Public Libraries Section

Country Report: Czech Republic 2002

Jarmila Burgetová

After more than a decade of endeavour and „struggles", the Czech Republic has got a new Library Act. On June 29, 2001 the Parliament of the Czech Republic passed the law no. 257/2001 Coll., on Libraries and Terms of Operating Public Library and Information Services (Library Act)¹.

The act - the third one in sequel in the history of Czech librarianship - deals with the field of public library and information services and governs, in this respect, first and foremost public libraries. It does not exclude, however, a contingency that libraries of other types may enter the „System", on the proviso they provide their services to the general public. The prior Act, the law on the unified system of libraries of 1959, governed all the libraries active on territory of the then Czechoslovakia.

The libraries, comprised by the Act, will be granted government benefits (eg. in the form of earmarked subsidies) and they will have (and, in some cases, already have) exclusive status in related legislature (copyright law, law on accounting, etc.).The System of (Public) Libraries, in accordance with the Act, is composed of

1. the libraries governed and funded by the central government - the National Library of the Czech Republic², the K.E.Macan Library and Printing House for the Blind, the Moravian Library in Brno,
2. the libraries governed and funded by the regional authority - regional libraries³,
3. the libraries governed and funded by the municipalities (communities) - basic libraries,
4. specialised libraries.

The Act stipulates prerequisities for the inclusion of a library into the „System of Libraries" by course of the law. They are - all in all - two of them:

1. Operator of a library is mandated to guarantee the equal access for all to public library and information services provided by the library.
2. Operator of a library is obliged to file an entry in the Library Registry with the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.

The basic public library and information services are provided by libraries free of charge. They comprise

1. making available documents from collection of a library or, through inter-library services, from collection of another library;
2. oral delivery of reference information and literature searches,
3. mediating information from external sources, particularly information from the civil service and local government and administration,
4. facilitating access, through telecommunication media, to external information sources to which the library has free access - or the access to the Internet⁴, (with the exception of copying services in general, international ILL, and access to audio and audio-visual documents).

Libraries may provide a gamut of other services while charging a fee up to reimbursement of the really incurred cost.

Purpose-specific subsidies shall be granted by the central government to libraries especially for R&D projects, implementation of new technologies, establishing Internet connectivity, (electronic) reformatting of information sources and documents and providing for their access, collection development, collection preservation, providing access to library collection for the handicapped, cultural, educational and training projects, professional support of libraries in an administrative region⁵, continuing education of librarians, construction and reconstruction of a library building, or its equipment by security and fire-protection systems.

1 The English translation of the Library Act is available on web: http://www.nkp.cz/o_knihovnach/English/ZakonAng257.htm

2 The National Library shall represent the System of Libraries in negotiations with „collective administrators of copyright"in matters pertaining to royalties - what we consider to be a very important stipulation

3 Regional libraries - mostly former „state research libraries" - shall perform so-called „regional functions", ie. they shall provide, with cooperation with other commissioned (mainly former district) libraries, a broad professional support for lesser public libraries in the respective administrative region.

4 Mandatory stipulation for Internet connectivity of all public libraries is remitted by a final provision of the Act allowing small public libraries to meet this obligation by December 31, 2006.

5 Professional support of libraries in an administrative region encompasses a broad range of activities for the benefit of lesser public libraries that have been performed, so far, in framework of individual administartive districts by district libraries. However, due to an administrative reform, the local government on district level shall cease to exist by December 31, 2002 and from 2003 on district libraries shall be governed - if that has not happened, already - by municipalities (or regions). The newly established regional libraries shall take over these tasks - with public budgetary support - in cooperation with libraries commissioned in respective region.