The below message was distributed to IFLA’s members and volunteers directly by e-mail in IFLA’s official languages as of 10 January 2025.

Gamba daru*, 

Firstly, I wish you a happy New Year 2025. If you took leave during December / January, I hope that you had the opportunity to relax and recharge.  I certainly appreciated the opportunity to catch up with family and friends. 

This is not only the final year of my presidency, but also the final year of the first quarter of the 21st century. With IFLA’s centenary in 2027, and the inspiration provided by our IFLA Trend Report 2024 in planning for the future, I am approaching this year with optimism and energy, and I hope that you are too.   

Although the Governing Board is not meeting this month, I know that our volunteer groups and Headquarters team have been quick to start work again, if they ever stopped! I wanted therefore to give you an overview of my own plans for the next eight months, as well as some upcoming areas where I hope that we will be able to make the most of our work with our members and volunteers.   

Looking at my own priorities, I hope that you have been keeping track of the dashboards that I have been sharing on my pages of the IFLA website. These give an update on the status of progress in each of the six priorities.   

It has been great to complete our work around updating the IFLA Strategy, but there remains plenty of work to do over the coming months.  

On sustainability, I can advise that the legal process with Stichting IFLA Global Libraries (SIGL) has been completed. The judgement has been issued, and we believe that it provides a good basis for engagement with the SIGL Board into the future. The Governing Board and IFLA team look forward to working with the SIGL Board to maximise the impact of the Legacy Grant from the Gates Foundation.   

Further supporting our sustainability goals, you can expect to see in the coming months some exciting new research that will support us in this work. This will help to build understanding of how library associations and fields can build delivery capacity, scanning leadership programs around the world, and specifically supporting advocacy around libraries in climate empowerment and education for sustainable development.   

This will contribute to a wider reflection on how IFLA can help library fields at all levels mobilise resources and achieve impact in the communities we serve. It is a great illustration of what can be achieved when IFLA and SIGL partner.   

Next week, the formal nominations process opens for our elections and I hope that we will see the strongest field ever of people coming forward to help achieve the Strategy’s Vision: sustainable futures for all through knowledge and information. I strongly encourage you to consider nominating – being an IFLA Officer is a very rewarding experience.  

On our Trend Report, we want to use this as a springboard in 2025 to build a stronger focus on the future across our field. As I mentioned many times, the Trend Report offers not just a key resource for libraries, but also an inspiration to be proactive in thinking about the future. In particular, we will start to gather ideas and evidence about how we can mark IFLA’s centenary. I believe that this is an opportunity both to celebrate all that has been achieved over 100 years, and to look forwards to the next 100 as well. Your input will be vital.   

One of my commitments, when I commenced my Presidency, was to undertake a health-check of our overall governance structure. It has been four years now since our Statutes were significantly updated (notably changing the size and composition of the Governing Board), and I am sure that many of our members and volunteers have really valuable reflections to share based on their experience.   

We do not want to rush this process, and plan that it will likely extend into the term of my successor as President, Leslie Weir. In any case, Leslie and myself agree that in doing this we need to build on the practice of our Strategy and WLIC review processes, and make the Health Check as inclusive as possible. In the coming months, we will share how you can contribute to the Health Check. 

During 2024, we saw new communities of practice emerge, and held regular town hall meetings to share more about our work and plans, and hear your views. We will be continuing with these in 2025 – with the first cycle in January – and reflecting on what more we can do to make sure our members are fully included in our work. Find out about the dates for our next town hall sessions in our news story.  

Finally, we are now moving into the implementation phase of our Review of the World Library and Information Congress (WLIC). And of course, you will be hearing much more about our upcoming WLIC in Astana, Kazakhstan in the coming weeks and months!  

This sets a busy agenda for 2025. This is certainly true for the Governing Board and Headquarters Staff of course, but as I hope you have seen, we are going to be engaging with you intensively to make sure your views are reflected. And of course, with our elections coming up, there is an excellent opportunity to take on – or to continue with – a leadership role within IFLA!  

Before closing, I also wanted to highlight a few of the themes that I know are likely to be high on the agenda for 2025. These are areas where I know that Headquarters colleagues are particularly active, and where there are opportunities for your work to contribute to our advocacy and beyond. This is not a request to drop current work or change planning – rather a chance to share opportunities to contribute and potentially see your work featured on the global stage!  

Around advocacy in particular, there will be a strong focus on climate empowerment (ahead of COP30 in Brazil), digital inclusion (with the World Summit on the Information Society + 20 conference in Switzerland in July), culture and development (with MONDIACULT in Spain in September), and social development (with the World Social Summit in Qatar in November).   

In each case, the strength of our arguments as IFLA is boosted when we can share not only examples of libraries’ practical contributions on the ground, but also how we are able to work together to have a wider systemic impact. The same goes for work around information integrity, where UN country teams have been tasked with taking initiatives forwards here.   

Outside of advocacy, we are going to continue to focus on the importance of partnerships, and what it takes for libraries, library associations and library systems to make the most of these to support work towards our missions. We will be asking for insights and ideas here, but will also encourage you to share proactively; it is important that other actors – governments, funders, and more – develop the reflex of seeing libraries as partners in achieving a wide range of goals at all levels.  

Closely linked to that, we are also going to be thinking a lot about what allows libraries to have a systemic impact, helping to achieve policy goals at the regional, state or even national level. As we work to develop tools and programming to help with this, we will need to draw on examples of success.   

Finally, and as already highlighted above, building on the Trend Report to develop the habit of thinking into the future is going to be a common theme. The Report itself offers great guidance on how to start, but it is your insights, experience and imagination that will allow us to see furthest. If you have used the Trend Report, or otherwise carried out Futures work, colleagues are interested to hear from you.   

If you feel that you have something to contribute on any of these points, please do not hesitate to share at [email protected].   

Without a doubt, 2025 will be a busy year!  

I look forward to working with you, 

Vicki McDonald
IFLA President 2023-2025 

* “Gamba daru” means “Good day” in the language of the Barunnggam people from the Darling Downs region of Dalby and Bunya Mountains – the community where I grew up.