The 111th All-Japan Library Conference (2025)

【2026-E001】

On October 30 and 31, 2025, the 111th All-Japan Library Conference was held in Ehime Prefecture by the Japan Library Association (JLA) and other related organizations, with 854 participants in attendance. A video stream of some section meetings was available online until December 31, 2025. The theme of this year’s conference was Libraries Coloring the Future: From the Iyo Road.

The program comprised keynote reports and commemorative lectures by three authors from Ehime Prefecture as well as presentations and discussions at 12 section meetings.

Next year’s conference is scheduled to be held in Ishikawa Prefecture in November 2026.

Below is an overview of the presentations given in the section meeting on supporting reading activities for children and young adults.

Section Meeting 3—Supporting Reading Activities for Children and Young Adults

Nurturing Children’s Future Through the Power of Reading: Innovations and Practices in Reading Activity Support

This session was organized as a joint section meeting of the School Libraries and the Children’s Services sections and aimed at providing a forum to share, from both perspectives, ideas and practices in supporting reading activities.

The keynote program comprised a hands-on workshop led by TAMARU Masatomo, a writer from Ehime Prefecture, on how to write very short stories. Mr. Tamaru explained that the goal of the workshop was to spark children’s interest in reading through the experience of writing fiction. He also expressed the hope that libraries will be used as a place for creative work.

Following the keynote program, case reports were presented by librarians from public libraries as well as from primary, secondary, and high school libraries in Ehime Prefecture. A variety of initiatives to promote children’s reading activities were introduced, including by promoting collaboration between communities and schools or by engaging children in reading activities. The examples shared by public libraries included workshops by Mr. Tamaru, the keynote speaker, on writing very short stories and reading English stories aloud. School libraries shared their experiences in boosting children’s motivation to read, through measures such as creative displays and special-feature corners, a student-led “Bibliobattle” (book review presentations), book recommendation card making activities, and improvements to the library environment.

Ref :

All-Japan Library Conference (in Japanese)
https://www.jla.or.jp/national_library_conference/

(2026.3.31 update)