Major EU report on public libraries prepared by OMC group

In early 2024, the European Commission, in implementation of the EU Work Plan for Culture 2023-2026, set up an Open Method of Coordination group (OMC) to address the different roles of public libraries. By the summer of 2025, the OMC group should deliver a report that outlines the current challenges and opportunities for public libraries in Europe in fulfilling their various roles.

Background

The EU Work Plan for Culture 2023-2026, under Priority B, Culture for the people enhancing cultural participation and the role of culture in society, provides for the creation of an OMC group of member states’ experts focusing on Building Bridges: strengthen the multiple roles of libraries as gateways to and transmitters of cultural works, skills and European values.

The Work Plan states that “Libraries play a key role in Europe’s democratic, social, cultural, and educational landscape at all levels.»

An OMC group is a group of experts, composed by the member states of the European Union. Each member state was allowed to appoint a maximum of two experts. Twenty-five of the twenty-seven member states did so, bringing the group to no fewer than 33 experts.

Scope

The mandate of the OMC group was approved in October 2023. It points at the fact that the comprehensive impact and outreach of libraries across Europe is poorly reported in statistics, and that there is a need – at policy and operational level – to better understand and document the multiple cultural, societal and democratic roles libraries can play in Europe and determine how they can be supported at local, regional, national and European level in terms of funding, regulatory framework and relations with the relevant authorities at European, national and local level.

The mandate of the group consists of several components:

The OMC group will focus on how to promote and strengthen the multiple role and visibility of libraries as key facilitators for democracy-building and citizen engagement and as access points and transmitters of cultural works, skills and European values.
The OMC group will explore and identify the different dimensions and areas in which public libraries can play a societal role.
The OMC group will collect good practices from public libraries in Europe and good examples of policy at local, regional, national and European level.

The OMC group shall also ensure complementarity and synergy with other relevant initiatives under the EU Work Plan for Culture 2023-2026.

The OMC group builds, where relevant, on the results and recommendations of other reports, OMC groups and relevant policy documents.

Considering the relevance of the topics for countries from the EU neighbourhood, the OMC group may also consider inviting experts from non-EU countries participating in the Creative Europe programme when relevant to the group’s work.

Outputs

The OMC group will provide a report which reflects the current challenges and opportunities public libraries in Europe face in fulfilling their roles as key-facilitators for democracy-building and citizen engagement and as gateways to and transmitters of cultural works and skills and European values.

The report should highlight good practices in public policy and library management and provide beneficial and operational recommendations to libraries and long-term policy recommendations (including examples of funding opportunities at different levels), which can be shared and used in all the member states.

Current progress

Klaas Gommers (Netherlands) and Stuart Hamilton (Ireland) have been elected as co-chairs of the expert group. The group met for the first time in Brussels in February 2024 and for the second in June 2024 in Warsaw. A third meeting is planned for November 2024.

In between the physical meetings, the OMC group meets virtually, in full or in three sub-groups which have been established.

The group aims at delivering a report by summer 2025. A conference will be organised in the autumn of 2025 to present the results to the sector.