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Library Stat of the Week #26: Countries with more public and community librarians tend to have higher levels of social cohesion

Eric Klinenberg’s book, Palaces for the People, has popularised the idea of libraries as key parts of the ‘social infrastructure’ of the communities they serve. This role matters, because social infrastructure supports the development of social capital – strong connections between people, often associated with trust – commonly seen as a key driver of development. […]

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Library Stat of the Week #25: At Similar Levels of GDP, Countries with More Academic Librarians See Higher Numbers of Publications

In the past two weeks, we have explored the figures that IFLA’s Library Map of the World offers us on the subject of academic libraries and library workers. We have looked at how many there are in different parts of the world, including relative to population, and last week, as correlations between numbers of libraries […]

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The UN General Assembly Resolution on Culture and Sustainable Development: What’s Changed?

In the first part of this two-part series looking at the UN General Assembly’s Resolution on Culture and Sustainable Development, passed on 19 December, we looked at key overall takeaways from the text that could help libraries and others in our efforts to get culture recognised fully recognised and integrated into planning.

The second part looks back to the previous such Resolution, from 2021, in order to get a clearer idea of what has changed between the two. While many elements are simply copy and pasted from one text to the next, each revision does offer an opportunity to reflect new thinking and approaches. Through this, we can get an idea of how the discourse on culture is evolving over time.

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10 Takeaways from the UN General Assembly’s Resolution on Culture and Sustainable Development

On 19 December, the UN General Assembly approved a resolution looking at the relationship between culture and sustainable development. Such resolutions are prepared every two years, but nonetheless this represents a useful high-level reference point for work on the place of culture in delivering the 2030 Agenda.

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