From October 24 to 25, 2024, the "Shanghai International Library Forum 2024" (SILF2024), hosted by the Shanghai Library, was held at the Shanghai Library East. The theme of this forum was "Library: Digital Empowerment and Sustainable Growth," aiming to explore the opportunities and challenges faced by the sustainable development of libraries in the digital age.
On the opening day of the forum, nine experts from the library and related fields from Australia, the United States, Slovakia, and China shared their insights, attracting over 300 representatives from the United States, Canada, Australia, Slovakia, the United Kingdom, Germany, and various cities and regions in China, including Beijing, Xi'an, Taiyuan, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. Pan Min, Deputy Minister of the Publicity Department of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China, Chen Ying, Secretary of the Party Committee and Deputy Director of the National Library of China, and Vicki McDonald, President of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), delivered speeches at the opening ceremony of the forum.
During the keynote speech session, IFLA President Vicki McDonald, Chen Ying, Secretary of the Party Committee and Deputy Director of the National Library of China, and Zhang Zheng, Dean and Senior Chief Scientist at Amazon Web Services (AWS) Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, successively shared their thoughts and insights on the themes of "Sustainable Future for All through Knowledge and Information," "Sustainable Development of Libraries Driven by Digital Intelligence," and "AI’s Upcoming Impact: Learning, Reading and Education."
In the afternoon plenary session, Michael Lambert, Director of the San Francisco Public Library; Mao Yajun, Director of the Capital Library of China; Nick Buron, Director of the Queens Public Library in New York; Huang Chen, Director of the Future Library at Zhejiang University; PhDr. OľgaDoktorová, Director of the Slovak National Library of Science and Technology; and Xu Qiang, Deputy Director of the Shanghai Library, respectively delivered wonderful reports. The atmosphere was lively with active interaction.
The forum this year adopted a main venue plus sub-venues format. On October 25th, the forum featured four sub-venues, focusing on hot and cutting-edge issues in reading promotion, digital humanities, knowledge organization, and cross-border cooperation, inviting over 40 domestic and international experts from academia, library profession, and cross-disciplinary fields for discussions and exchanges.
It is particularly worth mentioning that, for the first time in the KV design of this year's forum, the use of generative artificial intelligence (AIGC) was integrated. The entire plan creates a surreal, freehand reading scene and spatial representation with images of books, the peaks of knowledge, and the infinitely sustainable waves, marking an innovative integration of AI technology and reading promotion.