Let’s rethink - Enable Libraries to provide Smart Access to Culture, Information and Knowledge!

An important result from the EBLIDA conference

 is The Aarhus Declaration. Take down the digital barriers! 

Enable Libraries to provide Smart Access to Culture,

 Information and Knowledge! See it here

Design thinking, 24/7 information accessible everywhere, from all devices, hyper-connected citizens, the Internet of things, big data, smarts cities, information overload, artificial intelligence, Androids, mass-digitisation, books, music, movies, literacy, trans-literacy, e-books etc. Those are some of the key words that are used in our daily environment and are having an impact upon the ways in which librarians work, writes EBLIDA in the invitation to their 25th anniversary conference.

Besides these usual suspects, the global shift towards digitisation disrupts traditional ways of working. It offers new opportunities for us to better serve our patrons but it also presents new challenges, as new business models compete with the services that libraries offer.

2017 marks the 25th anniversary of EBLIDA. Since 1992 and the date of its inception, the environment in which libraries exist has dramatically changed. It is not a single change but a multiple that have impacted on the information sector at different levels and these factors together have combined to accelerate the transformation of our institutions.

25 years is therefore the right time to rethink.

Let’s rethink is the actual theme of Aarhus, European Capital for Culture 2017, and it seemed fitting to adopt this motivating theme and make it ours after 25 years of existence to rethink our work, our mission and our impact through a one-day conference on 4 May 2017.

Ultimately, European society (and more broadly, society as a whole) is facing new challenges in the form of unemployment, illiteracy, migration and terrorism to name but a few, while communication from one end of the earth to the other has never been easier.

In this ever evolving environment where human attention is now a scarce commodity, librarians need to rethink their role and how their missions can benefit citizens.

I hope we call on the politicians in Europe to Recognise libraries as Europe’s knowledge, culture and learning institutions to all the citizens.

It's always hard to predict the outcome of a conference, but I hope that we can strengthen libraries in their task of providing citizens of Europe unhindered access to valid information and knowledge in a digital society. An update existing copyright framework to secure libraries legally based activities by matching expanding existing analogue exceptions and limitations into a digital context as part of the Digital-Single-Market process.

Se more at www.eblida.org