CORDIS Archive

Telematics for Libraries - Projects

PUBLICA

Updated: 01 JAN 2001

Additional information is available from the PUBLICAWeb site. (PUBLICA)

Concerted Action

This is a concerted action across all action lines

Call Topic(s)

Not applicable

Project description

PubliCA helps support development and enhancement of public library services throughout the European Union. An extension (PubliCA-CEE) covers the 10 accession countries of Central and Eastern Europe (Cⅇ). Public Libraries are essential information resources for their communities, sustaining democratic opportunities and creating social cohesion. PubliCA will enable a coherent approach to the development of new services to meet the needs of the citizens in the Information Society, while ensuring that the new services are integrated with traditional public library services.

Organisational approach

PubliCA supports development and enhancement of public library services throughout the European Union. Public Libraries are essential information resources for Cⅇ communities, sustaining democratic opportunities and creating social cohesion. PubliCA enables a coherent approach to the development of new services to meet the needs of the citizens in the Information Society, while ensuring that the new services are integrated with traditional public library services.

The main tasks of the action are:

• Designing and implementing a strategy that integrates awareness raising, knowledge transfer and training for public libraries regarding opportunities within, and results from, the Telematics for Libraries and other relevant EC programmes.
• Collecting, validating and disseminating relevant economic and organisational information to enable public libraries to choose and implement technologies, tools and products relevant to the integration of services.
• Creating a sustainable infrastructure providing a long term forum for public libraries across Europe as a basis for influential action directed at national and European policy makers.
• Co-ordinating actions which can reduce the disparity between public libraries across Europe.

Key issues

The main issues include:

• Interaction with, and encouragement of, the take up of the recommendations of the study "Public Libraries and the Information Society".
• Awareness raising and information exchange about the strategic potential of public libraries in the development of the Information Society and about actual ongoing public library projects and their results.
• Extending the action - based on consultation and infrastructure established in phase I - to new alliances, other Member States and the Cⅇ accession countries.
• Defining strategy, actions and studies.

Actions and Results

Typical of the results achieved were:

A workshop, held in Leuven, Belgium in August 1998, attended by senior library managers from the EU and accession countries of the Cⅇ, resulting in the "Leuven Communique" urging the European Parliament to adopt the "Report on the Green Paper on the Role of Libraries in the Modern World" (written by the EP Committee on Culture, Youth, Education and Media).

PubliCA participated in the EU - Egyptian Seminar "Public Libraries and the Information Society held in Cairo, Egypt, in December 1998. ( The summary of the paper given by Jan van Vaerenbergh at this conference is available from our pages).

The European Public Library Map was produced in the second Annual Status Report of the project.

Impact

PubliCA phase 1 created wider participation by public libraries in the Telematics for Libraries Programme. The extension in time (to 30 months) and space (to the 10 Cⅇ accession countries) has contributed to the further development and enhancement of public library services across Europe, ensuring that their potential as essential information resource providers is fully harnessed and recognised in the development of the Information Society.
The results from PubliCA will, through optimising concertation between relevant initiatives, enable co-ordination of the development of new services - and their integration with traditional services - to meet the needs of the citizens.
PubliCA helped ensure that public li-braries played an active role in the Libraries Programme and benefited fully from the results of its research projects.

Coordinator

Other Partners