Take down the digital barriers - Aarhus Declaration

 

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Enable Libraries to provide Smart Access to Culture, Information and Knowledge!

 

We call upon the local, the regional and the national governments of Europe to:

• Empower libraries in providing the citizens of Europe unhindered access to reliable information and knowledge in a digital society;

• Enact copyright exceptions for libraries that reflect the needs of users in a digital world;

• Promote and support strong reading and critical thinking competencies through libraries in a time of fake-news and information overload;

• Rethink and update local and national library policies, strategies and legal frameworks;

• Recognise libraries as Europe’s knowledge, culture and learning institutions;

• Acknowledge libraries in promoting and reaching the Sustainable Development Goals.

 

Libraries in Europe play an important role in the shift from a mainly analogue world to a digital environment where the ways of accessing and sharing information and knowledge have changed dramatically. But for the next phase we have to tear down all the existing digital barriers.

We need a new legal framework and new business models for acquiring and disseminating culture, information and knowledge by libraries and a modern system of copyright exceptions that reflect the needs of users in a digital world.

In the context of its 25^th anniversary, the European Bureau of Library, Information and Documentation Associations,EBLIDA calls on policy-makers within Europe to accelerate the transformation of public libraries into democratic institutions of the 21^st century encouraging and enabling citizen engagement, providing the information and facilities for public debate and acting as local hubs of learning and creativity.

EBLIDA Council & Conference 3 & 4 May 2017, DOKK1 Aarhus, Denmark.

 

For further information contact: vincent.bonnet@eblida.org

 

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