Our 2024 Trend Report found that trust in governments, public institutions, the media and traditional news has declined around the world. None of this is accidental. With global shifts towards populism and far-right ideology, there has been a deliberate use of disinformation and misinformation to sway public opinion, change how people relate to one another and turn them against the sources they once trusted.

Libraries have felt this directly. We have always had to fight to keep information accessible and open, but right now libraries in some parts of the world are seeing more book bans and censorship than ever before. Information itself is being turned into a weapon.

Libraries that hold collections of heritage and memory are also becoming sites of increased polarisation. They are being questioned on what they collect, what they put on display and whose stories get told and how. And they are not the only ones. Archives and museums are under the same strain.

This pressure runs the full length of the information and culture life cycle, from how we hold on to the past, to how culture is expressed today, to whether people are able to be together inside the library itself.

In this context, the traditional role of the librarian, which is to offer a wide range of ideas, use professional judgement about what suits which audience and when, and trust readers to handle that range, is being eroded. New restrictions are turning librarians into activists, in ways we’ve never seen before and that many may not be prepared for.

At IFLA, we believe that what a library makes available must be a professional decision, never something dictated by moral, political or religious pressure. This is exactly what we work to defend.

And we are well placed to do so. We bring together libraries and library associations from around 160 countries, which gives us a vantage point no single institution has on its own. We use our international reach in three ways. We bring professionals together, create standards and other professional tools, and advocate.

Bringing people together matters more than is sometimes realised, because in difficult moments there is real strength in knowing you are not alone. The network we offer is international, so a librarian facing a struggle at home can connect with others facing the same struggle in another country.

We can support the field by providing clear and agreed lines on the mission of libraries, their role in society and how they uphold this role. The IFLA and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Public Library Manifesto, updated in 2022, does exactly that. It sets out in plain terms how a public library serves its community. This helps provide a strong basis that national and local advocates can stand on when the pressure reaches them.

Our Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Expression Advisory Committee follows where these freedoms are gaining and losing ground, and keeps that exchange alive. For example, it co-organised, together with other IFLA professional units and members, MexINFO 2024 – the Mexican Information Global Forum. This included an International Symposium on Libraries and Censorship, ‘Unshelving Voices: Empowering Libraries Against Censorship’, which brought together LGBTQI+ groups, school libraries and people who run national associations to plan ahead for censorship and co-design practical responses tailored to their contexts.

Finally, we advocate for more supportive international policy. As the world begins to ask what should follow the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, IFLA is part of that conversation, making the case that access to information and knowledge is not a secondary concern but something sustainable development genuinely depends on.

Helping people navigate information has always been part of the job, but how this is done and the skills needed keep changing. While the library profession has always been about helping people find what they are looking for, there’s a growing importance placed on building critical thinkers, by helping people judge what they find, working out what is reliable, where it came from and how it holds up against other sources. AI can make finding an answer easier, but it doesn’t always help in building critical thinking, as it can hand someone a tidy answer in seconds and tempt them to stop thinking there.

AI also deepens the digital divide. Billions of people still have no reliable connection, and getting online is only half of it. They need the skills, confidence and spaces to make something of it. This is meaningful connectivity. In much of the world, the library is where many first encounter these tools and where they learn to use them.

There is also a deeper problem of whose knowledge these systems carry. An AI model only knows what it was trained on, and much of that is in English and reflects very limited perspectives. Left unchecked, that deepens the gap in whose knowledge gets carried forward. Libraries can help here, by upholding ethical standards for AI and feeding in the diversity of what they hold so these systems grow more multilingual and multicultural.

One important thing is recognition. Those who write policy and hold the budgets need to see libraries as partners in building communities that are more democratic, equitable and inclusive. That means making them part of the strategies they are already drawing up, not treating them as an afterthought.

This recognition must come with opportunities for professional development and steady, long-term funding that is not tied to a specific project. The work is already happening. There is almost always a library staff member or volunteer who cares and is already doing it. What they are missing is the backing to keep it going.

Libraries also need the freedom to decide for themselves what to collect and how to give access to it, based on their professional judgement and the needs of the people they serve. That is where a strong national library association becomes essential, because it can advocate for libraries inside the realities of each country. Helping those associations grow stronger, so they can dig into the issues their members actually face, is something IFLA supports.

And at the international level, we want whatever comes after the 2030 Agenda to say plainly how much access to culture, information and knowledge matters. You can’t reach any other development goal if people aren’t connected, informed and engaged. We want those values built into international policy, so the work ahead leaves no one behind and reflects how people really find, use and share information today.