EBLIDA Newsletter April 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. 4. April 2018

Forward

The President’s Editorial

Should libraries be an EU talent? According to the subsidiarity principle of EU, decisions should always be taken at the lowest possible level. That is clever. There is no information in Brussels whatsoever on how children's day care should be organised in the city of Porto in Portugal or the municipality of Pihtipudas in Finland.

The same goes for libraries: they operate locally, and therefore it should be up to local communities to decide on how, when and where. There are some issues, with this, however.

EU member states are well aware of the needs of the libraries, as there often is a fraction of the state budget targeted to support locally funded libraries, and further more, there is always a national mechanism of observance and regulation, run by the ministries of culture and/or education. But that's it. EU does not have talent where libraries are concerned. That means, that nobody in the entire Brussel bureaucracy machinery has any first-hand knowledge about libraries, since they last time smelled the dust of the books of the local library in their pre-teens. That also means, that there is no information whatsoever available on what kind of regulation would be beneficial and what could be malevolent to the libraries. And there is more. We have a huge selection of different library systems and concepts around Europe, but we do not have a way, apart from Eblida and the NAPLE Forum, of spreading best practices, comparing different methods and systems, nor mutually set standards that local libraries should meet. We cannot develop Europe by investing funds, time, energy or knowledge to library management. I am not suggesting that we should establish an EU wide library bureaucracy as this would make library management slow and clumsy. But we should find a way to make Brussels better informed about the libraries. There are 30.000 bureaucrats in Brussels, but none of them work for us.

Looking forward to catching up with you in Strasbourg.

Yours sincerely,

Jukka Relander
EBLIDA President

INSIDE BRUSSELS

Copyright reform – a round-up of information

From 19 to 21 March, various stakeholders with which EBLIDA is working closely, organised a series of events under the banner European Copyright Action Days.

On Monday 19 March, EDIMA organised the event The unintended consequences of getting copyright wrong that focussed on the questions of Press Publishers’ Rights (Articles 11) and Upload Filtering (Article 13).

Tuesday 20 March, Copyright 4 Creativity hosted a breakfast debate “Humans of copyright – the real life stories” in the European Parliament. The event was co-hosted by MEPs Catherine Stihler (S&D, UK), Lidia Joanna Geringer de Oedenberg (S&D, PL), and Julia Reda (Greens/EFA, Germany), three strong supporters of libraries.
The event featured a broad range of speakers who gave a 5 minute long speech each on how the current copyright reform would affect their work, see the list below:

Human rights: Eva Simon, Advocacy Officer Freedom of Expression & Privacy at Civil Liberties Union for Europe;
Research: Jean-Sébastien Caux, Chairman at the Scientific Publication Portal SciPost and Professor in Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics at the University of Amsterdam;
Education: Andrew Todd, Policy & Advocacy Officer at the Lifelong Learning Platform;
Creators: Antoine Defoort, Actor, Author & Stage Director & Alexander Donev, Producer, Director, Screenwriter & Lecturer at the National Academy of Theater and Film Arts and at the New Bulgarian University;
Journalist: Maarten Lambrechts, Freelance Data journalist;
Startup: Paul Wolter, Director Public Affairs & Communications at the Bundesverband Deutsche Startups;
Software: Bas Peters, Solutions Engineer at GitHub & Roberto Di Cosmo, Director at Software Heritage (INRIA, France) and Professor of Computer Science at the University Paris Diderot.

That same day, Communia held a roundtable discussion The Future of Technology in Education, co-hosted by MEP Marietje Schaake, focussing on how education can benefit from the use of technology – now and in the future?

Further events were then organised in the afternoon and the next day by Communia.
With this series, the idea was to highlight the general opposition from civil society organisations, libraries, users communities, digital activists, etc to the current copyright reform proposal that is not going into the right direction.

A better copyright for quality higher education and research in Europe and beyond – Wednesday 11 April

The event gathered around 70 participants from different background: educators, teachers, publishers, librarians, intellectual property experts, etc. It was webstreamed.

The #CopyrightConference started with welcome messages from the organisers, followed by a short keynote of Thomas Ewert, Legal and Policy Officer in Unit ‘Copyright’, DG CONNECT, European Commission, in replacement of Marco Giorello (Copyright Unit Chair). He described quickly the overall package on copyright, and focus on the Education part underlining the feeling of urgency the European institutions have at present since they need to close the folder before the next European elections.

Several national copyright models from member- states in Europe and Canada were presented to the audience.

The climax of the conference was the panel addressing the EU copyright directive that welcomes views from Union organisations in Europe, the view of Communia delivered by Teresa Nobre who insisted on the risk of a ramping privatisation through licensing, as well as their costs.

And of course, the most expected moment was the view of MEP Voss that was a real disappointment. MEP Voss specifically mentions that the Education exception “has to stay fragmented in the EU and left to the Member-States only, and shouldn’t include cross-border uses under an exception”.

Not only is such statement incomprehensible coming from an elected member of the European Parliament, undermining the role of the EU against Member-States, but it also showed a lack of understanding of how such Copyright reform will impact circulation and access to knowledge in Eu for years. Far much too emphasis was made on compensation mechanism with a focus on the economic ends of this instead of on the education end. The short question and answer session at the end didn’t change our bitter perception of a topic that is addressed from the wrong side of the lens.

The panel discussion concluded with the views of the Austrian Permanent Representation in the EU (that will hold the EU Presidency as og July 2018) that showed a more enthusiastic understanding of the issues at stake, linking the upcoming Presidency to some of the strategic decisions of Austria with regard to open access policies and similar strategies.

In the afternoon, participants breaked out in groups to address the following issues:

Information and awareness raising activities among teachers and students: How to reduce copyright infringements, ensure legitimate access to materials and increase legal clarity; moderated by Ms Justyna Petsch, EUIPO Observatory – bilingual English/French
Higher education teachers and researchers as users of copyrighted works; moderated by Mr Aleksander Tarkowski
Teachers and researchers as creators of copyrighted works; moderated by Ms Nikola Wachter, Education International – English

After a brief introduction by Ms Ariadna Matas, LL.M IP lawyer from IFLA on the role libraries play in particular in non formal and informal Education, rapporteurs from the break out groups gave short feedbacks on the discussions, pointing at the need to act now and not wait until the legislation has passed, to train students and teachers, and also consider users and creators with an equal interests.

Organisers then wrapped up the day by noticing the lot of interests from participants for the event, and the good level of discussion, and the need to further maintain the discussion and work together.

Text and Data Mining (TDM), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Copyright reform

In the past two weeks, EBLIDA joint a coalition of signatories representing universities, large and small technology companies, telecommunications and Internet services providers, startups and scaleups, libraries, scientific and research funding and performing organisations, open access publishers, investigative and data journalists and non-profits, representing a key constituency of TDM users.

Together with these constituencies, we signed two open letters on TDM and AI.

The first letter asks the JURI Committee to revise the exception for TDM as follows:

Broaden the scope of Article 3.1 to include any person (natural or legal) that has lawful access to content, provided that reproduction or extraction is used for the sole purpose of text and data mining.
Support the European Commission’s proposal on article 3.2 to ensure that contractual terms restricting the use of the exception are unenforceable.
Clarify in Article 3.3 that technical measures cannot be used to unreasonably restrict the exception’s beneficiaries to conduct TDM.
Add a paragraph in Article 3 to allow datasets created for the purpose of TDM to be stored on secured servers for future verification.

See the EBLIDA Press Release here that contains the full text of the Open Letter.

The second letter targeting specifically EU Commissioners and the Council in addressing the issue of AI and TDM was published on April 10 for the Digital Day.

You can find the EBLIDA Press Release here (with the full text of the Open letter).

High-level Group Report on Fake News and Online Disinformation

The final report of the High Level Expert Group on Fake News and Online Disinformation was published Monday 13 March 2018.

Recommendations are to:

enhance transparency of online news, involving an adequate and privacy-compliant sharing of data about the systems that enable their circulation online;
promote media and information literacy to counter disinformation and help users navigate the digital media environment;
develop tools for empowering users and journalists to tackle disinformation and foster a positive engagement with fast-evolving information technologies;
safeguard the diversity and sustainability of the European news media ecosystem, and
promote continued research on the impact of disinformation in Europe to evaluate the measures taken by different actors and constantly adjust the necessary responses.

The report also highlights that libraries can play a role in literacy competence, especially in media and information literacy as libraries can also engage with the aim of integrating critical media literacy into the core literacies guaranteed to all schoolchildren in Europe [...].

EBLIDA issued a press release that you can read here.

Read the full report to learn more about the details.

IMCO Workshop on Fake News and Disinformation – 19 March

To complement the report, the Committee on Internal Market and Consumers Protection (IMCO) organised a workshop (see agenda here) with some of the experts on 19 March.
The event was entitled How can we fight against the fake-news phenomenon to have a Digital Single Market based on trust?

Reliable sources of information are key to well-functioning Digital Single Market - misinformation or fake-news have direct effects on consumers behaviour and the decisions they make on the market.

The event was opened and chaired by MEP Eva Maydell (EPP, Bulgaria) in place of Ms Róża Gräfin von Thun und Hohenstein MEP, Chair of the IMCO Working Group on the Digital Single Market and Ms Anneleen Van Bossuyt MEP, Chair of IMCO Committee who were both unable to attend.

3 experts provided speeches and presentations (accessible here):

Prof. D. Frau-Meigs (University Sorbonne Nouvelle), Societal Costs of Disinformation in the Digital Single Market
Prof. Ži. Turk (University of Ljubljana), Technology as Enabler of Fake News and a Potential Tool to Combat it
Dr A. Renda (CEPS - College of Europe), Fake News in the post-truth era: policy-options for Europe.

Although an important topic, the workshop didn’t attract many MEPS with only MEP Julia Reda being present for the event on behalf of the Greens, out of a total lists of 6 MEPs from the whole political spectrum.

The event was web streamed and is available here.

European Citizens Initiative: committee debate

The Committee on Constitutional Affairs (AFCO) hosted a debate on 21^st of March on the draft report on the new legislative proposal for the European Citizens' Initiative (ECI), on 21.03.18.

As mentioned on the AFCO webpage “The report aims to, amongst others, provide more flexibility and support to the organisers of an ECI, oblige the Commission to deliver a detailed analysis and justification should it refuse to register an initiative, enhance the political follow-up by the Commission of successful initiatives, and enhance the transparency of ECI funding”.

Further information:

EUROPE AND WORLWIDE

IFLA President's Meeting – Barcelona, Spain, 19th March 2018

The theme of the first IFLA President meeting of former EBLIDA Vice-President Glòria Pérez-Salmerón was ‘Leading the way: Libraries as Motors of Change’.

The event gathered participants from all over the world and featured the below list of speakers:

Cassie Robinson (doteveryone) – The library as a demonstrator of public value, social infrastructure and digital ethics
Matthew Finch (Library storyteller) – New Alliances in Libraryland
Roger Baig Viñas (Guifi) – Understanding Community Networks to Explore Collaborations with Libraries
Glynn Moody (Journalist) – Dark Ages 2.0

Should you wish to know more, please check the dedicated IFLA webpage here.

Inside EBLIDA

EBLIDA-NAPLE 2018
REMINDER

The 15th of April is the last day that you can register for the EBLIDA-NAPLE 2018 events at the early bird rates described below.

Don’t miss out – register here: https://eblida2018.sciencesconf.org/registration/index.

Registration Fees

Early bird (Until : 15 April 2018 / jusqu'au 15 avril 2018)

EBLIDA, NAPLE Member: € 150
Non Members: € 170
Students: € 50
Guests (organising committee): € 0

Regular registration (After: 15 April 2018)

EBLIDA, NAPLE Member: € 180
Non Members: € 200
Students: € 50
Guests (organising committee): € 0

Registration Cancellation Policy

Notification of cancellation must be done in writing and sent to EBLIDA by email: eblida@eblida.org
If the written notification of cancellation is received before 15 April 2018, the paid registration fee less an administration fee of € 30 EUR will be refunded. Cancellations after this date will not be refunded.
In the event that you are unable to attend, please consider sending a replacement. In this case, an administration fee of € 30 will be charged.

There will be no refund for no-shows. EBLIDA recommends that you check that your travel insurance covers costs in case of cancellation, e.g. registration fees, travel booking costs.
Please note that, for organisational reasons, eventual refunds will be done after the Conference. All refunds will be made at the exchange rate applicable on that date. EBLIDA cannot be held responsible for any loss resulting from alterations in exchange rates. To receive your refund, please send your complete coordinates and full bank account details to eblida@eblida.org.

Cancellation of the Conference
EBLIDA reserves the right to cancel the event until April 30^th at the latest. Paid registration fees will in that case be reimbursed, minus an administration fee of € 30. EBLIDA will not be liable for any travel or accommodation costs incurred by the cancellation of the conference.

EBLIDA-NAPLE 2018 - Programme
Most recent Updates

Find below an outline of the programme for 30 and 31^st of May

30 May – EBLIDA Annual Council meeting and NAPLE General Assembly
Timing change! : 9.00 – 14.30
Location: Council of Europe

N.B.: between 14.30 and 16.00, the time is booked for accessing the European Parliament on foot and passing the security checkpoints.

30 May – Reception at the European Parliament
Time: 16.00 – 17.30
Location: European Parliament, Strasbourg

30 May – Conference dinner
Time: 20.00 – 22.00
Location: Restaurant de la Victoire, Strasbourg

31 May – EBLIDA Conference
Time: 8.30 – 16.30
Location: Bibliothèque national et universitaire

Programme outline in English and French

08.30 – 09.00 Conference Registration / Inscription à la conférence

09.00 - 09.20 Official Opening / Ouverture officielle

Alain Colas (Administrator/Administrateur BNU)
Camille Gangloff (Councillor / Conseillère, Strasbourg Eurométropole) (tbc/à confirmer)
Xavier Galaup (President / Président ABF)
Tine Vind (NAPLE Chair/Présidente) on behalf of / au nom de NAPLE & EBLIDA.

Conference moderation by Lee Hibbard, Council of Europe / Modération de la conférence par Lee Hibbard, Conseil de l'Europe

09.20 - 10.30: Conference Session 1 / Session 1 de la Conférence

Bridging beyond borders - the Moon as a future location for archiving and preserving human data indefinitely? Keynote speech by / Discours liminaire de Prof. Chris Welch (International Space University)

Interactive Panel discussion / Table ronde intéractive with Prof. Chris Welch (International Space University), Jukka Relander (outgoing EBLIDA President/Président sortant) and Tine Vind (NAPLE Chair/Présidente)

10.30 - 11.00 - Coffee break / Pause-café

11.00 - 12.30 Conference Session 2.
Working across border, practitioners’ point of view / Session 2. Travailler à travers les frontières, le point de vue des praticiens

Presentation on Italian ebooks across Europe by Nicola Cavalli (Media Library On Line, MLOL) / Présentation Livres numériques italiens à travers l'Europe par Nicola Cavalli (MLOL)
Presentations and panel discussion with / Présentation et table ronde avec

Camille Gangloff (Councellor, Strasbourg Eurométropole/ Conseillère Strasbourg Eurométropole),
Catherine Storne (Director, Mulhouse Public Library/Directrice des bibliothèques de Mulhouse),
Janosch Nieden (Eucor Director / Directeur d'EUCOR)
Chrisophe Didier (Delegate for Scientific Policy and International Relations, BnU / Délégué aux relations internationales et à la politique scientifique, BnU)

12.30 - 14.00 - Lunch on site / Déjeuner sur place

14.00 - 15.30 Your turn to practice - workshops / À vous de jouer - ateliers

Regional collaboration driving global visibility to a worldwide audience (OCLC) /
Une collaboration régionale pour une visibilité planétaire auprès d'un public mondial (OCLC)

Axel Kaschte (Product Strategy Director OCLC EMEA)

Copyright Literacy in a cross-border environment, a workshop to build Copyright Literacy in European libraries /
La littératie en matière de droits d'auteur dans un environnement transfrontalier, un atelier pour développer la culture du droit d'auteur dans les bibliothèques européennes

Chris Morrison (Copyright, Software Licensing and IS Policy Manager at the University of Kent) - video message (tbc)
Dr. Jane Secker (Senior Lecturer in Educational Development at City, University of London / Maîtresse de conférence en développement éducatif à City, Université de Londres).

The Multicultural Library, a model for Europe, an Erasmus + strategic partnership workshop to exchange practices and ideas /
La bibliothèque multiculturelle, un modèle pour l'Europe, un atelier de partenariat stratégique Erasmus + pour échanger pratiques et idées

Magdalena Krasowska-Igras (Project Coordinator / Coordinatrice de projet, Information Society Development Foundation)
Hannah Thominet (Project Officer / Chargée de projet, Public Libraries 2020)

15.30 - 16.00 - Closing session / Session de clôture

Wrap up of parallel sessions / Résumé des sessions parallèles
Announcement of next conference / Annonce de la prochaine conférence

16.00 - 16.30 - Farewell coffee / Café d'adieu

Hotel accommodation

Book your Strasbourg hotel as soon as possible!

We would like to issue an urgent message to those who intend to travel to Strasbourg in May. Some people have already registered online for the Conference and we would like to encourage early registration please.

However, what’s even more pressing at this time, are hotel bookings. We have received a notification from Strasbourg about the lack of bookings so far. As we have informed you previously, you can book through the platform below by clicking on the image or by booking directly with independent hotels.

With the European Plenary sessions happening at the same time, hotels are filling-up quickly!
So, please don’t wait any longer – go ahead and book!

(ranging from 2* to 4* hotels)

Note:

Room availability is subject to availability at the time of booking;
The language is automatically in English for connection outside France, and in French for connection within France;
Booking dates are set automatically for the night between 30 and 31^st May. Guests wishing to book another date may change the date of stay at the top of the page.

INDEPENDENT HOTELS

Le Lodge Hotel - Brithotel Strasbourg ***

10 RUE Paul ELUARD – 67 200 STRASBOURG
Single room: € 139 per night (breakfast included)
Local city tax: € 1,65 p.p.p.n.

Distance – 30 min (tram + by foot) from the Conference venue (BNU).
Location on the map

Hotel Victoria**

9 Rue du Maire Kuss, – 67 000 STRASBOURG
Single room: € 70 per night (2 rooms available)
Double twin room standard: € 96 per night (1 room available)
Double twin superior: € 102 per night (2 rooms available)
Buffet breakfast (7 to 10 ): € 9
Local city tax: € 1,65 p.p.p.n.

Distance - 11 min. by tram and by foot from the Conference venue (BNU) (or 20 min by foot).

Location on the map

OTHER HOTELS CLOSE TO THE CONFERENCE VENUE

4****

Hotel D****

15 Rue du Fossé des Treize, 67000 Strasbourg
Double room: starting at € 212,50 per night

Distance - 9 min. by foot (900 m /985 yards) from the Conference venue (BNU)
Location on the map

Régent Contades, BW Premier Collection****

8 Avenue de la Liberté, 67000 Strasbourg
Double room: starting at € 190,50 per night

Distance - 4 min. by foot (300 m / 328 yards) from the Conference venue (BNU)
Location on the map here.

3***

Hotel Au Couvent du Franciscain***

18 Rue du Faubourg-de-Pierre, 67000 Strasbourg,Hotel Au Couvent Single room: starting at € 123 per night / double room starting at € 128 per night
Local city tax: € 1,65 p.p.p.n.

Distance - 11 min. by foot (850m / 929 yards) from the Conference venue (BNU)
Location on the map

Le grand Hotel***

12 Place de la Gare, 67000 Strasbourg,
Double room: starting at € 160 per night
Local city tax: € 1,65 p.p.p.n.

Distance - 21 min. by foot from the Conference venue (BNU) (13 min with tram)
Location on the map.

>> 5 reason why membership matters <<

Events and Dates

April

12 April	Oslo, Norway	Libraries in the sky: large-scale collaboration strategies and infrastructures to enhance the use of digital heritage collections
17-20 April	Anatalya, Turkey	ANKOSLink2018 International Conference
23-27 Aril	Lyon, France	The Web Conference 2018
25 April	London, UK	CILIP Copyright Conference 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