Sue Welsh, PubliCA Webmaster, introduces the Concerted Action for Public Libraries. The Citizen's Gateway will be a regular column in Exploit Interactive.
PubliCA, the Concerted Action for public libraries, was two years old at the beginning of the year. Those not familiar with its work may be asking: what is a concerted action? and why do public libraries need one? This article will seek to answer those questions by describing PubliCA's aims, achievements and forthcoming a ctivities. This is the first in a regular series of articles focusing on European public libraries and PubliCA activities.
A concerted action is a Libraries Programme mechanism designed to create a human network united by shared concerns, for the stimulation of action in pursuit of common goals. Concerted actions provide cohesion across projects and countries for issues with wide ranging significance such a copyright and standards.
Public libraries became an issue because of their past lack of engagement, compared to other library sectors, in European telematics activities. The Public Libraries in the Information Society study, set up to examine the challenges that are experienced by public libraries predicatably found that they encounter a lack of funding, technical and IT skills amongst staff and training opportunities, but equally that there is uncertainty about policy and a lack of overall strategy for development in this area [1].
A key element in all these aims is dissemination and exchange of information, about telematics research activities to the libraries, about the libraries needs and activities to each other and about the activities of public libraries to the world in general and key decision makers in particular.
PubliCA has established a mailing list and a web site as important dissemination tools (see below). In addition, as the definition of concerted action above implies, these aims are realised through PubliCA's human network. Since January 1997 PubliCA has organised three face to face workshops, each attracting 35 or more librarians from European Union members states and Central and Eastern Europe.
After the most recent of these, held in Leuven, Belgium in August 1998, the Leuven Communique was produced and agreed by all participants. Addressing the issue of the role of public libraries in the information society the Communique stressed their importance to democracy and citizenship, income and social development, lifelong learning and cultural and linguistic diversity. The participants called for national and federal public library policy to improve citizen’s access to information, help citizens to benefit from the information society, work to remove the disparities between access in different regions and meet the cost of extending library services to the information society. The Communique has since been translated into 14 languages and distributed widely in paper and electronic format [3].
Looking forward, in 1999 PubliCA will organise a major conference on public libraries, focusing on national policies and their practical application. This year will also see the realisation of PubliCA's training placements scheme, matching expressed training needs of senior library staff in the Central and Eastern European states with libraries in the West willing to offer training.
The PubliCA web site [4] is an excellent source of information about the project and is also used to disseminate information from the projects extensive network of country contacts. It can be used as a source of contacts for public libraries thinking of embarking on new projects, and as a source of information about public libraries in European countries. Recently, a new section describing previous and ongoing EU funded projects involving public libraries has been added. This column will feature regular reports culled from the PubliCA web site and other PubliCA sources covering all aspects of public libraries activity in Europe - stay tuned!
PubliCA is lead by a consortium of European public libraries and related organisations, and supported by the European Union under Framework Programme 4. Enquiries and suggestions regarding this column should be sent to Sue Welsh (swelsh@library.croydon.gov.uk).If you have any comments on this article, please contact the editors (exploit-editor@ukoln.ac.uk).
For citation purposes:
Sue Welsh, "
Public Libraries in Europe: Meet PubliCA," Exploit Interactive, issue 1,
10 April 1999
URL: <http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue1/citizens/>
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