EBLIDA Newsletter July/August 2018

The EBLIDA Newsletter is published monthly on European library & information society issues, programmes, news and events of interest to the library, archive and cultural heritage community.

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Issue No. 7-8 July/August 2018

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The President’s Editorial

Dear colleagues,

This is the Summer edition of the EBLIDA newsletter that covers July and August.

This present edition is the last one that will be written in full by our Director Vincent Bonnet, who is leaving EBLIDA on September 1^st to resume as a civil servant in France.

I would like to take the opportunity of this editorial to thank him on behalf of our EBLIDA readership for all the excellent work he has done for the library sector in Europe over the years.

The new Executive Committee and I are busy preparing his replacement, and in the meantime we are working on solutions.

In this Summer edition, you will find a very interesting overview of the current situation on the Copyright front where a lot has happened over the past few weeks. And a lot is ahead of us starting September! We will need your commitment again to ensure a fair copyright system where libraries can flourish and serve their patrons well.

Since 1^st of July, the Council of the European Union is lead by Austria. Check-out the article to find out more about their key priorities for Europe.

As always, Summer time is IFLA WLIC time with this year the annual event taking place in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) from 24 to 30 August. Since I can’t attend this time, I have asked our Director and other Executive Board members to represent the organisation on my behalf. This will be the Director’s last commitment for EBLIDA. More to come in the September newsletter edition.

I am also pleased to inform you that the presentations, videos and graphic reporting from our Conference Libraries bridging borders held in Strasbourg on 31^st of May 2018 are now available on the EBLIDA website. More information in the related article.

Lastly, please take a look at the first meeting of the new elected EBLIDA Executive Committee that took place in Utrecht, my home town.

Together with my fellow colleagues, we stand ready to make the library sector of Europe visible and strong, and will work hard over the next 3 years to achieve great results. A new strategic plan for 2019-2021 will be presented early next year.

I wish you all a happy Summer and happy holidays.
See you in September!

Yours sincerely,

Ton van Vlimmeren
EBLIDA President

INSIDE BRUSSELS

Copyright reform – the show must go on

European Parliament

Over the past few weeks, a lot has happened in the JURI Committee and in the European Parliament.
I’m sure you won’t have missed the media reporting on the discussions on Copyright.

First Step: the vote of 20 June of the legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament.
20th of June was a key vote for the Copyright Directive proposal. Following a year full of postponements, the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) of the European Parliament have at last voted on a proposal built of compromise amendments.

Following the vote, on June 22nd, EBLIDA published a statement Shambolic JURI Committee vote on Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive - Good, Bad and Ugly.

In a nutshell, the statement noted that “As a major advocate of the library and information sector, while EBLIDA welcomes the encouraging outcomes on some of the Articles, the overall result of the JURI’s deliberations is actually rather lacklustre and in places rather negative for libraries, education and research”.

On this note, EBLIDA President, Ton van Vlimmeren, declared that “Libraries are a crucial element of the knowledge society, a truly democratic institution ensuring free, equal and legal access to information. If we want European citizens to benefit from their work, we need a copyright reform that goes beyond the report of the JURI Committee. Together with our members and partners, we will continue to lobby for a broader copyright reform.”

To support our claim, EBLIDA provided a quick analysis of the JURI text. You can read it below and attached.

Second step: a mandate or not to MEP VOSS (EPP, Germany) to start trilogue negotiations
The JURI vote includes a mandate to JURI Rapporteur MEP Axel Voss (EPP, Germany) to start trilogue negotiations on the text voted upon in JURI.
A group composed of 85 MEPs (the threshold being 76, i.e. more than 10% of the 751 Members of the European Parliament) called on a very rare procedure: Rule69c(2), a decision to enter into inter-institutional negotiations, to trigger this vote. In addition, the Greens/EFA Group requested a roll-call vote, i.e. a recording and making available to the public of the MEPs voting behaviour.

This action lead to a massive lobbying campaign from all directions in Brussels and eventually ended up with a Plenary Session vote on July 5th where a majority of MEPs voted against the JURI Committee negotiation mandate.
In fact, 318 MEPs rejected the report by JURI Rapporteur MEP Axel Voss (EPP, Germany), 278 MEPs voted in favour, and 31 MEPs abstained.

In rejecting the mandate, the MEPs opened the text to further amendments that should be discussed at the next European Parliament plenary session to be held from 10 to 13 September.

This implies that the 751 MEPs will now get a chance to look closely through this copyright directive proposal, and propose amendments to the JURI report for the vote in Plenary.
This means that there are opportunities to improve some of the articles, but also threats to articles that the library sector is happy with.

Although the European Parliament is closing this Thursday July 12th for the Summer and will reopen on August 27th, MEPs will end their work in their constituencies from July 16th to 20th and will resume back their work from August 20th onwards, while their assistants are still supposed to work until the end of July.

With this in mind, there is still work to do before the Summer break comes, however most of the tasks will have to be managed by the end of August, early September.

Council of the European Union

Since the text was ready to go for discussions in trilogue, Member States representatives will now wait until the European Parliament resumes its work. This doesn’t stop activities at national level, and contacts with your copyright representation in your member-state.

To be continued.

Austrian Presidency of the European Union

Since July 1^st and until December 31^st, Austria is assuming the Presidency of the Council of the European Union for the third time after 1998 and 2006. Austria’s Presidency motto is "A Europe that protects".

Read below excerpts of the Austrian Presidency website:

“[…] Austria is part of a trio presidency together with Estonia (Presidency of the Council in the second half of 2017) and Bulgaria (Presidency in the first half of 2018). The trio programme, adopted by the Council on 20 June 2017, is based on the European Council’s “Strategic Agenda for the Union in Times of Change” of June 2014”.

“[…] The Austrian Presidency of the Council in the second half of 2018 will have to work on a large number of complex dossiers. In this period, the EU will be particularly confronted with two challenges: Negotiations regarding the United Kingdom’s exit from the EU (Brexit) and regarding the Multi-Annual Financial Framework for the period 2021-2027 […]”.

“[…] The motto Austria has chosen for the EU Presidency is “A Europe that protects”. In order to attain this objective, the overarching principle of subsidiarity should be strengthened: The EU should concentrate its efforts on issues that need a common solution, while withdrawing from smaller issues that could better be dealt on national or regional level.

Against this backdrop, the Austrian Presidency will put emphasis on three areas where the EU has a particular protective role: Security and fight against illegal migration; securing prosperity and competitiveness through digitalisation and stability in the neighbourhood – rapprochement of the Western Balkans/South-Eastern Europe to the EU […]”.

“[…] After Austria, the next trio presidency will take over: Romania (first half of 2019), Finland (second half of 2019) and Croatia (first half of 2020)”.

EUROPE AND WORLWIDE

IFLA WLIC 2018 – Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

This Summer, IFLA World Library and Information Congress sets up in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia with the motto Transform Libraries, Transform Societies. Read more at https://2018.ifla.org/

There will be several representatives of EBLIDA to take part in the rich programme, with members of the Executive committee, and the Director being present.

As every year, the programme provides a great diversity of areas, and we will prepare a brief overview for the next Newsletter.

In preparation for the IFLA WLIC General Assembly, you are most welcome to read IFLA’s annual report, available at : https://www.ifla.org/AnnualReport2017/

Inside EBLIDA

EBLIDA-NAPLE 2018 Conference "Libraries bridging borders" – presentations and videos are online!

We are pleased to announce that presentations and video recording of our Conference Libraries Bridging Borders are now available through the EBLIDA homepage www.eblida.org.

You can look back at the Conference day, get to know or review moments that you might have missed, gain access to the content of the graphic recording panels – really worth a look.

All content can be downloaded and viewed at http://www.eblida.org/eblida-naple-conference2018.html

We thank again all the moderators, keynote, panelists, workshop attendants and participants for making this conference a success.
[Poster drawing by Coline Robin CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

Happy retirement!

Guy Daines, long serving EBLIDA Executive Committee Member (Head of Policy – CILIP, UK), has recently retired.

We would like to thank Guy for the passion and insights he brought to EBLIDA and to wish him a healthy and happy retirement.

We will miss you Guy!
[Photo by Jean-Marie Reding.]

EBLIDA Executive Committee Meeting of July 2018, Utrecht

With half of the Executive Committee being new members, and a lot of change happening at EBLIDA, Executive Committee members met on the invitation of EBLIDA’s President Ton van Vlimmeren in his own Public Library on July 5^th in Utrecht (Netherlands) for a busy meeting to prepare the future.
.

EBLIDA EC Meeting Utrecht

The President and Executive Committee members started drafting plans for the future strategy of the association, looking for closer connections for lobbying and advocacy with, investigated different possibilities for a future recruitment of a new Director, and exchanged information and intelligence on the library sector. The vacancy for Director will be published before we break up for the Summer, so please, spread the word through your network when you see the job vacancy coming through!

The next Executive Committee meeting will be held in Brussels in October2018 right before the Generation Code event organised by our friends of PL2020.

[Photos by Jean-Marie Reding.]

A Farewell to Vincent Bonnet

The EBLIDA office would like to take this opportunity to give a warm goodbye to Vincent and to wish him and his family good luck, health and happiness in the future.

Vincent has been a wonderful colleague over these past years. He has worked hard behind and before the scenes, for you, our members and for the wider library and information community.

We will miss Vincent, his humour, his patience, his creativity and his kindness - he’ll be a hard act to follow!
(Look out for the job vacancy which is being published later on today.)

We salute you Vincent and thank you for everything!

>> 5 reason why membership matters <<

Events and Dates

July - August

12 July

London, UK

Key issues for copyright in the UK - value exchange, international relationships and protection

23 July

Stuttgart, Germany

International Summer School for Librarians

15 August

Virtual

The Computer Campus: Integrating Information Systems and Services

22-24 August

Paris, France

14th International Symposium on Open Collaboration (OpenSym 2018)

23-24 August

Reykjavík, Iceland

The 11th Nordic Law Libraries Conference

29-31 August

Prague, Czech Republic

International Society of Addiction Journal Editors (ISAJE) Annual Meeting 2018

Stay informed, sign up today!

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EBLIDA (European Bureau of Library Information and Documentation Associations) · Prins Willem-Alexanderhof 5 · The Hague, 2595 BE · Netherlands