The process of developing the IFLA Strategy 2024-2029 has taken place over the past year, guided by a series of six surveys of our members, volunteers and others.

A first set of surveys asked for views on the following key themes:

  • What you would want to be able to do with an IFLA Strategy (see: results)
  • What you felt about the different elements of our 2019-2024 Strategy (see: results)
  • How relevant you felt the Highlights and Opportunities from our Global Vision process were still (see: results)
  • What IFLA you wanted to see by 2029 (see: results)

These informed a discussion at the IFLA Governing Board in December 2023, which defined a set of 10 change pathways – things that we should prioritise in moving forwards from our existing Strategy. On this basis, we ran a fifth survey, asking for your views on the proposed change pathways for our Strategy (see: results).

Your results then allowed for the creation of a first draft of a new Strategy, agreed with the Governing Board for further consultation. We also gathered your inputs on this, both through a survey and a set of townhalls (see: results), before creating a final version which was approved by the Governing Board in August 2024.

Alongside the final Strategy, the Governing Board also approved a set of metrics and indicators designed to allow us to measure and share information about our progress on each of the impact areas.

This, together, is what is shared with you now on the IFLA website.

What marks out the new Strategy?

In line with the areas that you underlined we needed to prioritise, the new Strategy is characterised by:

  • A much clearer and more memorable vision that puts the world we want to see first – sustainable futures for all through knowledge and information. Through this, we underline that we are an organisation – and a field – focused on making a positive difference to the communities that we serve. This is an important point for ourselves and partners alike.
  • A much stronger focus on telling the story of how we make a difference. In particular, it defines a high-level goal (sustainable futures for all through knowledge and information), how we believe the library field contributes to this, and then how we think the different work taking place in IFLA helps the library field to fulfil this promise.
  • A simpler structure, with just three impact areas (professional connections, advocacy and partnerships, and capacity building and leadership) that are interconnected and applicable at all levels of our field. We hope that this makes the Strategy much more easily adopted and adapted (as necessary) by associations and institutions everywhere.
  • In addition, rather than treating our own organisation as a separate pillar, we present it as a cross-cutting enabler. To be able to deliver in any of the impact areas, we need to ensure that we achieve high levels of efficiency and transparency in our own work.
  • A set of indicators and metrics, which will form the basis of a dashboard. On many of these we will need to start by gathering baseline information later this year. We hope that this will not only provide more transparency about our work, but also offer a useful model for others.