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By Robert Davies - July 2002
Rob Davies gives us a progress report on Europe's Thematic Network for Public Libraries and cultural institutions operating at local level.
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Since its inception in May 2002, the PULMAN Network of Excellence has set out to strengthen the performance and help achieve the potential of public libraries in their emerging new roles and to help them prepare to fulfill their potential in the digital era of an e-Europe.
PULMAN's major work involves:
A key outcome of PULMAN is to encourage integrated activity involving public libraries, museums and archives operating at local level.
The PULMAN Network is now firmly established with representation from 26 European countries and a further 10 to follow (see below). The first twelve months of activity have been a very productive period.
Work has now been completed on drafting the first edition of the PULMAN Digital Guidelines and they will shortly be available on PULMANWeb [1]. The draft Guidelines were evaluated at a workshop, attended by 69 experts from 35 countries, in Helsinki on 18/19 February, 2002. The experts, which included PULMAN's own Virtual Advisory Board, assessed the Guidelines from all perspectives including format, usability and content. The result of the Workshop was to establish a well-defined editorial framework for the finalisation of the Guidelines. They are now ready for publication on PULMANWeb during June 2002. Proposals for their translation into 18 national languages have already been received.
The 122 million registered users of public libraries in 29 countries of Europe attest to the importance and impact of public libraries in society. To realise their full potential in the digital era, public libraries must be prepared to offer new and innovative digital services that empower citizens to achieve their personal goals in a changing society and to contribute to a cohesive and successful knowledge-based economy in Europe.
The Guidelines are intended to point public libraries and - more tentatively - their local cultural partner organisations, into this era. They include sections on: Policy Issues; Good Practice; and the Future Agenda - together a very wide range of links to innovative services.
The Guideline contents are as follows:
| Introduction |
| Section 1 - Social Policy guidelines |
| Social inclusion |
| Citizen participation in new forms of civic governance |
| Access and services for people with physical and visual impairments |
| Public library services for children and schools |
| Public library services supporting education in adult life |
| Support for business and the economy |
| Access to diverse cultural content |
| Access to music and non-print material |
| Section 2 - Management guidelines |
| Performance measures and evaluative tools |
| Funding and financial opportunities |
| Management practices and models for co-operation and partnership |
| The public interest in access to copyright-protected materials |
| The handling of legal issues |
| Section 3 - Technical guidelines |
| Digitisation |
| Developments in integrated library systems |
| Multimedia digital service delivery |
| Delivery channels |
| Resource description, discovery and renewal |
| Tailoring of services and citizen interaction and participation |
| Technical responses to multilingual issues |
We do not expect that the Guidelines will be a perfect instrument in their first edition and, for this reason, will be inviting comment from all interested parties via a process of Open Review which will lead to a revised edition in time for the Policy Conference in March 2003 (see below).
Perhaps the first use of the translated Guidelines will be to provide a basis for discussion at the 26 PULMAN National Workshops scheduled to be held in September and October 2002. The Workshops will also try to move forward the agenda for cross-domain activity and co-operation among public libraries, museums and archives.
Feedback from the National Workshops will feed into the planning and agenda of the PULMAN Policy Conference.
In support of this cross-domain agenda, a meeting was organized by EBLIDA (European Bureau of Library, Information and Documentation Associations) on 7 June 2002 in The Hague. This involved participants from a range of European organisations and associations from the museums and archives sector in the discussion of the terrain for co-operation between public libraries, museums and archives as well as contributing further to the Policy Conference agenda.
The PULMAN Policy Conference will be held in Oeiras, Portugal (13-14 March 2003). Its target audience is policy makers and influential practitioners in public libraries and their partner institutions. EBLIDA is co-ordinating and planning the Policy Conference.
PULMANweb [1] now provides access to a growing variety of resources and information - The Guidelines will be the newest arrival.
The following table summarises applicants and participation in the Training Workshops:
| Country | Applications | Participants |
| Bulgaria | 5 | 4 |
| Czech Republic | 3 | 3 |
| Estonia | 4 | 3 |
| Greece | 15 | 7 |
| Hungary | 3 | 2 |
| Latvia | 1 | 1 |
| Lithuania | 9 | 5 |
| Poland | 12 | 6 |
| Portugal | 8 | 5 |
| Romania | 4 | 4 |
| Slovak Republic | 2 | 2 |
| Slovenia | 7 | 5 |
| Spain | 1 | 1 |
| Total | 74 | 48 |
Finally, PULMAN is growing! The proposal to extend the PULMAN Network to countries bordering European Union countries and its candidate states, favourably evaluated under the 8th Call of IST FP5, is in the final stage of negotiation at the time of writing and expected to begin in mid-June, 2002.
The countries involved include Russia and Turkey (as partners) and a number of other countries represented by Country Co-ordinators (Albania, Belarus, Bosnia Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Yugoslavia and Ukraine).
PULMAN-XT will run for 14 months and will enable the new countries to benefit from the work of PULMAN including translated Guidelines, National Workshops and attendance at the PULMAN Policy Conference. In addition, an ambitious new programme of institutional mentoring and twinning will be established.
MDR Partners (UK, co-ordinator), Eblida, Helsinki City Library (Finland) , Oton Zupancic Library, Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Veria (Greece) are the PULMAN partners who will make the 'bridge' with PULMAN-XT.
Although this ambitious work programme is consuming a great deal of the time of PULMAN Network members, thoughts are already beginning to turn to what comes next. How can the important resources created by PULMAN, such as the Guidelines, the training resources and the political work, be sustained once the EC-funded period is over? How best can the cross-domain agenda for local services in cultural heritage, learning, employment skills, etc. best be developed under IST in future and how might the PULMAN Network contribute? We are working on it!
Rob Davies
PULMAN Project Manager
MDR Partners
URL: <http://www.pulmanweb.org
Email: rob.davies@mdrpartners.com
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For citation purposes:
Davies, R. "PULMAN: rolling on by night and day", Cultivate Interactive, issue
7, 11 July 2002
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue7/pulman/>
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