The 7th Knowledge Café was held at the 2019 WLIC in Athens, Greece.  This program was co-sponsored by three Standing Committees – Knowledge Management, Continuous Professional Development and Workplace Learning and Library and Research Services for Parliaments.  

Approximately 150 information professionals attended this meeting to share and learn from their colleagues on a number of interesting table topics.  The first program was held in 2013 in Singapore and I am pleased to say that we have established a successful opportunity for IFLA colleagues to discover, share and takeaway new ideas at our Café every year since then.

This year’s theme was “Change, Literacy: Digital, Collaborative, Creative.”  Change is the currency of our libraries, communities, parliaments, organizations, and world.  Whether it involves digital transformation, partnering with traditional or non-traditional agencies, or creating new and exciting engagement opportunities, change is at the heart of our activities.  Learning, growing, developing and succeeding in the face of change are our challenges.  

This was an interactive session using twelve round tables and facilitators with a number of different topics such as “Developing new communication tools: keeping up with advances in technology”; “How library spaces affect learning”; “Managing staff in tough and uncertain times”; “Developing library leaders of the future”; and “Creative uses of social media in libraries.”  This is just a sample of the topics – there were many more.  A full report with summaries is available here.  We hope you will join us at the 8th session in 2020 in Dublin!