Libraries call for discussion on future role

Date: 08/01/1998

By Peter Chapman

PUBLIC libraries across the EU are calling on the European Commission to stop dragging its feet and launch the debate on their future in the information society originally promised for last year.

They say a public debate on how the Union should tackle issues such as the preservation of work, privacy, copyright liability and universal access to information is vital as the online age begins to challenge the traditional role of public libraries.

But they fear the planned Green Paper on the issue has been pushed off the Commission's agenda just as individual EU member states are considering their own ways of preparing their public libraries to meet the demands of the digital age.

"It was planned to have been published already in late summer and we really need a debate on the issues raised at the European level as soon as possible," insisted Barbara Schleihagen, of the European Bureau of Library, Information and Documentation Associations (EBLIDA).

"This is because member states are currently coming up with a lot of national policies specifically on the role of public libraries in the information society, and now is just the right time to have wide EU consultations."

Schleihagen claimed that the Commission had put the libraries issue on the back burner because it preferred instead to concentrate on launching a Green Paper debate on access to public information, and a policy paper on the technical aspects of geographical information, such as satellites.

EU sources insist that the Commission still wants to launch the libraries paper, which has been gathering dust since early last year, but admit it is "not seen as a priority issue" among top officials.

Once the debate does eventually get under way, key issues likely to figure in it will include staff training, methods of preserving copies of endangered material and the extent to which new content made available electronically should be covered by 'legal deposit rules' requiring the deposit of minimum numbers of each published book in national libraries.

The Union is also likely to look across the Atlantic to the United States to examine the steps already being taken there in recognition of the impact which information technology can have on education.

"America has shown the way forward. For example, they have been discussing how libraries and schools can gain favourable access to the Internet," said one source.

EU libraries have attracted more than 30 million ecu of funding in the 'telematics' tranche of the Union's current Fourth Framework Research and Development Programme.

Officials say responses to the debate, which will be launched by the Green Paper when it is eventually published, are likely to play a key role in determining how the EU's Fifth R&D Framework Programme will target the libraries sector.