Take the survey: what do the Trends mean for IFLA?

Which of the Trends identified in IFLA’s 2024 Trend Report will most affect IFLA’s own work, from dynamic communities to effective advocacy, from capacity-building to long-term sustainability? Share your ideas in our survey.

Following the launch of the IFLA Trend Report in 2024, the focus now is on how we can make the best of it to inform – and potentially inspire – our work.

Its core message – that the future is not predictable, but by taking a structured approach we can nonetheless approach it with confidence – applies everywhere, from individual practice, through to institutions and library associations.

This message is also, of course, relevant across IFLA’s work, with the Trends raising valuable questions about how far the way we work today – and the assumptions that underpin this – enable us to engage in a changing world.

For example, the Trend Report highlights that skills are becoming more complex (Trend 4). This potentially affects different areas of our work, from how much we expect of our members and volunteers in order to participate, to how we position ourselves in digital inclusion agendas, and whether this means that we need to be doing more around digital skills in our capacity-building efforts. Alternatively, Trend 3 highlights that trust is being renegotiated.

For IFLA, this might mean that we need to think about how we communicate with and engage our communities in order to ensure a sense of belonging, as well as looking at how we can support libraries themselves in a climate of distrust.

We are therefore welcoming inputs from our community – which Trends have the most significant potential impact on which areas of our work?

You can share your ideas through our survey, open until 30 November 2025.

We look forward to receiving your answers!