The “Sustainable Development Goals and libraries – First European Report” is the first attempt to map SDG projects in European libraries not only as stories to be told to administrators and policy-makers for advocacy purposes, but also as a fully-fledged concept apt to frame library work into the broader and far-reaching scope of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
A new agenda is desperately needed for two reasons: a) historically, because the traditional library sphere (free of charge services based on books and other media) has been challenged in the last two decades by private information service providers, and b) because we are entering a post-Covid 19 age where many of the traditional assumptions in the world of libraries will be re-questioned or reshuffled.
“There are two main advantages for linking libraries to the European 2030 agenda.
The first is political: libraries are much more than the content they store in their precincts and on their servers; the concept of the “social” library can thrive in this broader political architecture and develop in the specific policies assigned to each Goal.
The second advantage is economic: a new battery of indicators is needed to measure how good libraries are for the society as a whole”, says Mr Ton van Vlimmeren, President EBLIDA.
This First Report covers projects and policies in seventeen countries.
“Rarely in the past has an UN or EU programme encompassing such complex social, economic and environmental issues been so spontaneously and enthusiastically received in libraries. What strikes in the implementation of SDGs in European libraries is not only the quantity, but also the quality and the variety of policies and programmes. EBLIDA will find ways on how these projects can be funded through European money,” adds Giuseppe Vitiello, Director EBLIDA.
The “Sustainable Development Goals and Libraries – First European Report” is the third of a series of reports released by the EBLIDA European Sustainability House.
In May 2020, EBLIDA also released the Report “A European Library Agenda for the Post-Covid 19 Age” and, one week later, a paper reviewing “The European Structural and Investment Funds 2021-2027: Funding opportunities for libraries.”
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Download the Report: Sustainable Development Goals and Libraries – First European report
[Open Access publication, licensed as Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) which permits the widest possible dissemination to EBLIDA members and the European library community.]
http://www.eblida.org/news/press-release-sdgs-and-libraries-first-eu-report.html