Call for Papers
#BiblioZukunft

The 115.BiblioCon will take place from 22 to 25 June 2027 at the Nuremberg Convention Centre East (NCC Ost).
The event is organised by the Berufsverband Information Bibliothek e.V. (BIB) and the VDB – Verein Deutscher Bibliothekarinnen und Bibliothekare e.V.

The submission period lasts from 1 September to 7 December 2026.

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Topics

The deadline for submissions is 7 December 2026.

We are seeking up-to-date and forward-looking content and relevant submissions on the following topics:

Here: Roles and Partners

Promoting democracy through academic and public libraries, participation, libraries as public spaces, community management, education, culture, networking, civic engagement, dealing with public discourse and disinformation, LGBTQ+, insights from academia and education, socio-political contexts, sustainability

Here: Requirements and Solutions

Job profiles, professional ethics, law, the concept of neutrality, professional and technical skills, continuing professional development, recruitment, staff development, staff retention, leadership, organisational development, strategy development, career changers, knowledge management, New Work, agile working, a culture of learning from mistakes, health, volunteering, diversity in the workforce

Here: Attitude and processes

Digital sovereignty, research data (management), automation, Open Science, the use of (generative) AI for library services, RAG systems, (academic) publishing, Open Access, Digital Humanities, Fediverse

Here: Qualities and guarantees

Knowledge organisation, Linked Open Data, knowledge graphs, metadata, data quality, catalogues, databases, discovery systems, research information, NFDI, FID, DEAL, repositories, portals, library software, research data, information infrastructures, consortia, data protection, data security, standardisation

Here: Developing skills

Service design, user research, UX, library education, reading promotion, data, information and media literacy, AI literacy, future skills, key competences, learning spaces, accessibility, evaluation, innovation management, makerspaces, library construction, statistics, reporting

Here: Taking an innovative approach with a long-term perspective

Preservation, retro-digitisation, cultural data, provenance, colonialism, regulations, contingency planning, long-term archiving, storage technologies, geodata, presentation environments, text recognition, PIDs

The #Freiraum26 area in the corporate exhibition is ideal for showcasing current topics. Planning for #Freiraum2026 can be carried out at short notice, thus allowing for the inclusion of contributions that can be organised at short notice.

General information

Presentations, hands-on labs/workshops and panel discussions may be submitted from 1 September 2026 to 7 December 2026. When submitting working sessions, please refer to the guidelines under the event types.

  • Submissions must be made online only; submissions made by other means, as well as incomplete submissions, will not be considered.
  • Each submission must include a detailed abstract, details of the panellists or the chair, all speakers, as well as information on the target audience and the time and venue requirements.
  • Please always include the names of all those involved in your submission. Only these names can be checked for scheduling clashes during the programme planning process.
  • Unfortunately, it is not possible to make changes to the programme at a later date.

BiblioCon aims to draw more inspiration and best practice from the international context and to enable colleagues from the non-German-speaking library sector and other fields to engage with discussions and developments. We therefore expressly welcome submissions in English. When submitting your proposal, please indicate whether you plan to present in English or are flexible regarding the language of your presentation.

Guidelines for submissions from the community, external experts and companies

  • The speakers at BiblioCon work on a voluntary basis; no fee is paid.
  • The speakers listed first will receive a free ticket to BiblioCon. Only one free ticket will be issued per talk. This ticket is non-transferable.
  • If experts from fields other than library and information science are invited to speak at individual events, such as panel discussions, this must be clearly stated at the time of submission; in such cases, access to the conference will be clarified with the organising associations.
  • Presentations by company representatives form part of the fee-based corporate programme. If company products are discussed during presentations by fellow professionals, care must be taken to ensure that library-related aspects take centre stage; otherwise, the submitted contribution will be treated as a corporate presentation.
  • Submissions from colleagues who are not (or are no longer) employed full-time in libraries and who earn their main livelihood from consultancy and training activities will be treated as corporate presentations and subject to a reduced fee. This applies primarily to ‘solo self-employed’ individuals and not to employees of companies (see ‘Corporate presentation’).

Submission format

  • We invite proposals for events in the form of an abstract of no more than 2,000 characters (including spaces). The title must not exceed 125 characters; the organisers also reserve the right to edit titles.
  • Please provide a short biography of no more than 300 characters, preferably with a thematic link to the abstract you have submitted. Please also state the expected space requirements and the target audience for your sessions. Please remember not to overload your talks, and ensure your presentation is clear and concise.

Your submission will be assessed by peer reviewers, who will make recommendations to the programme committee as to whether it should be accepted or rejected.
The following criteria guide the assessment of submissions:

  • Quality of content
  • Practical relevance
  • Current events
  • Project results (excluding interim project reports)
  • Potential for innovation – Future prospects

Conference papers from committees of the organising associations may be submitted as a fully curated session. The session will be assessed as a complete proposal by the programme committee.

Information about the Different Types of Event

Should you have any specific requirements regarding the layout of the rooms, these must be declared at the time of submission. As alterations are costly and labour-intensive, we are planning a medium-sized room with the option for you to arrange the layout yourself. In this room, tables can be pushed to the edges or moved into the centre, and it is possible to create circles of chairs and open spaces. We will endeavour to accommodate additional requirements as far as possible, but we cannot always fulfil every request.

To allow sufficient time for discussion, individual presentations are limited to a maximum of 20 minutes. Only individual presentations may be submitted; presentation blocks are not permitted. If there is a thematic link between several presentations, please indicate this in the comments field when submitting.
Due to the limited speaking time, a maximum of two presenters per presentation can be included. Both will be listed in the list of presenters (online and in print). Any additional authors and/or presenters may only be listed directly in the abstract and will not be taken into account when checking for time overlaps (see above).
If a presenter is proposed for one or more talks, please name them. One speaker per talk will be granted free entry to BiblioCon.

Panel discussions
Panel discussions are designed to facilitate a lively debate on a particular topic. Each participant puts forward a thesis, which they briefly present at the start of the discussion. The audience joins in as the discussion progresses.
Panels should comprise no more than five people, including the moderator (chair).
Panel discussions are allocated between 90 minutes and two hours. Please state in the abstract the (controversial) positions, the panellists (including those ‘to be confirmed’ where applicable) and the chair of the discussion. The chair of each discussion is granted free admission.

Hands-on Labs focus on a topic, a software tool or a service from a practical perspective and aim to encourage active participation from attendees. Please specify the planned format/method, e.g. World Café. Submissions under this ‘hands-on’ format that consist of a series of talks will not be accepted. Similarly, it is not possible to change the format once the submission has been accepted and confirmed. The organiser of the hands-on lab will receive free admission.

Please note the information below regarding optional extras for rooms.

Please note the maximum number of participants for the Labs. We recommend that participants register in advance.

Submitted working sessions will be referred to the Programme Committee for its standard review. Working sessions can only be held to a limited extent during BiblioCon. In particular, for closed working sessions, venues outside the conference grounds may be used, depending on the capacity available on site. If sufficient capacity is not available, working sessions cannot take place as part of BiblioCon.

Please note:

  • Events featuring multiple speakers and covering a range of topics should be submitted as talks or sessions for the main programme in the form of individual presentations, not as public working sessions.
  • With the exception of the general meetings of BIB, VDB and dbv, access to the working sessions at the conference venue is restricted to registered conference attendees. Registration for general meetings is carried out by the relevant body.

Conference contributions from committees of the organising associations (BIB and VDB) may be submitted as fully curated sessions. Individual papers must, as usual, be submitted separately. However, it must be clearly stated that they form part of a pre-planned session. The session will be assessed as a whole by the programme committee.

The organising associations, BIB and VDB, can also curate individual events ‘by invitation’ at short notice.

Companies are invited to showcase their products at the corporate exhibition and during corporate presentations, and to engage with customers there. Bookings for company presentations, exhibition space and sponsorship packages are made via the online booking system ‘Exhibition and Sponsoring Ordering System (ESOS™)’. Ms Alexandra Krohn from K.I.T. Group is available to assist you at ausstellung@bibliocon.de. Further information and the relevant terms and conditions can be found in the Exhibitor and Sponsor Handbook under the heading ‘Company Presentations’.

The #Freiraum27 area within the corporate exhibition is ideal for showcasing current topics. Planning for #Freiraum27 can be done at short notice, allowing for the inclusion of contributions that can be organised at short notice.
Please look out for the separate call for entries from February 2027.

may be submitted. A separate call for submissions will be issued in January 2027.

Further general information

Moderation

All sessions in the thematic areas will be moderated.

We are looking for support from the community to help with the moderation:

  • You submit an abstract and recommend a chairperson.
  • You submit an abstract and make yourself available as a presenter for future events.
  • Sie stehen grundsätzlich für (eine) Moderation zur Verfügung. Dann senden Sie bitte eine Mail Please specify the topic area in which you would like to chair the session and contact Ms Janine Kutsche of K.I.T. Group at abstract@bibliocon.de.

Publication of the papers

By submitting their paper, speakers agree that the abstracts of accepted presentations will be made available on the online publication server (BIB-OPUS, https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-bib-info) by the start of the 115th BiblioCon.
It is also possible for speakers to submit the full text of their talk or presentation online in good time before their session – although there will also be an on-site media submission point. Details will be provided to speakers upon acceptance of their talk.
Selected papers will be published after the Library Congress either in the VDB’s open-access journal ‘o-bib’, in the BIB’s journal ‘BuB – Forum Bibliothek Information’ (online and/or in print), or on the BIB-OPUS server.

Speakers whose presentations are to be published will be asked by the relevant editorial team to submit their manuscripts to the editors shortly after the conference has ended. Further details will be provided to speakers upon acceptance of their presentation.

Dates and Contact Details

Dates

Papers may be submitted from 1 September 2026 to 7 December 2026.
Authors are expected to be notified in March 2027.

Posters may be submitted from 1 February to 16 April 2027.
A separate call for posters will follow.

Submissions for #Freiraum27 will be accepted from 1 February 2027.
A separate call for #Freiraum27 will follow.

Contact
For further information, please contact Ms Janine Kutsche of K.I.T. Group at abstract@bibliocon.de.

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