International Federation of Library Associations Report on Library Leadership Programs

The International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) recently published a report on Learning to Lead: A Scan of Global Library Field Practice:

"A major focus for IFLA is ensuring that emerging leaders have opportunities to gain experience and recognition. As a result, IFLA is keen to provide its members with a reference document that outlines the types of leadership programmes available, highlighting their commonalities, differences, and evidence of impacts where possible."

"The Learning to Lead: A Scan of Global Library Field Practice is the first of-its-kind IFLA publication, aiming to provide a representative and comprehensive overview of leadership programmes run by library associations, libraries, museums, archives, and related organisations. It identifies their objectives, methods, and impact data, as well as key features and commonalities. It also aims to support library associations and libraries in their own decision-making about leadership programmes, and enable IFLA to make strategic decisions regarding its future leadership initiatives."

"This report employed a survey methodology as the primary research tool for collecting data for analysis over the period from October to November 2024. The web-based questionnaire was sent to 143 active IFLA Associations and 1129 IFLA volunteers/individuals. To boost the number of programmes surveyed and reviewed, the team also selected leadership programmes from the Arabella Advisors report that was released in January 2015, the total number of programmes reviewed were 66. It is worth mentioning that several criteria were applied in selecting the leadership programmes."

IFLA is an international, non-governmental organization that advances the interests of library and information associations, as well as those of librarians and the communities they serve throughout the world.

Formed in 1927, the Federation has its headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands.