LIANZA 2025 is a wonderful opportunity to bring people together from across our diverse library and information sector.
The conference will be held September 23 - 24, 2025 at Tākina Wellington Convention and Exhibition Centre in Pōneke Wellington.
On September 25, LIANZA 2025 continues the successful Tales and Tours Day with a few tweaks. A group of 200 delegates will have the opportunity to travel across the city to visit library, information and cultural venues to hear about innovations and activities from hosts while making new professional connections.
LIANZA 2025 is a wonderful opportunity to bring people together from across our diverse library and information sector.
The conference will be held September 23 - 24, 2025 at Tākina Wellington Convention and Exhibition Centre in Pōneke Wellington.
On September 25, LIANZA 2025 continues the successful Tales and Tours Day with a few tweaks. A group of 200 delegates will have the opportunity to travel across the city to visit library, information and cultural venues to hear about innovations and activities from hosts while making new professional connections.
Opened in 2023 and located in the heart of Wellington's cultural precinct opposite Te Papa Tongarewa, Tākina Wellington Convention & Exhibition Centre balances flexibility and functionality with the latest technology, cutting-edge contemporary design, and panoramic views over the city and Wellington harbour.
Tākina has been designed and built in a way that reduces negative impacts on the environment. It has been awarded Five Green Star Design certification – the first convention centre in the country to achieve this standard.
Designed by Studio Pacific Architecture, Tākina’s iconic design draws inspiration from a wide range of sources, including its maritime location and Wellington’s dramatic and sometimes wild weather patterns and landforms. The Māori mythology of Te Upoko o Te Ika - the head of the great fish of Maui - is also represented within the architecture.
Te Rau Herenga o Aotearoa LIANZA 2025 Conference will be every bit as amazing as LIANZA 2023.
Taiao is a Māori word that can mean 'the natural world' or the 'environment'. It can also refer to the land, water, climate, and living beings that make up the natural world. "Ko au te taiao, ko te taiao ko au" can take on new meanings. I am the natural world, and the natural world is me, so too, I am the land, water and so forth.
In the Māori worldview, the environment is part of the collective and collective thinking. In this conference, te taiao is central to our planning and implementation.
Aotearoa is changing - our communities are changing, our climate is changing, our ways of communicating and knowledge practices are changing, technology continues to rapidly change while access to the benefits of new technology continues to widen, and trust relationships are being questioned and renegotiated. The pace of change just seems to accelerate.
Libraries are continually changing and adapting to meet the needs of our communities - it's one of our great strengths and part of why it's so interesting to be a librarian and information professional in contemporary society.
This is the mahi we need to do to educate and sustain ourselves and thrive through this continual change. Ongoing changes include - being community hubs, digital experts and digital literacy teachers, and (mis/dis)information navigators, offering critical social (and government) services, and being climate advocates, to name a few. While at the same time, our shift to digital and responding to AI draws on limited global resources.
Given our role at the heart of our communities and learning environments, we are some of the first to see other changes or the need to reinforce the value of existing services required to sustain our communities. For example:
The societal good of reading for pleasure and the role of libraries within the literary and education eco-system.
Toitū te Taiao, Toitū Te Tiriti. Upholding Te Tiriti o Waitangi in an ever-changing environment.
The value of library spaces and services for inter-generational activity and learning.
Society's increasing need for community human connectivity the more global and digital the world becomes.
The need to easily discover, access and use trusted information resources important in our lives through the continual shift to digital.
This is big kaupapa that matters! LIANZA 2025 provides the opportunity to acknowledge, share, and understand these changes, and to address our mahi to sustain our profession, our communities, our tamariki, our climate, and our future through change.
In an ever-changing environment, the LIANZA 2025 theme comes from the whakatauki, ‘I am the environment and the environment is me’. Through a Te Ao Māori lens, the connection to land and sea is genealogical and relational. Our sector acknowledges the need to adapt to the changes and respond to the needs of our communities in Aotearoa New Zealand in sustainable ways.
At LIANZA 2025, we want to create opportunities to share the innovative ways and reinforce the great practices of our sector. The intention is to support our kaimahi and wider communities. How we plan, prepare and respond to these changes is our key theme.
Consider one of the following five threads for where your proposal might fit:
