Future of Europe for Public Libraries
Building a network of public libraries across Europe to engage with EU policies and initiatives on the themes of: digital, sustainability and democracy.
About the project
The Future of Europe for Public Libraries (FEPL) is an Erasmus+ project which ran from 2022 to 2024, with the aim of creating a strong network of public libraries across Europe interested in engaging with EU policies and initiatives on the themes of digital, sustainability, and democracy. The project worked to support PL2030’s Lighthouse Libraries network – and libraries across Europe – engage with EU policy and initiatives by making them relevant to the library sector. Through in-person meetings (‘thematic clusters’ focusing on one policy area each), the project set out to build a common language among this network of practitioners on these policy areas, and how this can be integrated by public libraries.
Four thematic clusters
In November 2022, a kick-off meeting was held in Brussels by PL2030 at the Goethe Institute. In March 2023, the first thematic meeting on digital futures (Digital Camp) was hosted at the De Krook Library in Ghent. In May 2023, the sustainability thematic meeting was held at DOKK1 in Aarhus (Sustainability Camp) in the context of the Next Library Festival. Finally, in October 2023, the democracy thematic meeting (Democracy Camp) was held in Lisbon by the Lisbon Libraries Network. Overall, the project gathered nearly 200 library professionals in Belgium, Denmark and Portugal.
The formats of the camps allowed for deep reflections on the three topics of digital, sustainability, and democracy, and provided the space to develop a common language to discuss these themes from a library perspective that transcends borders. Through this project, library professionals from across Europe had the opportunity to discover what other libraries and practitioners are doing, and exchange on good practices. This project demonstrated the added value of in-person meetings for building strong networks and connections, and transnational partnerships.
Building a common language: Discover the FEPL Posters
Over the course of the project, nearly 200 library professionals gathered in Belgium, Denmark and Portugal for in-person thematic meetings on the topics of digital, sustainability, and democracy. The FEPL partners produced a series of posters summarising all the collected insights and co-created knowledge from the thematic camps in an accessible and visual format. The posters include common language, trends identified, and policy recommendations for each of the thematic areas (digital, sustainability, and democracy). We aim for this to be used as a resource for library advocacy work at local, national, and European level. For example, insights from the sustainability camp in Aarhus contributed to developing the city’s local library policy.
Curious to find out more on the FEPL meetings hosted in Brussels, Ghent, Aarhus, and Lisbon?
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
On November 9 2022, we held the kick-off session for this work in Brussels. We brought together over 40 library professionals from across Europe and had three speakers tell us about the trends they foresee in the three policy areas we will be working on. Professor Lieven De Marez from IMEC spoke about the trends and attitudes towards technology in various demographic groups and the pitfalls that need to be addressed. Following on form that, Anthony Zacharzewski, President of the Democratic Society, explained the importance of meaningful and long-term citizen engagement to enact cultural and societal change. Finally, Claudia Hahn, Policy Officer at DG Environment at the European Commission, explained the three major and interrelated ecological crises: climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution with unsustainable use of resources as a key driver across these issues. With these three presentations done (available below), we broke into thematic groups to work on these topics. The results of this first set of workshops are available below.
Over March 6 and 7, we convened the Lighthouse Libraries in Ghent for the Digital cluster meeting. Around 40 library professionals joined us at this event to discuss the intersection between libraries and the digital sector. We heard from various speakers over the course of the two days covering a range of initiatives and perspectives on the digital sector. Jeroen de Boer from the Dutch National Library presented the programme for digital citizenship happening in Dutch libraries which aims to enable citizens to move actively, skillfully and resiliently in an ever digitising society. We also heard from Pauline De Wolf on the Comon project and how this has helped people understand the world, and in this case, the healthcare world and how this can be made more accessible to all.
A more detailed report will be available soon covering the meeting.
The second FEPL camp on Sustainability took place during the Next Library Festival 2023 in May in Aarhus. During the camp, PL2030 Director Ilona Kish delivered a talk on the “Future of Europe in Public Libraries” (FEPL) project and discussed how the public libraries in Ghent, Lisbon and Aarhus are working together to engage with EU policy on the topics of: digital transition, democracy, and sustainability.
From the 23-24 of October, the Lisbon Public Libraries Network hosted the third in-person meeting of the Future of Europe for Public Libraries (FEPL) project. Over the course of the two-day meeting, nearly 50 library professionals from across Europe gathered in Lisbon’s Galveias Library and Estrela Garden Library to reflect on how public libraries can contribute to strengthening democracy in Europe.