EBLIDA Newsletter July/August 2019

The EBLIDA Newsletter is published monthly on European library & information society issues, programmes, news and events of interest to the library, archive and cultural heritage community.

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Issue No. 7/8 July/August 2019

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The President’s Editorial

Dear colleagues,
Dear friends,

The French language has two words for an issue to be dealt with: problèmes, to be solved, and problématiques, to be raised. As a highlight in Members’ life, the 27th EBLIDA EC meeting, the EBLIDA Annual Council and the EBLIDA-NAPLE Conference in Dublin (24-25 June 2019) were instrumental in tackling both problèmes and problématiques in EBLIDA’s work.

First, let’s talk about problématiques. All international organisations have to embed their activities into an international framework.

The 2019-2022 EBLIDA Strategic Plan cannot refer to the national cultural policy of individual Member States or make a mix of such policies. The political and intellectual framework of EBLIDA’s work has to be found in the UN Sustainable Development Goals as they are structured, implemented and perceived in Europe.

UN SDG 17 objectives, 169 targets and 232 indicators are not the same whether they are considered in a European perspective or in the rest of the world, for at least three reasons:

Goals are diversified according to nations; to give an example: UN SDG 1: “No Poverty” cannot be measured in Europe according to international standards; UN SDG 2: “Zero Hunger” for a good number of European Union states is more about food waste and food security than food shortage as such;
The European Union is contributing to the UN SDGs through its own Agenda 2030 with specific policies and programmes;
EU-funded library projects implementing UN SDGs are evaluated according to specific EU funding criteria and assessment standards.

We thank Ambassador Stefano Stefanile, Deputy Permanent Representative at the Italian Permanent Representation to the United Nations, for having provided an inside vision of UN SDGs and for describing the role played by European countries in the definition and implementation of UN SDGs.

Let’s see now which problems were solved through the EBLIDA meetings and conference. All Members supported the shift in EBLIDA’s mission. EBLIDA is facing an environment where copyright is a transversal issue and a priority for many other organisations working in the European arena. EBLIDA’s work on copyright will be focused on the needs of public libraries.

With the new 2019-2022 Strategic Plan, approved by the EBLIDA Council Members, advocacy is inherent in all Strands of the Strategic Plan and also the core of Strand n. 1 – The Political level – which will be carried out in collaboration with IFLA, PL 2030, LIBER, SPARC Europe and all other interested organisations. Initiatives undertaken by PL 2030 - MEP Library Lovers and Generation Code will be supported in all possible ways (incidentally, the next edition of “Generation Code” is likely to take place in the week of 7th of October).

The three Strands and their flagship projects – the revision of the Council of Europe – EBLIDA Guidelines on Library Legislation and Policy in Europe (Strand 2); the setting up of qualitative indicators for libraries (Strand 3), and open access in public libraries (Strand 4) - were examined during the working group sessions at the EBLIDA Conference. This Newsletter includes the results of the discussions. Finally, we also report about the results of a pre-Conference Survey concerning the 2019-2022 EBLIDA Strategic Plan, which was carried out early June 2019.

And lastly, this is a Summer issue for July and August, so we will be back with the next issue on Thursday, 13th of September. In the meantime, I wish all EBLIDA Members excellent Summer holidays and peaceful and relaxing vacations!

Yours sincerely,

Ton van Vlimmeren
EBLIDA President

Interview with Ambassador Stefano Stefanile

Ambassador Stefano Stefanile is currently Deputy Permanent Representative of Italy to the United Nations in New York. Among his previous positions, he had already served at the Italian Mission to the UN from 2009 to 2013.

EBLIDA: You have a long experience in UN affairs and, particularly, in the area of sustainable development. Can we ask you some questions on the implementation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals?

Ambassador Stefanile: I will be delighted to answer.

EBLIDA: Where does the UN SDG programme find its roots and why is it so important for world growth and development?

Ambassador Stefanile: The SDGs represent the evolution of the previous Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) into a more comprehensive and integrated global agenda. The MDGs had been successful in guiding the international community towards a substantial reduction of poverty. However, they used to hinge on a traditional philosophy of international development, which focused mostly on economic growth and where States with a high national income were supposed to support, mainly through Official Development Assistance, the development of more disadvantaged countries.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with its related SDGs, has drastically broadened the notion of international development by encompassing, in an integrated fashion, its social, economic and environmental dimensions. Moreover, it has superseded the donor-recipient pattern in favour of a universal and holistic partnership. In this context, all countries have an equal level and dignity and they all share the responsibility to contribute, within the limits of their capacities, to the attainment of the SDGs. And this partnership does not include only States, but also non-governmental actors, such as civil society and the private sector.

EBLIDA: Seven objectives, 169 targets and 232 indicators: we are talking of a rather complex architecture. Too complex, perhaps?

Ambassador Stefanile: It is indeed a complex and ambitious architecture, with an admirable texture. The seventeen objectives should be considered macro-objectives, but the SDGs real lifeblood lies in the 169 targets or sub-objectives if you like. Altogether, the 2030 Agenda is the most overarching and complete global plan for the sustainable development of our society: an ambitious attempt to map out what is universal and indivisible in development, to chart the requirements for the planet to be sustainable, to address a wide spectrum of targets leading to the well-being and the prosperity of our World. It is even more remarkable since this formidable objective/sub-objective machinery comes together with a system of 232 indicators for the monitoring of the SDGs implementation.

The UN Statistics Division has made a huge effort to encompass all targets into a grid enabling monitoring and re-adjustments, when needed. The state of implementation of the single SDGs has been reviewed annually in the context of the High Level Political Forum, under the aegis of ECOSOC, and we are now looking forward to the SDG Summit, under the auspices of the UN General Assembly, which will take place on 24-25 September 2019 in New York. Four years after its inception, the 2030 Agenda will be thoroughly reviewed and an assessment will be made on how far we have gone in achieving the SDGs.

EBLIDA: What has been the role of the European Union in developing UN SDGs?

Ambassador Stefanile: The European Union has an a special observer status at the United Nations, through which it plays a remarkable role in coordinating the EU Member States and representing their common position. In this context, the EU has significantly contributed also to the shaping of the 2030 Agenda by showing constant commitment to sustainability, both collectively and through the individual action of its Member States. In the long and intense work which lead to the formulation of the SDGs, several “Group of Friends” were created at the UN to promote the inclusion of particularly important issues in the new global Agenda.

These Groups were “lobbying” - in the most noble sense of the word - to raise the attention and the commitment of the international community with regard to the most crucial challenges: from ensuring food and nutrition security to guaranteeing access to affordable and sustainable energy; from promoting decent jobs to fighting climate change. Most of these informal groups included, or were lead by, EU Member States and the EU as a whole strongly campaigned in favour of ambitious and comprehensive SDGs. After the adoption of the 2030 Agenda, the EU has aligned its main policy strategies to the pursuit of the SDGs, both internally and in the framework of its partnership with international actors. The EU and its Member States, including Italy, continue to be constantly engaged in the promotion and implementation of all SDGs. To give just one example, last May the Italian Government hosted at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation a review conference on SDG 16: “Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies”, the outcome of which will contribute to the works of the September SDG Summit.

EBLIDA: What is the role of culture, and what could the role of libraries be, in the implementation of UN SDGs?

Ambassador Stefanile: Sustainability is above all a matter of culture. Without a cultural shift towards the philosophy of sustainable development, most of the SDGs could not be achieved. Culture is also a powerful driver of social and economic growth and an important peacebuilding factor. That is why the role of culture is reflected in the 2030 Agenda not only in SDG4 but also transversally in other SDG targets. It goes without saying that Italy is among the greatest advocates of the importance of culture, given its extraordinary cultural and historical tradition and its longstanding partnership with UNESCO.

The UN system promotes the culture of sustainable development in many ways, including through social media which today can reach the younger generations far more effectively than traditional information campaigns. Another formula to engage the youth is the so-called Model UN, where students simulate multilateral negotiations on issues pertaining to sustainable development, thus developing better knowledge and greater motivation.

A further factor is the involvement of civil society. NGOs, associations and academia are the watchdogs of Governments and can be, therefore, particularly effective in advocating for policy measures which may be initially costly but are certainly advantageous in the long term. To give an example, ASVIS, the Italian Alliance for Sustainable Development, has played a fundamental role in raising awareness about the 2030 Agenda in Italy and in stimulating SDGs-consistent policies.

To answer your final question, libraries too can play a fundamental role, being crucial gateways to knowledge, providing reference points for civil society and offering meeting places for public debates. They can certainly be important allies in promoting and disseminating a new culture of sustainability.

EBLIDA: Thank you very much for having devoted your precious time to this interview and for being a UN SDG advocate.

REPORT - Working Group Session 1 of the EBLIDA Conference:

Library legislation

The background Paper to the 27^th EBLIDA-NAPLE Conference (25 June) singled out three main models of library administration (centralisation being only a theoretical model, never applied): devolution, decentralisation and privatisation.

Devolution, or “autonomy”, refers to the movement of responsibility for a government programme to a lower level of government so that the lower level of government has complete autonomy in the financing, performance, policy-making and administration of library activities.

Decentralisation refers to a situation where the responsibility for performance and administration is to be relegated to a lower level, while policy-making and finance are to be retained at a higher level. Privatisation means that part of the budget allocated to libraries comes from public grants, and that libraries have to find other sources of funding in order to carry out their public mission. The background document also pointed out that these models are implemented in a spurious way in Europe with cooperative arrangements including the administration of library networking under different patterns of development.

The discussion taking place in the Working Group confirmed the variety of library legislation in Europe and the different concerns in each of the countries present around the table. In Norway, the current challenge is copyright and how to secure user access through fees to be paid to publishers. In Flemish Belgium the current library law is an empty box: municipalities are theoretically obliged to have public libraries, but this obligation is simply stripped. The reform of municipalities and their aggregation into bigger administrative agencies is the argument normally used to delay law enforcement. “Libraries for everyone” was a successful campaign undertaken in the region which resulted in the production of an ad hoc bill; despite the momentum, things are now in a standstill.

Portugal does not yet have a library bill. With municipalities taking different directions in their development there may be room for a library law, which would be a great novelty for Portuguese libraries. Just as in all countries, copyright is the main concern in Denmark, even if a new development concerns the local responsibility for the production of the national bibliographies.

As for the Netherlands, three layers - national, provincial and municipal – intertwine in library developments and cooperation between the three may be problematic, in particular when special subjects - for instance, free of charge access to libraries - are at the centre of the discussion. There is no compulsory agreement to charge readers, although people under 18 are in general exempted. Digital library is another theme for cooperation with the national Library acting as coordinating agency for the three layers.

In Estonia there are a few questions which occupy the centre of stage. Apart from copyright, where the government is on hold in transposing the EU Directive into national legislation, a draft library law does not include non-book material as a library collection. When users request audio-books, libraries will have a hard time in complying with their requests. Another concern is e-books. Despite a recent EU Court of Justice judgement, e-books are taxed with an ordinary TVA, and not with the reduced TVA for books.

In Finland a new library law has been adopted. Quite hot at the moment is the problem of e-book acquisitions. Copyright is expensive for newspapers and there is no law regulating it. General Data Protection Regulation was a problem last year; it is no longer on the agenda.

In Denmark the library law is getting old and there is a need to update it in terms of support provided by municipalities. Digital lending rights is an expensive machinery but works well; it would be of paramount importance to implement it at European level. As it stands, it is against the four EU fundamental freedoms.

In conclusion, EBLIDA’s work should be focused on the identification of the features that are specific to national library bills, but could be of general interest for European libraries as a whole. Another trend worth noticing is that while the amount of libraries is decreasing, their size is getting bigger, and this could improve quality in library systems. Decentralizing library services could help to improve how libraries are perceived and deliver a brighter vision.

REPORT - Working Group Session 2 of the EBLIDA Conference:

Policy making for libraries

by Floriane-Marielle Job / Stefano Parise

In drafting its 2019-2022 Strategic Plan, EBLIDA approved a background paper which identifies four strands around which to develop its future action.

Policy making is one of them. It identifies the ways libraries can engage in implementing their mission in concrete terms. The library’s mission has shifted somewhat from access to information to serving people where the focus is on people instead of collections. The increasing focus on serving people’s puts the library into a more human perspective, where inclusion, cohesion, development and sustainability are key concepts.

In this particular perspective, for instance, UN SGD’s should be considered as a toolkit for linking the local and global dimension of the library action, that is to show how global issues can be adapted in a specific area to better correspond with local needs. Actually, this main shift requires a new approach to library evaluation, because “it has been found that library facts and situations do not seem to be reflected adequately in national statistics evaluating library performances at national and European level”.

UN SDG’s is a list of 17 goals which were set out for a sustainable human environment, and EBLIDA – as well as IFLA – believe that libraries are key institutions which contribute to fulfilling these goals. However, the library’s engagement requires a different approach to policy making. This is the reason why EBLIDA’s new Strategic Plan associates qualitative and quantitative library indicators linked with document circulation that are normally used to evaluate the use of libraries and their collection. The impact generated by the so called “social library” has not yet been assessed in a scientific way, namely in terms of social change, inclusion and democratic participation.

The possible approaches to qualitative evaluation was the topic of the working group held in Dublin during our 27th Annual Conference. The speaker was Florianne-Marielle Job, the Director of the “Puzzle” cultural center in Thionville (France). The topic of evaluation in the field of libraries is not new for the library profession. Nevertheless, we are used to measuring statistics in terms of user visits and media circulation. The shift we have seen in recent years has turned more towards qualitative measure of libraries the usage of this data as a tool for advocacy as well as raising awareness about libraries.

This can be explained by two main factors : the economic recession experienced by European countries during the post-2008 crisis led to a transformation of the way public policies operate (following new public management principles and focusing on impact studies). Another factor is the transformation of the missions of public libraries, which are increasingly involved in social inclusion matters, whether in the form of digital inclusion, environmental change and development issues within the SDG framework.

In Europe, libraries may claim that some 100 million visitors visit them every year. This figure, however high it may seem, can be dismissed with scorn by a biased politician, who may infer that similar and perhaps better results are achieved by social media, search engines and similar channels. A good example is the Thionville Library. The library and cultural center opened in 2016. That year, the new administration didn’t see the point of voting a budget to buy new documents arguing that old ones were enough and that nowadays people only go online. The new building was opened with a budget of less than 10,000 euros for a library as big as 4,500 meter square serving a city of 40,000 inhabitants (and a city area of 80,000).

Therefore, rather than in the intensity of use of library collections, library practices should be seen in terms of modalities of use. Impact studies aim to analyse the innovative, economic, social and human impact of libraries. In how many countries are similar studies conducted? How can we measure this impact, if there is no real framework at international level?

Floriane-Marielle Job presented a case story from her previous job in Pantin, a town of fifty thousand inhabitants in the Île-de-France region where she managed a program aimed to integrate vulnerable persons back to the job market. She showed how the evaluation of the rate of employment of people involved in the program was carried out and, through this way, the role and impact of library. The task required an approach to measurement using tools like as survey, direct observation, focus group, analysis of behavior, interviews, and lasted four months. The output was a portrait of the typical profile of the program user’s. The project was carried out without support of external professionals and raised some difficulties: the lack of resources, the difficulties in obtaining clean and reliable data, the choice of how to compare the results and on how to communicate them.

Florianne-Marielle Job ended her presentation showing the list of indicators prepared by the French Ministry of Culture to describe the cultural, educational and social impact of libraries. There is an important gap in library statistics. Impact studies can be a very good argument to keep up the investment. In Denmark, for instance, if libraries do not manage to reach 50% of the population, municipalities are likely to cut funding for libraries: you don’t use, you don’t like it. Libraries should never reach the point where people should be asked to mobilise for libraries’ existence.

Next we go on to how to use library statistics for advocacy purposes. Decision-makers are focused on why and how: they need to see the impact of their investments on libraries. Evaluation is a tool for advocacy and may create awareness for policy makers on certain topics (in France, for instance: opening hours and digital inclusion issues).

Methodology concerning evaluation includes the following:

Explain why you want to evaluate, taking into account that qualitative evaluation can be badly perceived within teams, what evaluation means and how to carry it out, knowing better our public and defending the interests of libraries;
Find out the criteria according to which you wish to evaluate and how to measure it, taking into account that data needs to be meaningful (relevance, coherence with objectives, efficiency and effectiveness), that the cultural project of the library should be linked to the patrons or to the local authority, and that there should be found ways to measure the gap between the desired effect and the observed reality (example : impact on education);
The nature of enquiries, which should be based on the observation of practices and usage patterns, on users with perhaps the definition of a focus users’ group, and tools through which to measure satisfaction;
The interpretation of the analysis: how to communicate your evaluation in an impactful way, the difficulty of qualitative analysis when you don’t have numbers to communicate.

A useful tool may be the introduction of impact registers. An impact register used in a small project taking place in France included, for instance: a) individual transformation; b) individual development; c) improvement of individual relations with the environment; d) enhancement of individual practices; e) revitalisation of networking and partnership relations.

The discussion underlined some of the best practices: in Spain, a national project on the library social and economic impact has been drafted by the Ministry of Culture and FESABID; it is now running in the Navarra region. The Norwegian Library Association collected and diffused stories from migrants and refugees in 2014-2015 as a tool to show how libraries can impact and change people lives.

The Pantin experience as well Norway’s “storytelling” show that qualitative assessment often lead toward results impossible to generalise, because they are related to individual lives. These remarks raised some comments and discussions on how to use this approach to create awareness among politicians: the political level asks for immediate evidence and, however powerful storytelling may be, results can be reached only where there is statistical evidence as well as staff trained for, and devoted to, advocacy.

The participants agreed that it is necessary to give the right data to the right persons and to present data and results in a many way with a variety of languages to engage different stakeholders and for the library cause. The best way is to show the added value provided by libraries, which is not (only?) measurable in economic terms (ROI – Return On Investments - applied to libraries doesn’t seem very productive) but especially in social ones – well-being, inclusion, civic engagement – it has been described by the US sociologist Eric Klinenberg in his book "Palaces for people".

The discussion was mainly focused on the relationship between qualitative measurement and advocacy, leaving in the shadow the value that this approach can have in integrating - not replacing! - the most traditional quantitative statistics as tools to support the library management.

The question "why qualitative evaluation matters for libraries?", opened by Florianne-Marielle Job, had only some of the possible answers during the workshop. In any case, the sharing of good practices, their dissemination also through multilingual translation, research and benchmarking are good approaches to help librarians to step forward the application of qualitative evaluation.

In conclusion: evaluation is a tool for advocacy and not for story-telling. It has been proven that it connects decision makers to the library in a different way. It would be ideal to have a person in charge with that mission and to build a relationship of trust with the policy maker. While advocacy serves information for policy-makers who have to build upon a political discourse at that very moment and place, story-tellers may tell about the resilience of the community due to the presence of a library and speaks about the notions of social infrastructure and human capital.

It should be EBLIDA’s role to share best practices and overcome language barriers.

REPORT - Working Group Session 3 of the EBLIDA Conference:

Library and their educational-social impact

by Anders Söderbäck

The session started with an introduction from Martin Berendse (Director, Public Library of Amsterdam, The Netherlands) on the strategy for Amsterdam public library. Most organisations, said Berendse, will tell you what they are doing and how they are doing it. A strategy needs to begin with the question of why you are doing what you do. Amsterdam has realised that a big part of what they do is providing a platform for their community, and therefore they need to challenge existing structures and collaborate around both content and service with many different partners.

The following discussion touched upon both parts of the Amsterdam public library strategy as well as EBLIDA, the social-educational impact of libraries and specifically open access.

Points raised in the discussion was that it is important to provide a future oriented story about the library, that ”open” is not necessarily the same as ”accessible”, and that the fear of libraries becoming obsolete in a digital world is often an impediment to changes that is necessary for making sure libraries continue to be relevant. Being open requires courage!

Another important issue EBLIDA need to consider is the importance of bringing the really small libraries into the discussion. Managers of public libraries in small municipalities often have a responsibility for a wide area of public services and may not have the time for visiting library conferences such as EBLIDA or IFLA, or working on new visions for public libraries.

Finally, it was concluded that while Open Access has a specific meaning and is a well definied concept for academic libraries, the concept is still relatively vague in a public library context. Different opinions were raised about whether public libraries should work with MOOCs or other kinds of freely available scientific content, whether the concept implied providing access to other kinds of cultural heritage created by the community the library serves, or whether we should open up traditionally closed library systems to make possible for other actors to build new services on top of the library platform. Since open access and the socio-educational impact is a part of the new EBLIDA strategy, this discussion will surely continue.

Validating the 2019-2022 EBLIDA Strategic Plan:
Results of a Survey

A sample of EBLIDA Members (ca 20 percent) was involved in a flash-survey prepared before the EBLIDA-NAPLE Conference (25th June 2019). The response rate is too small to be considered a consultation process. Nevertheless, it provides for a first insight of Members’ views on the 2019-2022 EBLIDA Strategic Plan and how they see EBLIDA’s future activities.

The flash survey listed 17 questions related to the 2019-2022 EBLIDA Strategic Plan and included a spectrum of issues going from emerging trends to copyright, from freedom of expression and free access in libraries to national cultural, educational and social policies. Questions implied a yes/no answer. In some cases recipients were requested to provide explanations. This article reports about their answers and related percentages.

First, let’s see how EBLIDA Members see the library’s future. All answers confirm that factors for library change are the four elements described in the Background + Working Papers prepared for the Conference: a) the struggle for an independent and democratic library space, b) copyright, c) the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and d) Artificial Intelligence. These elements are catalysts for change – in other words, they can accelerate or delay library change provided that library decision-makers are able to intercept them, re-orient library activities in an appropriate way and come out with innovative solutions. Not all of them, however, have the same weight. Copyright is considered the most influential factor (30 percent of the answers), followed by the struggle for an independent and democratic library space and UN SDGs (25 percent both), as well as Artificial Intelligence (10 percent). One respondent sees the future of libraries in data curation and another mentions multiple factors with no further specification.

Some of the questions aimed to understand the environment surrounding the recently approved Copyright Directive in the Digital Single Market. Half of the answers consider that results could have been better, while 30 percent are happy about the outcome of the European Parliament vote. Only 20 percent declare that they are unsatisfied with the outcome. No less than 85 percent report that their library authorities have no plans on how to transpose the Directive into national legislation. The Copyright Directive provides for mandatory exceptions for research organizations, cultural heritage institutions, cross-border teaching activities, while facilitating licensing and availability of out-of-commerce works by cultural heritage institutions. 25 percent of the respondents are well aware that exceptions and limitations to copyright create opportunities for libraries and that there is a need to participate in the implementation process; 60 percent of the answers say that there is full awareness among professionals about the advantages originated by exceptions and limitations, but they are not sure how to move forward.

Freedom of expression and free access to information are, or should be, principles guaranteed in library operations. Unfortunately, 30 percent of the responders declare that there have been violations to these principles in their own country in the last five years. In other words, authorities have tried to impose “recommended” lists of acquisitions or information filtering. Unanimously, all respondents agree that libraries should acquire Artificial Intelligence-based tools able to detect misleading information or fake news in order to promote pluralism and diversity of opinion. 84 percent consider that freedom of expression and access to information in libraries should be evaluated in libraries; only a tiny portion (16 percent) consider that this is not a good suggestion.

We already knew that many countries in Europe do not have library legislation. 74 percent of the respondents state that no library bill exists in their own country (but there may be overlapping answers since the questionnaire had no geographic basis). Interestingly enough, 65 percent of the interviewed feel happy of the library governance model applied in their own country.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are likely to be implemented especially, but not exclusively, in a “social” library. Social library is a widespread concept, according to 65 percent of the answers (although, as one respondent asserts, not all people share the same concept of “social” library). Statistics are, or should be, the main element supporting library policies at national and local levels. Interestingly enough, they shape library policies only to a certain extent. 70 percent of the answers refer to other elements for policy-making: library plans, for instance, or decisions taken by patrons and sponsors. When it comes to statistics, 42 percent consider that national statistics have a bigger weight, a little bit more than one third (37 percent) gives more importance to data internal to library; the remaining 21 percent prefers ad hoc enquiries.

LBY-LHY (Learn By Yourself, The Library will help You) is a concept encouraged by EBLIDA. It consists of promoting self-learning and widespread literacy to be acquired through MOOCs, Tutorials and other open access educational material. LBY-LHY is a concept that should create synergies between academic and public libraries with the first producing open access educational materials and the latter diffusing them for self-learning purposes. Almost two-third of public libraries have open access projects (for instance, within the national library system or through digitalization of public domain works). According to almost two third of the respondents, MOOCs, tutorials and other open access material for education purposes are aggregated in academic or other platforms of different nature.

Finally, cultural heritage. Legal deposit legislation for digital publications is enforced in many European countries; this does not mean that legal deposit is applied successfully. 80 percent of the answers claim that a legislation on legal deposit exists in their countries, but two responders are unsatisfied about its results. 53 percent of the respondents declare that there are digital preservation plans in their countries. Therefore, despite its controversial nature, Google Book projects may always be an option in the future.

Conference Photo Album

Dublin, Ireland
24-25 June 2019

Visit our Conference Album on Flickr (click on the photo)

Events and Dates

July/August

July 5
International Workshop on Semantic Big Data (SBD 2019)
Place: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Sponsor/Organizer: Organizing Committee

July 9 – 11
9th Iberian Meeting of the Association of Education and Research in Information Science of Ibero-America and the Caribbean (EDICIC): "Open Data and Digital Inclusion in the era of Big Data"
Place: Barcelona, Spain
Sponsor/Organizer: Organizing Committee

July 10
Workshop on Large Mathematics Libraries (LML 2019)
Place: Prague, Czech Republic
Sponsor/Organizer: Organizing Committee

July 11 – 12
Organization of knowledge for the exploitation of heritage collections and audiovisual archives (4th ISKO Spain Congress)
Place: Barcelona, Spain
Sponsor/Organizer: ISKO Spain Portugal

July 15 – 16
International Society for Knowledge Organization, UK Chapter (ISKO UK) Biennial Conference: "The Human Position in an Artificial World: Creativity, ethics and AI in knowledge organization"
Place: London, UK
Sponsor/Organizer: International Society for Knowledge Organization, UK Chapter (ISKO UK)

August 4 – 7
18th Nordic Literacy Conference and 21st European Conference on Literacy CPH 2019): "Learning from the Past for the Future: Literacy for All"
Place: Copenhagen, Denmark
Sponsor/Organizer: Organizing Committee

August 20 – 21
Librarians and information professionals as (pro)motors of change: immersing, including and initiating digital transformation for smart societies
Place: Zagreb, Croatia
Sponsor/Organizer: IFLA Standing Committee CPDWL (Continuing Professional Development and Workplace Learning) and Croatian Library Association

August 21
Library services for open science
Place: Vienna, Austria
Sponsor/Organizer: IFLA Science and Technology Libraries Section and Evidence for Global and Disaster Health (E4GDH) Special Interest Group

August 21
RDA: Resource Description and Access 2019
Place: Thessaloniki, Greece
Sponsor/Organizer: IFLA Cataloguing joint with Committee on Standards and the European RDA Interest Group (EURIG)

August 21 – 22
Academic & Research Libraries with Library Buildings & Equipment, Public Libraries, Metropolitan Libraries: "The evolving concept of “library” and its impact on building design"
Place: Rome, Italy
Sponsor/Organizer: IFLA Sections on Academic and Research Libraries, Library Buildings and Equipment, Metropolitan Libraries, and Public Libraries

August 21 – 22,
Local History and Genealogy in multiethnic societies, the impact of genetic mapping and digitized sources and Libraries as mediators, producers and partners in the development of community awareness and cultural understanding
Place: Belgrade, Serbia
Sponsor/Organizer: IFLA Local History and Genealogy Section and Asia and Oceania Section

August 21 – 22
Robots in Libraries: Challenge or Opportunity?
Place: Berlin, Germany
Sponsor/Organizer: IFLA Information Technology Section

August 22
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its impact on libraries and librarianship
Place: Corfu, Greece
Sponsor/Organizer: IFLA Knowledge Management Section

August 22
Metadata specialists in the machine age Place: Thessaloniki, Greece
Sponsor/Organizer: IFLA Cataloguing Section, Bibliography Section, IT Section and Subject Analysis and Access Section

August 22 – 23
More than numbers: Implementing new assessment methods for libraries
Place: Piraeus, Greece
Sponsor/Organizer: IFLA Statistics and Evaluation Section

August 22 – 23
Doing research in real-world settings: Telling your story and evaluating programs through social science research
Place: Pireas, Greece
Sponsor/Organizer: IFLA Journal Editorial Committee and the Social Science Libraries

August 22 – 23
Data intelligence in libraries: the actual and artificial perspectives
Place: Frankfurt, Germany
Sponsor/Organizer: IFLA Big Data Special Interest Group

August 22 – 23
Recruiting and managing the new generation of employees to attract new markets and create new services
Place: Samos, Greece
Sponsor/Organizer: IFLA Management and Marketing Section

August 22 – 24
14th International Conference on Digital Information Management (ICDIM 2019)
Place: Dublin, Ireland
Sponsor/Organizer: Organizing Committee

August 23
International and local development that enhance scholarly communication in the biomedical and social sciences
Place: Athens, Greece
Sponsor/Organizer: IFLA Health and Biosciences Libraries Section

August 23
Grey Literature: Scholarly Communication in a Digital World
Place: Athens, Greece
Sponsor/Organizer: IFLA Serials and Other Continuing Resources Section

August 24 – 30
IFLA 85th World Library and Information Congress (WLIC 2019)
Place: Athens, Greece
Sponsor/Organizer: International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA)

August 26 – 29
21st International Conference on Big Data Analytics and Knowledge Discovery - DaWaK 2019
Place: Linz, Austria
Sponsor/Organizer: Organizing Committee

August 26 – 29
10th International Workshop on Biological Knowledge Discovery from Big Data (BIOKDD'19)
Place: Linz, Austria
Sponsor/Organizer: Organizing Committee

August 30 – 31
Transforming LIS education for professionals in a global information world: digital inclusion, social inclusion and lifelong learning
Place: Vatican City, Italy
Sponsor/Organizer: IFLA Library Theory and Research Section

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EBLIDA (European Bureau of Library Information and Documentation Associations) · Prins Willem-Alexanderhof 5 · The Hague, 2595 BE · Netherlands