Libraries as Places for Social Cohesion

Thursday, Friday, October 8, 9, 2009
Bibliothèque Public d’Informtion, Paris

The challenge facing libraries today, according to information I received about the workshop, is “to diversify their offer by adding services linked to economic and societal changes; to create new relationships with their publics; to find a “discussion space” with socially involved organizations and associations; and to define a role to play in order to strengthen social cohesion and professional integration.”

The purpose of the workshop was “to make an exchange of knowledge and experience possible, not just successes but also difficulties if not failures, and to develop a collection of ‘would be’ models and practices.” Thought also was given to “ways to defend the existence of such services in municipal libraries.”

During the workshop French librarians alternated with German librarians in making presentations. Their presentations included a brief description of their library and the programs it offers for immigrants and the unemployed. In this summary I have not included presentations made by or about the Paris, Cologne, Bochum, Bremen or Berlin libraries, because I provided detail about these libraries in other blog postings.

Municipal Library of Bordeaux
The City of Bordeaux has a central library, nine branch libraries and one bookmobile. It has a self-learning center called L’espace Autoformation. It has 34 computers and books on language learning.

The unemployment rate among the library’s customers is 20%. The library works with the Pôle Emploi, the national unemployment office, and PIMMS, an organization created to help immigrants assimilate into French life, to help the unemployed find jobs. The librarians often complain that it is difficult to work with the Pôle Emploi.


Municipal Library of Rennes and Library of Rennes-Mctropole
The public library of Rennes, the capital of Brittany, has 35,971 subscribers. It circulated 856,000 items last year. It has eight 15-minute public computers and 21 one-hour public computers. The library provides one-on-one computer training to customers on Saturdays. Among constraints the library representative listed that hamper its efforts to provide services to the unemployed and immigrants are the staff's need for more knowledge about information technology; resistance among staff members to performing tasks they consider social work; a lack of knowledge among target populations of the digital resources available at the library; and the limitations on computer inherent in some of the measures taken to protect the library’s network security.


Bibliotheque d’Etude et d’Information de Cigny-Pontoise
This library has created a study/career center where, according to the librarian representative, it has adapted its resources to the real needs of job seekers and other people. The library works with the Pôle Emploi, the national unemployment office, to host Journées Consiels Emploi, job advice days. The librarian said she did not find the agency as difficult to work with as did the representative from Bordeaux.

Blogging is wildly popular in France. The Bibliotheque d’Etude et d’Information de Cigny-Pontoise writes a blog about employment that patrons can access by clicking the Nos Services (Our Services) link on the library’s home page. The library’s weekly blog post includes information about job fairs, job training, and other practical information about employment-related activities in the Cigny-Pontoise area as well as information about the latest materials on the topic available at the library.


Stadtbücherei Stuttgart
According to the director of the Stadtbücherei Stuttgart, 35% of the city’s population is of “immigrational background.” They come from 100 different countries and speak 120 different languages. The director described her city as “multicultural but peaceful.” Stuttgart offers 3,000 programs a year in its central, music and 17 branch libraries, many of them in partnership with the Volkshochschule (school for adult education). The city is building a new central library, which, the director said, will be a center for life-long learning. The library created a 600-page book composed of letters written by citizens about how they feel about the library. The book was put into the cornerstone of the new building.

The director listed a variety of programs the library offers, some more successful than others. Like other libraries in Germany, it offers a fee-based research service, but there is no longer much demand for it because the library provides free access to many databases. It offers an information skills course that is also meeting with less success and may be discontinued. It offers a popular digital literacy course, which focuses not on computer technology but on providing a deeper understanding of what is expected to happen in the digital world. It has a course on protecting online information that is extremely successful.

The library has a volunteer staff of learning guides who help senior citizens with computers and help all patrons with spelling and grammar. It provides a message board where people who want to learn a language and people who want to learn each other’s language can connect. And it has a Knowledge Café that, according to the director, provides social networking, but in real rather than virtual time.

Breakout Sessions
Workshop participants were asked to indicate which of three breakout sessions they would like to join: minorities and social integration; services for the unemployed; and life-long learning. Presentations took longer than anticipated, however, and after a tour of the Bibliotheque public d’information, participants convened in a general session to discuss the three topics instead.

Public buildings in France and Germany must be handicapped accessible. Much of the general discussion had to do with laws in France and Germany that require public institutions like libraries to have handicapped-accessible websites as well.


Gender Mainstreaming
A European Union (EU) directive that generated considerable discussion had to do with “gender mainstreaming.” The UN Economic and Social Council formally defined the concept as “mainstreaming a gender perspective in the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation policies and programs in all areas and at all levels. It is a strategy for making women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programs in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality.” According to a European Union (EU) directive, this gender perspective must be integrated into the budget planning process for all public institutions like public libraries by the year 2011.