Column Editor:  Ann Okerson  (Director, Offline Internet Consortium) 

Against the Grain V38#4

Boogi is the official public outreach mascot for Busan, Korea, inspired by the city’s symbolic bird, the seagull.  The name is a portmanteau of Busan and galmaegi (the Korean word for seagull).  I’d like to say he greeted us as we came ashore on his beach not far from the convention center, but alas, seagulls are flighty critters, and so we were greeted instead by the first of many high-quality drivers of inexpensive taxis that show up after a minute once you summon them on the familiar Uber app.

Busan is the second largest city in Korea, with quite a vibe.  The population is over three million people, most of whom live in tower flats that march in rows up and down the hillsides of Korea’s largest port.  If the name is unfamiliar, you might remember it as Pusan in stories of the Korean War, when it was the entry port and headquarters for the American and United Nations forces coming to the peninsula.  There are older sections of town, but most often one sees ultra-modern skyscrapers (one offering an observatory on the 100th floor) and digital museums with dazzling visual displays and deafening audio.  It feels like a young city and an excellent place for the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) to bring its annual World Library and Information Congress.

And they were ready for us.  Clearly, the Korean government and Korean civil society organizations were delighted to have the world’s librarians descend on the city, and they put on an extravaganza.  The opening ceremony at WLIC is always a celebration of great local welcome, and this one was remarkable, with a parade of dignitaries giving warm speeches, including the nation’s first lady beamed in on video.  For this Canadian-American, there was something truly wonderful about the way each dignitary speaker concluded their remarks and then stepped from behind the podium and did a full from-the-waist bow to show their respect for the audience.  What would it be like to live in a country where politicians did that sort of thing!

There were in fact 1,500 Korean librarian delegates at the Congress — just under half the total — and the enthusiasm was palpable.  This may have been the WLIC with the best and most welcoming exhibit area ever — clever AI-assisted photo booths supplementing the usual stands of major library vendors, both local and global.  I wonder whether regular Charleston goers will recognize these, er, enhanced Congress-goers?  They look happy, having just eaten a free cup of hot ramen noodle soup being handed out to all and sundry at a neighboring booth.

Another AI-enhanced critter was Luka, the goggle-eyed reading robot, who knows thousands of children’s books in several languages and is also able to read any new ones you select.  Luka is apparently in advanced beta testing and almost ready to go internationally.  He’d be a fabulous addition to the wonderful children’s room in the Tempe Public Library here in Arizona.  The Korea-themed beanie babies who came along to Busan were enthralled with Luka!  His only visible challenge is choosing which of his multiple critter-themed costumes to wear.  In 2026, Korea described itself as a Reading Nation, and in Korea 20,000 Luka owls read 5 million picture books to children every year.

Of course, AI was a ubiquitous conference theme, from the keynote speaker who called for librarians to lead the way into the new AI world, to multiple program sessions on collections, public services, preservation, publishing, and more.  I was struck that from session to session you didn’t know whether you were going to be attending an anxiety-management presentation (how to control and discipline the use of AI) or a bright futures exhortation.  I’ll try to do a compare-and-contrast at the next WLIC to see how the conversations evolve.

Other themes of the Congress were more inwardly-directed, as in sessions led by IFLA President Leslie Weir (national Librarian and Archivist of Canada) on themes of change management and collaboration for librarians, to other sessions focused on more familiar but nonetheless evolving and urgent professional topics.  I was particularly struck to learn of the work of the Global Resilient Information Network (GRIN) that kicked off this spring, bringing together national libraries, cultural institutions, and digital preservation organizations to look for ways to bring the broadest possible coordination and cooperation to the essential work of capturing and keeping alive the digital heritage of humankind.

In 2018, at the Kuala Lumpur Congress, I had helped to organize the first meeting of an IFLA Library Publishing Special Interest Group (LIBPUB) that picked up on earlier IFLA meetings (including a pre-conference in Ann Arbor just before the 2016 WLIC in Columbus, OH) to bring attention to emerging ways in which libraries act to facilitate, support, and preserve targeted publishing activities.  It’s clear there is an important zone of publishing activity that libraries can fill well.  In this area, much has happened since Kuala Lumpur, including follow-up meetings held in Dublin, in Oslo (on the eve of COVID lockdown), and later in Den Haag.  Jane Buggle, Librarian at the Institute of Art, Design + Technology in Dublin, Ireland, now Chairs the IFLA Library Publishing Committee, upgraded this year to full standing committee status.  In Busan, WLIC’s LIBPUB session — on, what else, “Integrating AI into the workflow of library publishing” — was the most thronged and program we attended, with presenters from Canada, China, the U.S., and Indonesia.  The crowd was a sure sign of the current interest in this area.

I’ve been attending the world congress for some years now, joining with colleagues in places as diverse as Buenos Aires, Durban, and (last year) Astana.  Attendees always come away refreshed by the energy and imagination of librarians from around the world and warmed by the diversity and interconnectedness of the global profession.  Next year’s IFLA Congress will be special:  it will mark the 100^th anniversary of the founding of IFLA and an opportunity for the Congress to return to where IFLA started:  London, where enlightenment and collegiality will highlight a century of accomplishment.  Last week in Busan, Randa Al-Chidiac (an old friend from her days in her native Lebanon and now head librarian at the American University of Dubai) and I didn’t need much prompting to get into next year’s London vibe ourselves!