Tag Archives: COVID

Essential yet unequal: lessons for libraries from the OECD Skills Outlook 2021

Providing meaningful access to information is not just about creating the physical possibility to get hold of information, but also about delivering the skills necessary to use it.

With growing recognition of the importance of competencies in order to allow people to make the most of an information-rich – or even information-saturated world – the role of libraries not just as a repository, but rather as a skills-provider at the heart of the education infrastructure has become clear.

It is not just libraires who recognise this – organisations in the lifelong-learning sector (here and here), as well as governments working to promote digital skills in general – have underlined the value of involving our institutions.

As such, it can be helpful to follow the wider policy discussion about lifelong-learning and skills, in order to be able to take available opportunities to place libraires at the heart of the development of strategies in the field.

A good starting point for this is the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Skills Outlook (including a free-to-read version), which appears once every two years. This highlights key themes that policy-makers will need to consider in taking decisions, drawing on internationally comparable data, as well as offering national profiles.

This blog highlights some of the central messages of this work that can be relevant for libraries in their planning and advocacy.

 

An essential response to a changing world, in the long- and short-term

A first key point made by the report is the importance of skills in general. Evolutions in the economy, often driven in turn by technological change, have meant not only that whole categories of job have emerged and declined, but that even to carry out a single job, the skills required change over time.

This need for regular retraining and lifelong-learning was already growing in the years before COVID, with existing skills become obsolescent quicker than ever.

However, the pandemic has only accelerated this trend, hitting some sectors hard while others have remained stable or even grown. Many people will find themselves needing to gain the skills needed to take on new jobs.

Alongside other ‘transversal skills’ (including things like communication, problem-solving and creativity), it seems clear that digital literacy skills will be crucial to this. As the report points out, the ability to use digital tools to work remotely has been essential for work to continue in many sectors, as well of course as to communicate with others and access information.

Digital literacy has, also, been key for access to skills. There are many learning opportunities online, but as the report notes, to benefit from these a potential learner needs already to feel confident.

 

Skills – and possibilities to gain skills – are unequally distributed

Worryingly, despite the importance of skills in allowing people to respond to change, some are less active in developing them than others.

A key factor behind this, as highlighted by the report, is level of initial education. Those who have been able to pursue formal education for longer are also then more likely to carry on taking opportunities to learn throughout life. Yet also, investment in early-years skills, such as literacy, also make a big difference.

Job types also matter – people in skilled work are more likely to receive support from employers to develop further skills, as well as being able to learn from colleagues. Meanwhile, people who are out of work, or in short-term or less skilled work have a higher chance of not benefitting from training.

This gap all too often turns into a gap in attitudes, with some far more positive about learning than others, and to readier to look for and take up opportunities.

On a personal level, this risks seeing people less able to respond to change, and so condemned to low-paid work or unemployment. On the level of societies and economies, it risks creating divides, as well as wasting potential.

 

Designing a response, with libraries

The OECD draws on the experience of those countries which are doing better in trying to close this divide in order to offer lessons for others, while acknowledging that no-one has yet found the perfect solution.

One key focus, it suggests, is to work on developing the core skills necessary for people to take advantage of wider learning opportunities.

A major component of this is of course reading. The report underlines correlation between levels of literacy and levels of uptake of training in general. In turn, enjoyment of reading correlates strongly with literacy.

This is, of course, an area of key library strength. Use of libraries and enjoyment of reading tends to correlate, as do numbers of school libraires and enjoyment of reading. Librarians have a strong background in building a love of books by exposing young people to a wide variety of materials than can grab their attention and help them to become independent, confident readers.

A second component is around developing digital literacy. As highlighted above, digital skills are not only important for taking on many jobs today, but they can also make the difference between accessing and not accessing learning opportunities.

Again, this is a library area of strength, with many public and other libraires providing the equipment, skills and setting needed for everyone to get the best out of the internet. Many governments already recognise this role of libraries in digital skills strategies.

A third is about ensuring that people find out about the possibilities open to them. Individuals are too often not aware of the opportunities that exist, or confused by the choice. While effective career counselling can be vital within schools, adults too can benefit from help and guidance in choosing courses to follow.

A final one is to provide a wide range of types of learning, in different formats, which can suit the needs and situation of different learners – ‘life-wide learning’ (as opposed to ‘lifelong learning’). Longer, more formal courses may not work for everyone.

To deliver on this, a variety of settings and types of programming can help ensure that everyone finds something that works for them, in particular outside of the workplace.

As a result, based on the report, we can define the following advocacy points for libraries, based on the points made in the OECD’s Skills Outlook:

  • Governments must not neglect basic literacy. In particular, they can gain from supporting interventions that build enjoyment of reading – something that represents a traditional strength of libraries, and should be integrated into policies in the field.
  • Governments need to invest in digital literacy and inclusion, as a precondition for developing the skills, and taking on the jobs, of the future. Libraries have a recognised role in digital skills provision and should be at the heart of strategies on the subject.
  • Governments should ensure easy access to information about learning opportunities for all members of the community, regardless of age or work status. Libraries represent an ideal placer to do this, as well as a portal towards specialised skills providers.
  • Governments need to acknowledge the role of a variety of institutions in delivering skills. In addition to formal education institutions, libraries also offer important complementary provision (not just literacy and digital skills, but also a variety of programmes targeted at different competences and groups, in an environment that often puts learners at ease.

COVID has forced us to think again about service provision: can it offer longer term lessons for how we serve persons with disabilities?

Tomorrow, the 14th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities starts, in New York and online.

It will have, as an overarching theme, ‘building back better: COVID-19 response and recovery; meeting the needs, realizing the rights, and addressing the socio-economic impacts on persons with disabilities’.

There’s clearly a lot in there, but there is already more than enough space to see how access to information – as a need, as a right, and as a driver of development – fits in.

At least two of the sub-themes offer an even clearer connection. ‘Living independently, being involved in the community’ ties strongly to the possibility for all to find and use information to take decisions for themselves, as well as to engage in community life, in all of its dimensions.

Similarly, ‘right to education; challenges with inclusive education and accessibility during COVID-19’ is again, to a large extent, about ensuring that everyone has the possibility to access knowledge and skills.

With a mission to serve everyone, there is already a strong community of practice in the library field focused on services to persons with disabilities. Within IFLA, sections on libraries serving persons with print disabilities, and serving persons with special needs, bring this expertise and enthusiasm together.

A key impact of the crisis, however, has been that many more library and information workers have found themselves needing to think about how to reach out to community members who are unable to come to the library in person or for whom ‘traditional’ service offers do not necessarily work.

This is because, thanks to the restrictions and precautions taken to counter the pandemic, almost all library services have had to be offered differently. Every library now, arguably, has to take into account principles of design thinking in order to meet needs.

In response, we have seen an explosion in digital offers, both collections and services. Libraries have shifted budgets towards buying eBook licences, sometimes benefitting from additional government support.

Activities such as storytimes or learning have gone online. New works, games and tools have been devised, websites have been updated, and there are new and easier-to-use consultation services, deliveries to users at home, and proactive contacts from librarians to community members.

There are many examples on our COVID-19 and libraries page, which details experiences from the first months of the pandemic.

This has allowed libraries, at least to some extent, to maintain services to communities, and indeed to reach new users. As the story of the pandemic is told in future, we will of course, hopefully, also see persons with disabilities having benefitted from better access to information.

Of course, this is not to forget the costs of decisions – however necessary – to curtail services which benefit people with disabilities and others, or the additional challenges that they have faced, over and above those facing the wider population.

 

Clearly, the transition to a new way of doing things has not been without challenges – such services often require additional resources and training to work effectively. In providing them, reducing health risks for staff and users is vital. Similarly, acquiring and giving access to digital works – often providing greater possibilities for access for persons with disabilities – often runs up against issues of cost and restrictive terms and conditions.

Yet with sustained support, and a focus on improved regulations (not least the implementation of the Marrakesh Treaty and its extension to cover people with other disabilities), we can hope that there will be the possibility to sustain elements of pandemic-time services which will benefit persons with disabilities into the future.

Cut, maintain or invest: three choices for library funders

While public libraries are often organised as a specific service within local or regional government, or at least linked to it, in reality they support delivery of priorities across the board.

There are countless stories of library staff receiving questions related to other policy areas, such as health or access to justice.  Similarly, many of the people coming to use library computers have been sent by other agencies – for example those working to provide employment support or benefits.

In responding to this demand – to the best of their ability – libraries provide an important complement to these other services, contributing to their effectiveness, in particular in reaching those most in need.

Yet, of course, the people working in libraries are information professionals, not health, legal or social care professionals. It can be daunting for library staff to face requests for information on questions which are hugely important for users, and over which they have little training.

This situation translates into three broad choices for those taking decisions for funding about public spending in general, and libraries in particular.

Option 1: Cut

The first option is to cut budgets. By reducing opening hours, cutting staff, and no longer investing in new equipment, library funders could claim to be saving money.

However, it is highly questionable that this will be the case. For a start, the communities for the benefit of which decision-makers are supposed to be acting lose a key public space and driver of the enjoyment of key rights. As set out in our interview with Christian Lauersen, these impacts can be as important as they are varied.

But, crucially, it no longer becomes feasible for other government offices and services to tell people to go to the library if they need help to get online, or to get support.

Employment agencies can no longer count on jobseekers being able to search for work online. Health services cannot rely on people being able to use telehealth, rather than needing to come to hospitals or general practitioners. Benefits agencies cannot expect that the people who they are supposed to serve will reach them. Individuals cannot access the information they need to understand – and so enforce – their rights.

This is a recipe for reducing the effectiveness of public services, and so their ability to promote growth and inclusion.

Option 2: Do nothing

The second option is to maintain budgets at similar levels to currently. This would allow libraries to continue to provide services as now, with library staff providing information within their means, and internet access within their resources.

Clearly, this can already have a positive impact, as testified to whenever a library professional is able to connect a user to the information they need.  However, there is arguably still unrealised potential when library staff do not have the support needed to maximise their effectiveness in helping users in different areas, and indeed face anxiety about whether they are even able to do so.

Moreover, as the consequences of the pandemic continue to be felt, the demand for the sort of public services highlighted in this piece seems likely to grow. With the shift to digital-only public services only likely to continue also, even sticking with the status quo could mean a less scope for libraries to deal with individual requests.

As such, doing nothing, while better than cuts, cannot be seen as particularly desirable.

Option 3: Invest

The final option then is to think about how additional support could help libraries achieve all that they should be able to, given their unique characteristics as a public, non-commercial space staffed by dedicated professionals.

For example, making resources available to support training or the hiring of professionals can be transformational in terms of helping libraries provide accurate and effective support to users.

Enhancing capacity to provide meaningful internet access – both through modern hardware and skilled staff support – can also make libraries far more powerful as an enabler of the success of any number of eGovernment and other digital services.

For example, the Australian Library and Information Association secured support to offer training to librarians in order to be able better to support users in engaging with a new digital health records service.

Also in Australia, and a little earlier, the Law and Justice Foundation of New South Wales recognised the value of upgrading libraries’ abilities to respond to legal questions, and so paid for the development of new training and materials.

Beyond projects supported by partners from other sectors, there are also of course projects driven by more dedicated library funders which can provide useful pilots to demonstrate what can be done also. Naturally, any such efforts do require libraries themselves to organise themselves in order to maximise their own impact.

 

Clearly, the coming years are likely to be times of difficult decisions around budgets. However, it will also be a period of intense need for effective public services in order to support recovery.

Faced with this need, there is a strong case for investing the relatively small amounts necessary to realise the potential of libraries to ensure that these services have the greatest impact and reach possible.

Libraries in the Post-Pandemic Future of Cities

Cities and Pandemics: towards a more just, green and healthy future - front cover of reportUN HABITAT, the United Nations Programme for Human Settlements, recently released Cities and Pandemics: Towards a More Just, Green and Healthy Future.

Drawing both on the organisations’ long experience of supporting sustainable urban development – most notably through delivering on the New Urban Agenda – and lessons learned during the COVID-19 Pandemic so far, the report aims to  provide recommendations for the future of cities.

This blog highlights some of the key points made by the report, and their relevance for libraries.

 

A critical issue

From the start, and the foreword provided by UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres, the report is clear that the way that humans live has had a major impact on the spread of COVID.

From broader questions about the impacts of putting pressure on natural ecosystems (leading to risks of animal diseases getting into humans), to the more rapid spread of the virus among people living in cramped conditions, the need to reflect on how we organise our cities, towns and villages is clear.

Yet the report is also hopeful – cities can play a key role in the recovery from COVID, drawing on the knowledge and policy tools at their disposal. Indeed, in the past, it has been cities that have led the way in key public health advances, for example around sanitation or the promotion of open spaces.

In short, the Pandemic provides a basis both for reflection, but also optimism.

 

Key themes for a recovery

In setting an agenda for the future, the report sets out four key priorities:

  • Rethinking the form and function of the city, including reform to planning in order to support inclusion and productivity
  • Addressing systemic poverty and inequality, including both targeted support now, and work on longer-term solutions
  • Rebuilding a new normal, including efforts to promote wider changes seen as desirable (innovation, climate action, delivery of other public goods)
  • Clarifying urban legislation and governance, including greater freedoms for cities to respond to crises.

Across this, the report calls for a new social contract, addressing discrimination, ensuring participation, expanding capabilities, promoting redistribution, and adopting a rights-based approach in line with the UN 2030 Agenda.

This builds on the ability, already highlighted, of city governments to get closer to citizens than national authorities can, by developing place-based policies.

This opens up new possibilities to provide more targeted interventions which reflect local circumstances, cultures and needs, as well as to encourage behavioural changes. Clearly, as at any level of decision-making, this potential is only realised through effective and responsible governance.

Library and information workers reading this will already see a huge potential for libraries to engage in this work, both through their work to give individuals the information and skills they need to thrive, and as social and democratic spaces.

Libraries are, arguably, a microcosm of the wider work of local government, looking to find the most effective way of improving the lives of the communities they serve. They are well placed to support behavioural change in particular, through the provision of information, something that will be essential for climate action and improved health and wellbeing.

Beyond these broad points, there are two particular elements of the report which are valuable for our institutions, both in our own reflection, and in our advocacy.

 

Rediscovering the local

The report underlines the degree to which the Pandemic has obliged people to become more familiar with their local areas.

Both through restrictions on movement beyond a certain distance, and with many more people working from home, city centres have become emptier, while the suburbs, and suburban centres, have become livelier.

Beyond this, the report suggests that we may even see a resurgence in smaller cities, with people just as able to work from there as from anywhere else.

In practical terms, the lesson has been that more needs to be done to ensure that people can access key services and meet their daily needs locally, for example within a 15 minute walk.

For libraries, this can be a case for denser networks and/or (as the report also suggests) a greater emphasis on working outside of the walls, while also working to build comfort in a post-COVID world.

Of course, this is not a new issue. Many libraries already had active programmes of outreach to those unable to come to them, due to distance or personal circumstances. Many more have developed such services as a result of the pandemic.

However, as we move beyond the pandemic, the value of ensuring balanced and well-distributed urban services is a useful argument for our institutions, with an emphasis on flexible design that allows both for adaptation to future events, and the provision of a wider variety of services.

 

Digital inclusion as a priority

Another major area of focus in the report is digital inclusion, given how starkly the pandemic has underlined the costs of not being connected.

UN HABITAT strongly underlines the value of public WiFi provision, noting its installation in transport locations in India as a means of allowing more people to get online. It also calls for wider efforts to promote broadband connectivity, especially in marginalised areas such as informal settlements.

Significantly, the report does not stop at pure connectivity, but highlights that this should be accompanied by efforts to build skills and offer wider support. It calls for accessible digital inclusion and training programmes, with an emphasis on disproportionately excluded groups (women, persons with disabilities, the elderly and others), in order to help them use new applications and tools.

These are, of course, also areas of obvious library strength. Even in the best connected countries, public internet access in libraries plays an essential role in allowing people to get online, either as the only option, or as a complement to other means (such as a shared home connection, or a mobile device).

During the pandemic, there have been many positive stories of libraries turning their WiFi towards the outside, allowing people to access the internet from car parks, while others have lent WiFi hotspots.

Just as important, however, is the work in many libraries to build digital skills, from basic know-how (turning a device on, using e-mail etc) to media and information literacy. This can come through anything from informal support to formal classes, and of course be targeted, for example towards building health literacy.

Even when other options exist, libraries have unique characteristics – their reputation, their space, their staff (if trained themselves), their focus on providing a universal service. Crucially, they also allow people to get online together, promoting a more social experience of the internet.

 

As highlighted earlier in this piece, there is a lot in UN HABITAT’s work that will resonate strongly with libraries – a strong shared focus on inclusion, excellent service provision, and on finding solutions at the local level.

The emphasis on providing services close to people, and on the urgency of digital inclusion (both in terms of connectivity and skills) provide a useful support for efforts to promote strong library networks, with well-supported staff and effective outreach to communities.

As city governments look to take on board the recommendations made by UN HABITAT, they can gain a lot by including libraries in their reflection. In doing so, they will be better able to harness a powerful resource in achieving the goal of a more just, green and healthier future.