Libraries must adopt key trends to stay relevant to their communities - that was the theme of the opening session on the second day of the American Library Association, ALA, Conference, held at the Sharjah International Book Fair, SIBF, here.

The theme of SIBF 2016, currently under way at the Expo Centre Sharjah, is ‘Read More’. The 35th edition of the annual event, which runs until 12th November, is hosting 1,681 publishing houses from 60 countries.

In his keynote presentation, Michael Figueroa, Director at the ALA Center for the Future of Libraries, Chicago, USA, discussed how libraries needed to study change and explore the trends and signals encountered around them to help point to preferable future. However, such trends need to be practised by the library users themselves.

"While we cannot know the future, we can influence the future. We need to work out which trends make our world more effective. For example, 3D printers became a trend and lots of libraries installed one. But the only libraries which were successful in utilising them effectively were the ones that actually got people together to use them. It is not much use having a printer sitting on a desk when no one knows how to use it," he said.

"We must become collaborators of the future and to achieve this, we need to do three things. We need to respect and integrate knowledge and practice across multiple disciplines; generate new thinking that leaps over present problems and limitations, and unify individual perspectives and strengths into collective intelligence," Figueroa added.

Three more presentations came up after Figueroa’s speech and the topics were: Academic Libraries and Student Success: Lessons from the Assessment in Action Project; Literacy in the School Library and Making an Impact: Outreach, Marketing, Development and Community Service.

In the final session before lunch, Dr. Julie Todaro, ALA President and Dean of Libraries at Austin Community College, Austin, Texas, USA, gave a presentation on Integrating Continuous Learning with Work. It advocated the role of the library as a learning organisation.

Run concurrently was another session by Andy Plemmons, School Library Media Specialist at David C. Barrow Elementary, Athens, Georgia, USA. He shared his experiences about the tools he uses to educate children in a lecture titled School Libraries Sharing: Success and Struggles in School Libraries.