, it is an opportunity to strengthen our recognition as essential agents in the public infrastructure for upholding cultural rights, fostering social cohesion, creating a sense of belonging and mutual respect, and strengthening resilience in the face of challenges.

As the incoming Chair of the IFLA Cultural Heritage Committee (CCH), I am looking forward to engaging with issues related to climate change and natural disasters, securing collections and archives in periods of political instability, diversifying voices in collections and archives, and linking cultural heritage preservation and management to community identity and well-being. The work of CCH will build on the achievements of the committee that served in the 2023-2025 term.

CCH has been instrumental in bringing together the many areas of IFLA that are engaging in culture, connecting perspectives from across our professional units with the expertise of committee members from around the world. In this upcoming term, CCH will advance IFLA’s strategy related to safeguarding cultural heritage through preservation and use, and ensuring participation and access to culture.
This issue of the IFLA Newsletter celebrates cultures, through library collections, programmes, preservation and conservation activities, arts and creativity, and beyond. I hope you will find it edifying and engaging.

Happy reading! 🌍

Victoria Owen
Chair, IFLA Advisory Committee on Cultural Heritage

Erratum: In the newsletter, under the Events section, the item titled “Caste and Access to Library Services” contains an error. The text currently reads: “The IFLA Preservation & Conservation Section (PRESCONS).” It should read: “IFLA Library Services to Multicultural Populations Section.” We apologise for any confusion this may have caused.