By Michelle Arbuckle
Somewhere after the 15-hour flight, the two-hour bullet train, the 13-hour time difference and the 10mg of melatonin, I was expecting Busan to feel very far from home. The library conversations, it turned out, did not.
This summer, I had the privilege of representing the Ontario Library Association at the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) World Library and Information Congress in Busan, South Korea. I arrived with a poster about OLA’s Inclusive Libraries research and left with a notebook full of ideas, new connections, and a much bigger sense of the global library community of which we are all a part.
One of the things that struck me most was how familiar so many of the conversations felt.
Across countries, sectors, and languages, library workers are wrestling with many of the same questions we are asking here in Canada. How do we protect intellectual freedom? How do we ensure our libraries reflect and welcome the communities they serve? What does artificial intelligence mean for our work? How do we demonstrate our value in increasingly complex environments? And, perhaps most fundamentally, how do we build and sustain a culture of reading?
Of all the conversations I participated in, the topic of reading stayed with me the longest.
During the conference, I had the opportunity to take part in an Executive Masterclass on Futures Thinking led by the IFLA keynote, futurist Sohail Inayatullah. My table chose the wonderfully ambitious topic of the “future of reading,” and we used a process called Causal Layered Analysis to look beyond trends and technologies and explore the assumptions, systems, and stories shaping what reading might become.
The experience challenged me to think differently about a topic that many of us care deeply about. We often discuss reading in terms of outcomes: Are young people reading enough? Are literacy rates improving? Are they reading books or screens?
But a more powerful question emerged: What kind of reading future do we actually want?
For those of us who care about school libraries, that question matters enormously. A future filled with curious, confident, and engaged readers does not simply happen. Young people need access to books and stories. They need opportunities to discover what they love. They need skilled library staff who can connect them with information, ideas, and one another. They need spaces where they can slow down, explore ideas and engage deeply with what they read.
What struck me was that this conversation surfaced everywhere. Regardless of the session topic, reading kept reappearing as a central concern. Discussions about technology, democracy, misinformation, learning, and community engagement all seemed to circle back to the same fundamental question: How do we help people develop a meaningful relationship with reading in a rapidly changing world?
IFLA also reminded me that our professional community needs the same kind of intentional investment.
Some of the most valuable moments of the conference occurred outside formal presentations: conversations over coffee, discussions between poster presenters, figuring out where to go for lunch, and waiting in an extremely long line for a beer with library people I had met only hours earlier. I was delighted by the strong Canadian presence throughout the conference and inspired by the ways IFLA intentionally creates opportunities for connection, learning, and celebration.
Those experiences reinforced something I believe deeply about professional associations and networks. They give us somewhere to share what we know, learn from one another, find our people, and remember that none of us is doing this work alone. They also allow an idea developed in one library, one province, or one country to travel, adapt, and become useful somewhere else.
I came home thinking less about what makes our challenges unique and more about what connects us. Across borders and library sectors, we are asking some wonderfully fundamental questions: Who gets to read? Who gets to belong? How do we help people make sense of the world? What kind of future do we want to build?
The answers will look different everywhere. But one of the great strengths of this profession is that we get to figure them out together.
Michelle Arbuckle is the Executive Director of the Ontario Library Association (OLA), now celebrating it’s 125th year anniversary. Michelle also serves on the board of Canada’s Book and Periodical Council and is an organizer of the annual Freedom to Read campaign. Leading a dynamic team and working closely with a dedicated board of directors, Michelle steers the strategic direction of OLA, ensuring it remains a vital force in advocating for libraries of all kinds – public, school, academic, health, and special – across Ontario. Beyond the board reports and advocacy work, Michelle spends her downtime listening to a lot of pop culture podcasts, trying to keep up with the evolving language of her Gen Z child, and sings in a Dolly Parton cover choir!