Monthly Archives: November 2021

The 10-Minute International Librarian #72: Be able to explain the costs of not having libraries

It’s normal to try and be positive in advocacy!

Decision-makers will often hear people complaining about not getting what they want, or asking them to come up with solutions.

It is understandable, then, that they are keen to find stakeholders who, instead of offering problems, bring answers.

However, it is always useful to be able to make clear that institutions and communities stand to lose if libraries are cut, or disappear altogether.

This can be a great way of focusing minds, and avoiding worst-case scenarios.

So for our 72nd 10-Minute International Librarian exercise, be able to explain the costs of not having libraries.

Think about what it could mean for education, research or culture. What opportunities would not be open for different members of your community?

What long term consequences could there be for development?

As ever, make sure you can make your arguments clearly and simply, so that they are easy to understand!

Do share your strongest arguments in the comments box below.

Good luck!

 

This idea relates to the IFLA Strategy! Key Initiative 1.1: Show the power of libraries in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals

As we publish more ideas, you will be able to view these using the #10MinuteInternationalLibrarian tag on this blog, and of course on IFLA’s Ideas Store! Do also share your ideas in the comments box.

 

A Right to Be Remembered: A Task for Copyright Laws

Ever since the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union to allow people to request the removal of articles that violate their right to a private life from search results about them, the notion of a ‘Right to be Forgotten’ as entered the language.

It is not uncontroversial. Supporters highlight the possibility it offers for people to leave past minor misdemeanours behind them (especially once they have served their time), or to protect themselves against damage to their reputation, for example from allegations or charges which were never proven to the true.

Opponents worry that such provisions can be used to make it more difficult to find out about the past activities of people in power, and even the deletion of records (not just their removal from search results). The fact that decisions as to who has this right are effectively left to private companies also worries some.

In parallel, however, some commentators have pointed out the relevance of thinking about a ‘right to be remembered’.

This blog starts by exploring some of the different ways in which this has been talked about already as an idea, before underlining its relevance in a digital age, and finally setting out how this could manifest itself in copyright laws. In doing so, it covers much of the same ground as the UNECO 2015 Recommendation on Documentary Heritage.

 

From Forgetting to Remembering

Soon after the idea of the ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ appeared, that of a ‘Right to Be Remembered’ also popped up.

For some, the concept was an excuse to justify the collection of data about customers in order to offer them an ‘improved’ customer experience on websites.

However, already in 2015, Irina Raicu from the Markkula Centre for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University in 2015 talked about being remembered as a  ‘privilege’, raising the idea of the importance of ensuring that individual stories are not lost. In particular, she highlights the importance of ensuring that the names of Holocaust victims where known, in order to promote awareness of what happened.

An article published by people involved in the High Atlas Foundation went further, suggesting that creating a right for communities to protect and preserve their heritage, and have autonomy over its safeguarding should be added to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In this, it made the connection with the practices of many Western institutions in the past in appropriating elements of heritage from other cultures (often seen as inferior), and supported efforts at restitution.

This work does also highlight the issue, increasingly recognised in the library field, of the need to reconsider practices that risked treating knowledge and experience from much of the world and its populations, consciously or unconsciously, as inferior. In doing so, this has led to a situation where some groups’ lives have been more easily forgotten, allowing our image of the past to be distorted.

In parallel, we also have more conscious efforts to eradicate the experience of individuals or groups from history altogether, either through the altering of existing records, or the deliberate destruction of materials that testify to people’s existence.

In short, we can argue that individuals and groups should have the possibility to be remembered, and their experiences and contributions valued by those who come after.

Indeed, this could be seen as an element of the cultural rights offered by international law; future generations risking seeing these rights jeopardised if the memory of those who have come before – their ancestors – is simply wiped away.

 

New Possibilities

The emergence of the internet, and its spread to a greater and greater share of the global population have meant that there are now more opportunities than ever before to share stories, ideas and experiences.

It is no longer the case that only those with access to a printing press and a distribution network can share their ideas, experiences, and knowledge widely, through websites, blogs, social media, and beyond.

However, the possibility to be heard today is not the same thing as the possibility to be heard in future. The internet is a poor preserver of material. Materials published there, or otherwise in digital form, can easily be lost, and so the knowledge and experience of their creators forgotten.

Ironically, in parallel, in a world so focused on digital access, the same fate also risks befalling physical works, which are less easily found and accessed. And in the meanwhile, the intensification of the consequences of climate change risk seeing whole collections of memory destroyed.

This is where libraries, archives and museums can step in, with a mandate to ensure as broad a preservation of the experience of today for the benefit of tomorrow. This is a key social function, an investment today in ensuring the possibility for future generations to learn, to carry out research, and to enjoy their cultural rights.

In other words, the right to be remembered depends on having libraries, archives, museums and other heritage actors and institutions, tasked with preserving the memory of all cultures, libraries, archives and museums, and giving access to it.

It is clearly not something that can be left to the market. We cannot put a price on the value of memory or of the cultural rights it supports, just as we cannot charge our future selves for the cost of this work today. We need empowered libraries, archives and museums to fil the gap.

Clearly, this is work that needs to be taken forwards in line with ethical principles, in particular as regards Indigenous peoples, with collections built and managed in a way that respects the interests of the groups affected. There is growing awareness of how this can be done, in parallel with wider efforts to ensure that collections practices reflect the communities our institutions serve.

 

Acting for a Right to Be Remembered

A number of the elements that need to be in place for a Right to Be Remembered are already covered above – heritage institutions with the resources necessary to safeguard the knowledge and experience of the present and past, as well as collections policies and practices that promote inclusion while also respecting the interests of Indigenous groups in particular.

Yet beyond this, there is also the question of how to ensure that copyright laws do not end up representing a barrier to the right to be remembered.

This is a distinct possibility. Copyright already applies to works regardless of whether there is any intention to exploit them commercially. Even for works which are produced with a market in mind, for all but a tiny minority the term of protection extends far beyond their commercial lifespan.

In fulfilling their mission to defend the right to be remembered, libraries, archives and museums do risk running into blockages, being forbidden to take preservation copies of in-copyright works, in the most appropriate format, unless they seek permission (which may be impossible) or pay remuneration (which diverts resources away from the work of preservation itself).

This is the case in the 70% of countries which do not offer libraries, archives and museums a guarantee of being able to preserve works using whatever technology is most appropriate. Only among the 27 countries of the European Union is there (supposed to be) a clear possibility to form cross-border partnerships for preservation, helping ensure most effective use of resources and expertise.

As highlighted above, simply leaving the Right to Be Remembered to the market is unlikely to be an effective strategy. We tend to discount the value of access to knowledge for future generations, and of course even just the potential of earning revenues on a work in the short-term may prove too strong a temptation for rightholders.

Importantly, the Right to Be Remembered cannot be effective if works containing memory are locked away. While, of course, the Right to Be Remembered should not in itself mean the loss of the right to exploit a work commercially, it is meaningless if it is not accompanied by the possibility for people to access this memory. Cultural rights do not only apply to works that are old enough to have fallen into the public domain.

As the UNESCO 2015 Recommendation notes as early as its title, preservation and access must go hand in hand.

In short, if we are to take the Right to Be Remembered seriously, we need to ensure that institutions charged with making this right a reality themselves are guaranteed the possibility under copyright law to do whatever is necessary to preserve knowledge and experience, and to provide access to this knowledge in ways that do not jeopardise commercial exploitation.

Which policies matter? Analysing the results of the IFLA regional advocacy priorities study (Part 1)

IFLA’s Regional Advocacy Priorities Study was designed in order to start conversations about where we focus in our advocacy, and how we do it.

It is intended, in particular, to stimulate reflection about the focus of coordinated, national-level efforts, such as those carried out by associations, and of course about how IFLA and its different structures can support them.

This reflection is worthwhile. While IFLA underlines strongly that advocacy is something that individuals can do without needing extensive training or to dedicate a huge amount of time to, it is clear that full campaigns or other efforts to change policies and laws do require investment of effort.

We need to make sure we’re picking impactful areas on which to focus, and then mobilising the energy of library and information workers and supporters!

Determining what these areas are can depend on a number of factors.

A first is simply how big an issue is in general. It’s obviously difficult to mobilise efforts anyway around an issue that really isn’t particularly important, but also, if a change in law or policy isn’t going to have a major impact, it may not deserve much energy.

A second is what impact libraries can expect to have. This is perhaps more important even than the first factor. It can be easy to want to act on every issue that hits the headlines, but we need to be realistic about whether there is a ‘library angle’, and so whether libraries getting involved could make a difference.

A third is whether you have the ability to take the steps needed to make a difference. There may be many important issues where, with unlimited resources, libraries could effect change across the field. However, this is not the case for any of us, and so choices need to be made.

In the Library Advocacy Priorities Study, we therefore asked respondents to indicate which broad policy issues they felt mattered most as areas of focus for library advocacy.

We picked the below – these are of course just one way of ‘cutting the cake’, and if you want to reproduce this exercise in your own association or institution, you may want to do it differently. You may want more detail on some issues, or group other issues together. You could also use the division of policies among ministries in your government, or other structures!

Library laws: this refers to legislation setting out the status, rights, and responsibilities of libraries at a high level. Such laws can in particular establish obligations on governments at different levels to set up libraries, and the services they should offer.

Library staff: this refers to laws and policies concerning library staff, including qualifications. This is a recurrent question in many countries, where there can be pressures to remove qualification requirements for certain posts, or a shortage of qualified librarians.

Copyright and OA: this refers to laws and policies around copyright and open access. Such laws can either enable, restrict or create uncertainty around what libraries are able to do with their collections. They can also include rules obliging open access publication of research results and data, or funding for it.

Literacy and Reading: this refers to laws, policies, and strategies concerning literacy and reading promotion. Some countries also have strategies for promoting books, which can include libraries too of course.

Education and lifelong learning: this refers to laws policies, and strategies for learning, in particular adult learning. Libraries are often active skills providers, as well as being gateways towards more formal offerings.

Digital inclusion and connectivity: this refers to laws, policies, and strategies focused on ensuring that everyone can get online and make the most of the internet. It includes work on connectivity, but also skills and arguably content, plus the rules by which the internet itself operates.

Heritage and culture: this refers to laws, policies, and strategies around preservation of and access to heritage and support for contemporary culture and creativity. It can cover funding for this work too, and of course efforts to ensure that libraries are seen as an essential cultural infrastructure.

Legal deposit: this refers to the policies and laws that give deposit libraries (often national libraries) the right to receive copies of a range of works, in different formats, including for example to creation national bibliographies, or simply to maintain the historical record.

Social inclusion: this refers to policies and strategies for tackling inequalities and exclusion, for example to support potentially marginalised groups to participate and fulfil their potential. It can also, potentially, extend to wider efforts to promote social cohesion.

Division of responsibility: this refers to efforts to ensure that the division of responsibility for libraries between levels of government works in a way that best enables our institutions

So what did we find in terms of where priorities lay, bearing in mind that the number of responses (around 400) is far from enough to allow for any definitive conclusions?

Here are three initial ideas:

Does overall level of development correlate with the policy focus of library advocacy?: an initial thing that stands out from the results for all respondents (see p37 of the report), are the difference between richer regions, and those with a higher share of developing states.

Regional Advocacy Priorities Survey - level of priority of different policy areas by region (all respondents)

The three regions with generally higher incomes (North America, Europe, and Asia-Oceania, or at least East Asia and the Pacific) placed digital inclusion first on their list of priorities. This makes sense, in the light of an increasing focus on digital inclusion as a key for delivering wider policy goals, such as combatting inequalities.

Indeed, as these countries move to do more and more using digital tools (education, health, eGovernment), the need to find solutions to engage people who are unconnected grows (as the pandemic has illustrated). In addition, with many of these countries also risking losing some lower skilled jobs to foreign competition, the need to get more people into higher-skilled, digital work grows.

Engagement in such programmes can of course be associated with greater funding and support for libraries.

The two ‘middling’ regions – Latin America and the Caribbean and the Middle East and North Africa focus rather on library laws, policies and staff. This may reflect a need to ensure that libraries are able to fulfil more fundamental roles, and concern about funding in general. Indeed, governments in these region may face budgetary pressures that can lead them to under-fund libraries.

In this situation, it makes sense to focus first of all on how to ensure that libraries have a strong starting point, and then only later look to branch out to other policy areas where there may be possibilities to secure funding that complements core budgets.

Finally, Sub-Saharan Africa places literacy and reading first. With almost 40% of the population counted as illiterate, it is logical that libraries would see this as a key area of focus, not least given that a more literate population potentially also of course increases demand for and interest in libraries. At the same time, literacy and reading policies can serve to increase the profile of libraries, and provide them with the funding needed to operate.

The size of associations may be linked to different areas of focus: the study made sure to ask respondents whether they were answering on behalf of associations, institutions or just themselves, and what size of association or institution they represented.

Regional Advocacy Priorities Survey - level of priority of different policy areas bysize of associationThe logic here was in line with the third reflection above – do you have the capacity to make a difference. Smaller, general associations could be less focused on more ‘technical’ issues, and find it easier to engage more general efforts to ensure that libraries are properly supported.

The results do seem to vindicate this assumption to some extent. For smaller associations, the highest scoring policy area was library laws, which can be seen as a more general topic (or at least one where there may not be so much need to develop technical expertise), although this is followed by copyright and digital inclusion. Copyright tends to be a more technical area, while advocacy around digital inclusion can stretch from general calls for support to more technical elements, such as setting up programmes, engaging around internet regulation and beyond).

Meanwhile, larger associations themselves place copyright first, perhaps reflecting the fact that they are better placed to develop specific expertise. Digital inclusion comes next, and then education and lifelong learning. As above advocacy around digital inclusion can be both general and technical – the same arguably goes for education as well.

In particular in Europe (p49), the picture is clearer still – small associations focus on library laws and staffing most, while larger ones see copyright, digital inclusion, and education and lifelong learning as most essential.

Institutions globally tend to focus on copyright and digital inclusion: looking at the global level across the issues that matter most for institutions (p52), regardless of size, copyright and open access, and digital inclusion come out on top. This makes sense, given the impact that policies in these areas can have on the daily operation of institutions, determining the programmes they can run, and what they can do with their collections.

Regional Advocacy Priorities Survey - level of priority of different policy areas by size of institutionLarger institutions place heritage and culture in third place, while medium-sized ones look at education and literacy, and smaller ones give a bigger role to library laws and staffing.

Regional Advocacy Priorities Survey - levels of priority of different policy areas for institutions, by regionBreaking this down regionally, a different picture emerges though. In Asia-Oceania, Europe and North America, it is again copyright and digital inclusion that come first. However in Sub-Saharan Africa, legal deposit is the priority (it is possible that a large share of respondents were national libraries for example), while in the Middle East and North Africa, education and lifelong learning comes top, followed by library staffing. This may reflect a priority on enabling school and academic libraries to thrive.

Finally, Latin America and the Caribbean institutions again see library laws and staffing as being most important, mirroring the results for all respondents in the region (set out above).

In terms of the issues that come third, interesting features include the high result for social inclusion among North American institutions, and for divisions of responsibility for libraries between levels of government in Sub-Saharan Africa. Literacy also features in the top four or five response in all regions except Europe.

 

Watch out next week for an analysis of the results about advocacy activities!

The 10-Minute International Librarian #71: Reassess a service or activity

While the missions and values of libraries are lasting, the way in we deliver them varies over time.

New technologies and tools can obviously trigger change, from allowing some activities to be automated, freeing up time for other work, to opening new possibilities to achieve impact.

User expectations can evolve, for example to expect services to be faster or online, or on the contrary to value more the opportunity to meet and do things in person.

New challenges can emerge where libraries have a role to play, bringing our institutions into new areas of work and focus.

And the nature of the communities that we serve themselves also changes, with population ageing, and people moving in and out of areas.

All of these mean that the basis on which services and activities in libraries were designed in the past may no longer be optimal today.

So for our 71st 10-Minute International Librarian exercise, reassess a service or activity.

Remind yourself of its goals and intended impacts on communities, and think about whether there is any reason to look again.

Could there be more effective ways of achieving these goals? Are there other types of activity which it would be better to focus on?

It’s of course perfectly possible that you continue with what you are doing now – at least then you will know that you’re doing it for a reason.

But maybe you’ll find an opportunity to save time and resources in order to be able to do other things that will bring benefits.

Let us know about when you have reassessed services or activities, and the results, in the comments box below!

Good luck!

 

This idea relates to the IFLA Strategy! 2.2 Deliver high quality campaigns, information and other communications products on a regular basis to engage and energise libraries

As we publish more ideas, you will be able to view these using the #10MinuteInternationalLibrarian tag on this blog, and of course on IFLA’s Ideas Store! Do also share your ideas in the comments box.