UNESCO Public Library Manifestos, 1972-2022

Abstract

The paper traces the evolution of the UNESCO Public Library Manifesto from the first revision in 1972 to the recent version of 2022.

The 1972 Manifesto, a hasty update of the 1949 text, marks a clear change in the addressees: no longer local communities, citizens and the library profession, but public authorities and professionals. There is a strong emphasis on the role of the public library in culture, reading and information; on the right to access for all; on new media.

The 1994 Manifesto is the first joint IFLA-UNESCO Manifesto. It stresses an intimate connection between freedom, well-being, the development of society and individuals and a conscious and complete exercise of a full right to access knowledge.

The public library is defined as a ‘local gateway to knowledge’: an effective definition for a non-localistic vision. In the text, however, there is a gap between the formulation of the context scenario and the wealth of content that has emerged since 1990 in the Human Development Reports of the United Nations Program Development, a radical rethinking of the traditional concept of development.

The 2022 Manifesto stemmed from the collaboration between IFLA and UNESCO-Section Information For All Programme. This article questions the three fundamental thematic nuclei of the new text:

- ‘sustainable development’. A more explicit reference to the UN 2030 Agenda would have made more transparent the type of orientation (systemic, multidimensional and inter-institutional approach; integrated design and planning; development of feedback knowledge; inter-generational perspective) necessary to face the challenge;

- ‘libraries in the knowledge society’. There is a very strong connection between knowledge and skills for citizenship, with an emphasis on scientific citizenship and the methods and tools for its effective and daily exercise;

– the ‘community’ is a pervasive leitmotiv. Citizens are not just users, but builders of knowledge; libraries play an essential role in building ‘bridging’ knowledge and open communities.

The IFLA/UNESCO Manifesto 2022 is probably a transition text. In the expression of the key missions for the public library, the Manifesto reveals an underlying tension for the future, contained in the alert attention to the present. It is one of the most significant messages, which could perhaps have been made clearer and more intense with a closer integration between the different missions of the public library and a stronger integration of the rich UNESCO tradition on educational policies, cultural heritage, intercultural dialogue, human development.