Call for Papers

The 9th Library Congress will take place from 24 – 27 June 2025 at the Congress Centrum Bremen (CCB) under the motto #LibrariesDevotedToDemocracy.
The Congress is organized by Bibliothek und Information Deutschland (BID) e.V. (Library and Information in Germany – Federal Union of German Library Associations), i.e. the member associations Berufsverband Information Bibliothek e.V. (BIB), the VDB – Verein Deutscher Bibliothekarinnen und Bibliothekare e.V. and the Deutscher Bibliotheksverband dbv.

Presentations can be submitted from 16.09. to 13.12.2024. The Library Congress is becoming increasingly international, so we welcome submissions of presentations and events in English as well.
As organizers, we call on you, our colleagues as experts from academic and public libraries, information institutions, and representatives of relevant associations to submit proposals for lectures and panel discussions on the following topics.

Topic 1: Shaping Democracy

Here: Social cohesion, library as a public space and place of encounter and lifelong learning, libraries and politics, event work, networking, community building, diversity, the culture of discourse and debate, dealing with disinformation, promoting democracy, (digital) participation, citizens’ councils, educational justice, social media, volunteering, participation, ethical issues, censorship and “culture wars”, the influence of third parties, the concept of neutrality and controversy, legal framework to strengthen libraries as promoters of democracy

Topic 2: Library as an organization and profession

Here: Recruitment, personnel development, job profiles, professional ethics, organizational culture(s), organizational development, methods of project management, library as a people-centered organization, diversity, agility, new work and leadership cultures, leadership and self-leadership, success and failure as an experience, error culture, work and health, life-work balance

Topic 3: Change of Perspective – libraries, cooperation, and partnerships

Here: Developments in science communication, citizen science, Fediverse, research evaluation, working conditions in science, libraries and urban development, impulses from archives, cultural and further education institutions, and the education sector such as schools, KiTas, and political education organizations, creative bureaucracy, digital administration, meta-reflection and libraries from the perspective of other forms of cooperation, the international view

Topic 4: Libraries – services and offers

Here: Strategy development, task criticism and deprioritization, controlling, workflows, portfolio, library networks, library construction, work, research and learning locations, sustainability, information competence, media competence, library pedagogy, media pedagogy, mobile libraries, IT security in libraries

Topic 5: Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence

Here: Artificial intelligence, academic publishing, open access, DEAL, university publishers, research data management, open science, open educational resources, research software, next-gen library systems, NFDI, FID, digital humanities, statistics and bibliometrics, research information/FIS, legal framework (licensing law, copyright, data protection, data tracking), long-term archiving of publications

Topic 6: Preserving and activating cultural data and assets

Here: Conservation, emergency collections, digitization and presentation of digitized collections, restoration, indexing of old collections, provenance research and ethical handling of collections, legal framework (licensing law, copyright, restitution, expropriation), regulations, standards and metadata, linked open data, text recognition (OCR/HTR), long-term archiving, repositories, and portals

All events in the topic areas are moderated.
We are looking for support from the community for the moderations:

– You submit an abstract and recommend a moderator.
– You submit an abstract and are available as a moderator for further events.
– You are generally available for (one) moderation. If so, please send an e-mail to Ms. Wioletta Syplie from K.I.T. Group at abstract-bid-kongress@kit-group.org, stating the topic in which you would like to moderate.

For the presentation of current topics, the use of the #Freiraum24 in the exhibition is ideal. Planning for #Freiraum24 will be possible with a short lead time and therefore allows the inclusion of contributions that can be planned at short notice.
Please pay attention to the separate call.

Submission is only possible online, other ways of submission will not be considered as well as incomplete submissions. Each submission must include an abstract, information about the speakers or the discussion leader, all presenters, as well as information about the target group and time/space requirements.
Please always link your submission to the names of all persons involved. Only these names can be checked for time overlaps in the course of the program design. Unfortunately, subsequent program changes are not possible.
The Library Congress would like to increasingly include impulses and best practices from the international context and to give colleagues from non-German-speaking librarianship and other fields access to discussions and developments. We therefore explicitly welcome the submission of English-language contributions. When submitting, please indicate whether you are planning an English-language contribution or are flexible in your choice of presentation language.
The Library Congress thrives on the commitment of the participants, therefore presentation fees and travel reimbursements are not provided. The program committee reserves the right to make decisions on a case-by-case basis in the event of requests from associations and committees.
Presentations by company representatives are part of the company program for which a fee is charged. If company products are dealt with in the context of lectures by professional colleagues, it must be ensured that service aspects are in the foreground, otherwise the submitted contribution will be treated as a company lecture.
Individual submitting colleagues who are not (or no longer) employed full-time in libraries and who make their main living from consulting and training activities may submit. Submissions will be treated, but at a lower fee, as corporate presentations. This essentially applies to “solo self-employed” and not to employees in companies (see company presentation).
Proposals for events are requested in the form of an abstract of no more than 2,000 characters (including spaces). The title must not exceed 125 characters. The organizers reserve the right to edit the title. Please include a short biography of no more than 300 characters, preferably with a link to the content of the submitted abstract. In addition, please list the expected space requirements and target audience for your events. Please remember not to overload the presentations, and prepare your presentation in a readable manner and with due brevity.
We will be guided by the following criteria when evaluating submissions:

• Quality of content
• Practical relevance
• Topicality or innovation potential

Conference contributions from commissions of the organizing associations can be submitted as a fully curated session. The session will be evaluated as an overall planning in the program commission.

Publication of the presentations
By registering their paper, speakers agree that abstracts of accepted papers will be made available on the Library Congress online publication server by the start of the 9th Library Congress (BIB-OPUS, https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-bib-info).
It is also possible for speakers to submit the long version of their paper or their presentation online in good time before their presentation – however, there will also be an on-site media acceptance. Details will be communicated to the speakers with the acceptance of their presentation.
Selected presentations will be published after Congress either in the VDB’s Open Access journal “o-bib”, in BuB (online and/or print) or on the BIB-OPUS server. Speakers whose papers are to be published will be asked by the respective editors to submit their manuscript to the editors shortly after the end of the conference. Further details will be communicated to the speakers with the acceptance of their presentation.

Requirements for special equipment
If you have any special requirements for room furnishings, these must be registered during the submission process. Since remodeling is expensive and staff-intensive, we are planning a medium-sized room with the option to remodel it ourselves. There, tables can be pushed to the edge or brought into the center, chair circles and open spaces can be designed.

Working sessions
Please note: With the exception of the BIB, VDB and dbv members’ meetings, access to the working sessions on the congress grounds is only possible for registered congress visitors.
The registration of general meetings will be done by the responsible committee.
Other submitted working sessions will be assigned to the regular review by the program committee. Please note that working sessions with more than one speaker and content focus must be submitted as a coherent session for the main program in the form of individual presentations.

Individual presentations
In order to allow sufficient time for discussion, a maximum of 15 minutes is available for individual presentations. Only individual presentations can be submitted, not blocks of presentations. If there is a connection in content between several presentations, please indicate this in the comments field when submitting.
Due to the limited speaking time, a maximum of two speakers per presentation can be considered. These will both be displayed in the list of speakers (online and print). All other authors and/or speakers can only be presented directly in the abstract and are not included in the check for time overlaps (see above).
If a presenter is proposed for a lecture or several lectures, please name him/her. Speakers will be admitted free of charge. If more than one person is presenting, only one person will receive this preference.

Panel discussions
In panel discussions, a topic is to be discussed controversially. Each participant pursues a thesis, which he/she briefly presents at the beginning of the discussion. During the discussion, the audience participates.
Panels with more than five participants plus a moderator are not planned.
Panel discussions are allowed between 90 minutes or two hours. In the abstract, please state the (controversial) theses as well as the persons discussing and the leader of the discussion. The leader of the discussion will be admitted free of charge.
Panelists:in, who are not from the BID context and bring an external perspective to the discussion, can be granted free admission via a free day pass (by mail at registrierung-bid-kongress@kit-group.org). There is no entitlement to this benefit.

Hands-on Labs
Hands-on labs will once again take place at the Library Congress. Hands-on labs are dedicated to a topic, a software tool or a service from a practical point of view and are aimed at the active participation of the participants. Hands-on labs consisting of a series of presentations will not be accepted. The leader of the hands-on lab receives free admission.
The number of participants in hands-on labs is limited to a maximum of 30 people and registration of participants is recommended. Please note the information on special equipment for rooms (see above).

Curated sessions of the commissions
Conference papers from commissions of the organizing associations may be submitted as a fully curated session. Individual presentations must be submitted as usual. However, it may be indicated that it is part of a fully curated session. The session will be evaluated as a fully planned session in the program committee.

Company presentations and product presentations
Companies are invited to present their products in the company exhibition and at company presentations and to seek discussions with customers there. The booking of company presentations, exhibition space and sponsoring services is done via the online booking system “Exhibition and Sponsoring Ordering System (ESOS™)”. Please contact Ms. Alexandra Krohn of K.I.T. Group at ausstellung-bid-kongress@kit-group.org. Further information and the corresponding conditions can be found in the Exhibitor and Sponsor Manual under the heading Company Presentations.

Poster
Posters can be submitted. There will be a separate call in February 2025.