In 2027 IFLA will have a big anniversary. It was founded in Edinburgh in 1927, as the International Library and Bibliographical Committee, and only adopted the name, International Federation of Library Associations, two years later, at an international congress in Rome. But officially, IFLA recognizes 1927 as the year in which it was founded. For resources on IFLA’s history, see here.

Library historians don’t only look back. The IFLA Library History Special Interest Group has started preparing for the centenary celebration by embarking on a series of projects on oral histories of the world’s librarians. The series of projects is ambitious and will encompass many approaches. It is hoped that oral histories of librarians will include not only the history of their libraries at the time, but also the librarians’ immersion in social and political issues of their day, and how they faced the new issues presented to the profession at that time.

As part of the project, an open session with theme “Librarians learning from the past to inspire, connect, enable and engage”, is planned for the IFLA World Library and Information Congress in Dublin, Ireland, in August 2020. The call for papers has been published at https://2020.ifla.org/cfp-calls/library-history/.