Public Libraries Section

Country Report: Czech Republic 2003

Jarmila Burgetová

The Year 2003 was very important and significant for librarianship in the Czech Republic. The Law No. 257/2001 Coll. of June 29, 2001, on Libraries and Terms of Operating Public Library and Information Services (Library Act), came into effect on January 1, 2002.

In accordance with this Library Act, the library governing bodies were obliged to enter their libraries in the Register of Libraries kept by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic. As of May 1, 2003, there were registered 5327 libraries out of which about 4800 were public libraries. Compared with 2001, it is approx. 80 per cent of all public libraries. The fact the Library Act is fresh new notwithstanding, the preparation of a supplementary bill is under process.

Governing bodies of public libraries are almost exclusively local governments and it is them who are the object of the ongoing changes in legislation concerning budgetary determination of taxes, rules of budget procedure, transfer and decentralization of powers etc. The amendment aims at guaranteeing the availability and quality of standard public library and information services (PLIS) for inhabitants through basic libraries (ie. those at towns and communities) with general purpose collections within the whole national territory. At this time, the consideration of proposed amendments has been finished.

The community of librarians was participating through the Association of Library and Information Professionals of the Czech Republic (Czech abbreviation SKIP). The professional debate focused on PLIS standardization, primordially on the concept of standards as minimal level, extent, and quality of the services provided to inhabitants.

A great number of libraries, which meet the criteria envisioned in the bill, are justifiably worried, that should the amendment stipulate for the minimal parameter values, the governing bodies would generally tend to reduce the PLIS level to those minimums. Ironical enough, the bill under preparation could, by stressing the minimal, worsen the state of PLIS provided in those libraries that have reached higher than minimal level of their services already.

That is why the SKIP, in its Opinion of June 17, 2003, recommended the Ministry of Culture so as the amended Act should stipulate for the obligation of each community to provide the inhabitants within its authority with PLIS, reducing the criterion of standard of PLIS level and availability to a single parameter - that of extent of opening hours. At the same time, the SKIP suggested the Ministry of Culture, that it, pursuing to the Library Act amendment, elaborates and issues the recommendation - guidelines defining the optimal quantitative parameters of PLIS provision by individual categories of public libraries in respect to the size of public served, such as specification of personnel needed for library operation, extent of collection development, number of PCs with public access to the Internet, number of user places in study area, etc. In such a recommendation, or guidelines, a target state of PLIS should be defined. Simultaneously, the communities might be motivated to reach the parameters recommended. In an ensuing period, the parameters set, having become usual, could be stipulated for as obligatory for those providing PLIS.

The Library Act defined, among others, so called "regional functions" of regional libraries: "Regional functions are functions through which a regional library and other libraries assigned by it provide "basic libraries" within the region primordially with advisory, educational and co-ordination services, develop traveling circulating collections (ie. those that are developed on the level of coordinating libraries and made available successively for circulation in individual libraries within the coordination framework) and make available traveling circulating sets of library documents, and perform other necessary activities supporting the development of libraries and their public library and information services".

Performance of regional functions is, by the law, an obligation of regional libraries or those assigned by them. Changes of rules of budget procedure will have an impact on the funding in this field as well. That is why the Library Act amendment should ensure both continuity of regional functions and the national co-ordination of their performance. It is in this respect that the Bill aims at charging the regional governments with a broader responsibility for regional libraries and stipulates for the Ministry of Culture supervision over the compliance to this obligation. The Bill also extends the Ministry of Culture competences, adding the national co-ordination of the performance of the library regional functions to existing ones.