An alternative trend report for libraries

At the IFLA World Library and Information Congress held in Dublin last year (2022), Mary Robinson, the former President of Ireland, called on librarians to be prisoners of hope and challenged the library field to step up its effort to face the injustices of the climate crisis and spark conversations on radical change.

The 2022 IFLA Trend Report calls for radical hope, which I thought was a nod to Mary’s stirring keynote address, but unfortunately, I don’t think it is. Sorry to say I found the report underwhelming.

It appears as a set of recommendations for libraries to follow, in lieu of actual, identified trends. There are some insightful comments made throughout the report; however, I just wish it had gone a little deeper and provided practical advice or even some case studies where libraries might already be responding to something. For example:

“Libraries have the potential to be a cornerstone of any effort to deliver the behaviour change necessary to respond to climate change effectively.”

This is a trend. IFLA published a standalone article called Coming Up in 2023: Libraries addressing the climate emergency, which is the kind of content I would have expected in the trend report. (More, please!).

An alternative trend report

Despite these grumbles, the report did motivate me to look closer at the Australian/Victorian public library landscape and to reflect on what we’re currently doing in…