You are cordially invited to attend the IFLA President’s Session in Columbus – Answering the Call to Action: How Might We Respond to the Challenges Presented in the IFLA Trend Report. During the session the IFLA Trend Report 2016 Update will be released.

Date: Monday 15 August

Time: 9:30 – 12:45

Room: Hall E

Session 92, Answering the Call to Action: How Might We Respond to the Challenges Presented in the IFLA Trend Report, will be chaired by IFLA President Donna Scheeder. While the session is in English, simultaneous interpretation (SI) will be provided.

The invited speakers are:

  • Mark Surman, Executive Director, Mozilla Foundation, United States
  • Fred Von Lohmann, Copyright Legal Director, Google, United States
  • Jack Cushman, Library Innovation Lab Fellow, Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University, United States
  • Maura Marx, Deputy Director, Library Services, Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), United States

The world continues to experience a rapid pace of change since the launch of the IFLA Trend Report in 2013. The IFLA President’s Session will focus on how libraries have been responding to the continual changes in the information environment. The IFLA Trend report identified 5 high-level trends which have been discussed across the international library community over the past three years. Many in our community have answered the call to action. The session will see the publication of a new update report summarising these discussions and the community’s response to the Trend Report.

To set the context, four high-level speakers will present keynote thoughts on how emerging trends since 2013 have continued to pose challenges and opportunities for the information sector, and how innovative actors are responding to those challenges with new services and approaches to information provision.

Following the presentations, the IFLA President will moderate a discussion between the speakers and the audience that focuses on deeper examination of what’s new for librarians to consider. How will new trends affect us when designing services? What should we be prioritising when developing new policies to support access to information in our libraries? And what should we be ready to push back against, to defend the ideal of freedom of expression?