DN Debate. Massdigitalisera Sweden's knowledge and cultural heritage

Biblioteksutredningen.

DN. DEBATE 190307

When Teliacheferna recently was acquitted in the district court for bribery in Uzbekistan commented on the DN with a quote from the revykungen Karl Gerhards couplet ”Hooray, hooray, what fun is in Moscow” (1938). The liberals ' Jan Björklund announced his resignation and SvD reported what he said and how he looked 30 years ago. Women's suffrage celebrated 100 years of our political columnists based their article on a government investigation from the 40's on the maids.

This is to broaden and deepen the public discourse. Today's issues can be highlighted from the history perspective. It stood in the newspaper, in the public pressure or as performed on stage, said in the radio or shown on tv is a part of the nation's knowledge and cultural heritage. How this is done hittbart and accessible has been one of the issues at stake in the work of a national library strategy. Libraries are democracy's treasury, where the unadulterated source material is preserved. To the delight of the democrat, but to the horror of the enemies of democracy.

But the broad audience and the vardaglige biblioteksbesökaren have it not as easy. The student on the small school, the role of the nurse in community care, släktforskaren or who have another mother tongue than Swedish does not have the same access.

the role of Libraries for a functioning democracy is greater in times of propaganda and false news. But the business is threatened by the municipal savings, senfärdig digitisation and the absence of a central copyright agreement.

not to mention the hundreds of thousands of students denied their statutory right to school libraries by both the municipal and private skolhuvudmän. In the same way as the national minorities and urfolket the sami, not with the self-evident can easily get media in their own language at the library.

the Libraries ' role in a functioning democracy is greater in times of propaganda and false news. But the business is threatened by the municipal savings, senfärdig digitisation and the absence of a central copyright agreement. When it comes to the digitisation and making available of the library's treasures at risk of Sweden to end up in an international gärdsgårdsserie. Most comparable countries have come much farther with to make available their books, newspapers, magazines and other media. Sweden needs a real bibliotekslyft.

We have investigated the issue in the three-and-a-half years, produced 14 major reports, 10 documentary films about the libraries and conducted dialogue sessions across the country with the total library community. All of this has been boiled down to a national strategy on 25 pages. The vision is library for all, and the goal is democracy – everyone should freely be able to bring some of the world's literature and knowledge to operate in society on their own terms.

Based on this, we define six areas of work or resources to achieve the goal. We emphasize libraries as public open spaces and their importance for reading, learning and research. We propose new national digital library services and the strengthening of the common infrastructure.

But a national strategy will not be a reality without concrete actions. Therefore, we will submit today to the government a proposal for a package of reforms with the initially six reforms for the strengthening of the library at an annual cost of 250 million sek:

• Strengthening school libraries

• the Strengthening of the libraries for national minorities and indigenous people

• Strengthening multilingual education (esme)

• the Strengthening of national digital library services

• Strengthened national structure for skills development within the library community

• Strengthened national biblioteksmyndighet

The big political challenge is that libraries are governed and funded at several different levels. Public libraries are municipal responsibilities and, therefore, the state can not determine how many libraries should be, stop the ongoing closures of branches or set opening hours. This is determined in the local self-government. It is not enough even if the state would pay, as municipalities would prefer not to have targeted appropriations.

. Also skolbiblioteken is a responsibility of the municipal and private principals. Skolbiblioteksverksamhet is compulsory under the education act, but it is a non-binding framework, which most schools ignore. The government has allocated 30 million annually to staffed school libraries, but it is a drop in the ocean. To give all students access to the school librarians would cost 1.5 billion annually. We would like to propose, but it is the municipalities themselves who, within the limits of their resources must take responsibility for this. The inquiry has published several science reports that with the strong empirical evidence showing how properly manned and equipped school libraries promote student learning.

What we propose is to state efforts medieförsörjningen and measures to strengthen the capacity of teachers, principals, and librarians with a focus on the integration of skolbiblioteken in the educational activities. We also suggest resources to strengthening training for all librarians and notes that the need for training at institutions of higher education for librarians is growing. There is not enough support for the library and informationsvetenskapen. But student places and research funding is a matter for the independent academies.

. The national biblioteksmyndigheten should be instructed to coordinate a mass digitisation of the nation's collective knowledge and cultural heritage of newspapers, books, magazines, audio and image. This required a ten-year digitaliseringsplan so that Sweden can catch up with the outside world and live up to their stated the it policy objectives. The digitized material requires joint and national platforms for different target groups.

the Authors have a legitimate right to compensation for the digital publication of their books, writings and other media. This requires negotiating power and funding on the government side. The loan should be free of charge to library visitors, but it does not mean that writers, artists, publishers and media house should be without compensation. Already developed and successful digital library services as the Swedish literature bank, and Bibblix should have permanent state funding.

the Libraries is a society open rooms. They belong to the people. The libraries with their librarians and other staff to give the individual power and the ability to function in society. This is both the desired and the unexpected, the comfortable and uncomfortable knowledge. This is worth to both defend and develop.