[fse-esf] Re: [lib-esf2008] Report from Librarians network meeting

[Mikael Book]

Dear all, 

I enclose the report from the Librarians' network meeting at the EPA in
Stockhol and attach it as a file in word-format. The network has an own
mailing list (lib-esf2008 at sympa.kaapeli.fi) which may be subscribed via
http://sympa.kaapeli.fi/ . Please spread the word about this network via
your librarian friends and remember to tell about it to the staff in
your local public library.

 All the best.

  - Mikael Böök


LIBRARIANS' AND LIBRARY ACTIVISTS' NETWORK MEETING
at the Stockholm EPA 14-16 September, 2007

Venue:
Årsta Folkets hus , the Båven room.

Purposes: 
Engage library and information professionals (LIS) in the process of the
Social Forum.  Build a European network of LIS around the issue of the
Public Lending Right. Plan library-related activities (conference,
workshop)  for ESF 2008. Last, but not least, further the documentation of
Social Forums in libraries.

Participants in the network meeting: 
Maria Bergstrand - Librarian , Stockholm,  Sweden 
Mikael Böök - Library activist, Pernå-Pernaja, Finland
Francesca Cairoli - Milano, Italy
Marilena Cortesini - Librarian , Cologno Monzese, Italy
Anders Ericson - Journalist and librarian, Norway 
Peter Gustavsson -  Politician (Social Democrat), Uppsala, Sweden 
Anna-Lotta Jadinge - Librarian, Uppsala, Sweden 
Arwid Lund - Librarian, Världsbiblioteket, Sweden
Maja Pelling - Librarian, Uppsala, Sweden

Contributed to the meeting via the mailing list: 
Mayo Fuster, Researcher, Spain (info on the open eLibrary)
Siv Wold-Karlsen, Librarian, Sweden (report on IFFRO conference in Paris)
 



Librarians Network Meeting on Saturday 15 September:
 
14.30- 16.00 Presentations

The Political Library According to Ture Edbom (Anna-Lotta Jadinge). -
Public libraries are natural partners to social movements and political
parties. Librarians should be aware of the political mission of the
libraries and regard the library users as citizens (not only as
customers). Swedish Social Democratic politician Ture Edbom promoted these
ideas the mid 1970ies. His vision of the political library won much
acclaim for a couple of years but was later abandoned and/or forgotten.
Are there political libraries today? 

Campaign on the Public Lending Right (PLR)  directive of the European
Union.   (Marilena Cortesini). -  In 1992 the EU Commission introduced a
new right of creators and publishers to get compensation for the public
lending of the works they had published.  However, the implementation of
the directive on PLR started only ten years later, in 2002.  Existing
culturally motivated library remuneration systems  where condemned by the
EU Commission, and some countries where taken to court for not
implementing the PLR directive 'correctly'. 
Librarians and authors (incl. Nobel Prizes Dario Fo and José Saramago) in
Italy, Spain and Portugal have protested vigorously against the PLR
directive, arguing that it turns the act of reading into a commercial
transaction. The PLR directive is a serious threat to the public librarary
service.  Librarians all over Europe (incl.  non-member countries of the
EU) are more or less aware of the problem, but they have remained passive.
A European campaign is needed.

The Library Takes up the Case -  (Anders Ericson). -  The principle of the
independence of the public library is affirmed in  declarations by, for
instance, UNESCO. But is the library still practicing this principle? The
deterioration of the  media has created an information vacuum, which
should be filled by the library. "The Library Takes up the
Case"(Biblioteket tar saka) is the name of a project where librarians
create websites  with background documents and collections of articles on
local issues. One such case is the blog about the new civil airport which
is constructed in Rygge near Oslo.

Världsbiblioteket  (The World Library) of Stockholm ( Maria Bergstrand,
Arwid Lund). - The World Library is a special library in Solidaritetshuset
where many solidarity organisations have their offices and meeting-rooms.
The library  has a collection of books and journals by African, Asian and
Latin American authors. It has plans to build an open archive on the
internet, built on the creative commons licenses and protocols of the Open
Access initiative in the academic world. 

A library strategy for the social forum process (Mikael Böök). -  The
public library and the social forum have things in common: both are open
spaces, both are cosmopolitical and the future of both depends on their
ability to construct the internet as library and public sphere.
Librarians and library activists have initiated (in Mumbai, Bamako,
Nairobi, Atlanta) documentation and presentation of the social forum
process in public libraries, in  order to to preserve the memory and to
give the public access to information about the social forum. Librarians
can contribute to the classification and structuring of the thousands of
activities at the social forum events and in between them. The social
forum should renew itself through cooperation with libraries, and
viceversa: the libraries should reform themselves through the processes of
the social forum. 

  

16.30- 18.30 Network building an planning of activities at the ESF 2008


Plans and tasks agreed upon:

1. Documentation activities during the ESF 2008. - The Jo Labadie
Collection (Univ, of Michigan library) showed interest for documents from
the US Social Forum in Atlanta and from the WSF. Arwid Lund will find out
which librariy/archive in Sweden may like to get involved. 

2. Network building
a. The mailing list lib-esf2008 at sympa.kaapeli.fi is a basic tool ;  the
list is subscribed via http://sympa.kaapeli.fi.
b. Set up a wiki for information and campaigning around the PLR directive.
(Mikael Böök, Marilena Cortesini)
c. Set up a calendar of library-related events 2007-2008, where we can
inform about the social forum and get the library community interested in
ESF 2008.
d. Contact library associations etc. in the own country, and international
library associations (EBLIDA, IFLA and IFLA-FAIFE) but also libraries and
librarians from Murmansk to Istanbul.
e. Guarantee the involvement in the preparations of progressive groups
like Arbeitskreis kritischer BibliothekarInnen (Akribie), Bibliotek i
samhälle (BiS), Information for Social Change (ISC).
f. Cooperate with the Memory Project of the social forum, with the webteam
of the ESF,  and with the open e-Library. Contact person:  Mayo Fuster.
g. And more.

3. Conferences, workshops, panel discussions at ESF 2008  
a. NON PAGO DI LEGGERE. This will be the name of one conference plus panel
discussion with the purpose to inform the public about the EU directive on
Public Lending Right (PLR) and about the critique against it which has
been formulated by librarians and authors. (The Italian phrase means 'I
will not pay for reading', and it might also mean 'I won't stop reading').
Preparations to be co-ordinated by Marilena Cortesini.
b. THE POLITICAL LIBRARY. This will be the theme of a grassroots
librarians workshop about active librarianship in a period of
globalisation and transition. Preparations to be co-ordinated by
Anna-Lotta Jadinge.

Reported by Mikael Böök <book at kaapeli.fi> gsm +358-445511324




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