20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

358 Marian Koren80% in local subsidies. Contrary to international principles of the publiclibrary, Dutch public libraries have maintained the roots of a readersassociation including a subscription fee, at least for adults. Nevertheless,a large network of public libraries has been established, with around 4million members, and counting 8 million visits a year.After World War II, provincial library centres (PBCs) as serviceorganisations were created and from the beginning of the 1950’s and thetransformation of rural provisions into real public library services becamea reality. PBC’s developed the logistics to set up one library after the otherthrough: acquisition of library stock, recruitment of staff, managementand financial administration, library architecture and furniture, and mobileservices; and in later years library automation, marketing and publicrelations, and institutional services in addition to the tradition schoolservices have become part of their programme.The 1975 Act for Public Library Services confirmed this structure:Libraries in communities with less than 30000 inhabitants should have acontract of co-operation with a PBC in order to receive state funding, whichwas in fact paid directly to the PBC’s. Even after the 1987 decentralisationof state subsidies and responsibilities to local and provincial government,most smaller libraries continued their service contract with the PBC ona voluntary basis. The Welfare Act of 1987 stated that management andfinancial administration were obligatory services to be paid with provincialsubsidies and performed by the PBC. In the current Act on Specific CulturalPolicy (1994) the common, joint responsibility of the government levels isto stimulate the formation of library networks.In the late 1990’s a concentration of local government (economy ofscale) was performed, resulting in a smaller number of local authorities.Local and provincial governments now have more freedom to develop theirown library policies; subsidies are no longer earmarked; local libraries andPBC’s – gradually called provincial service organisations (PSO’s) – alsohave more freedom to develop and innovate services. This decentralisationhas lead to quite some differences in library services all over the country:differences in access, user fees, quality and variety of services.Nevertheless, a number of national activities have helped to shape apublic library network. Reading promotion has a long tradition, and somedecades ago the first national reading promotion activities have been started,e.g. Children’s Book week: a dynamic 10 days of all around children’sliterature. The Children’s Jury and the Jong Jury are national programmeswhere children and young people can vote for their top title (after reading