Danish public libraries are known for their innovative services and their pioneering use of technology. For example, every public library in Denmark has an automated library management system and the Danish National Library Authority (NLA) estimates that by the end of 1997 every public library will be able to provide Internet services to the public. This paper provides a study of the current state of Danish public library Internet services and makes some comparison with the current UK situation.

The paper is split into three sections. The first section provides the context in which Danish public libraries operate. It gives information on the political, organisational and funding context in which they are based and the networking policy under which they operate. The second section consists of case studies of three Danish public libraries and the actual services that they offer. The final section provides a brief comparative study with the UK and explores whether there are any lessons that can be learnt for UK public libraries from the Danish experience of providing and developing Internet services.

To understand Danish public libraries and the development of their Internet services it is important to place them in the political, organisational and funding structures in which they operate.

In a recent Danish Government report the Ministry of Research stated that

These ‘tacit values’ are the basis of Denmark’s extensive welfare system and high level of public services. The country has a strong belief in the right of the citizen to guaranteed security in the form of an extensive social-welfare programme. This social-welfare programme is provided for free and funded through a high rate of taxation with income tax at approximately 50% and VAT set at 25%.

Denmark is therefore a country with strong egalitarian beliefs and is willing to fund these beliefs through high taxation. These political and moral values define public services in Denmark. Public services are typified by their high profile in society and their comparatively (to many other countries) large budgets. Public libraries in Denmark therefore operate in a supportive political context that usually recognises the importance of their role in society and provides them with funds to fulfil this role.

The laws governing public library services were defined in the 1993 Danish Public Library Act. The Act states that each district council (which is somewhere between a parish council and a county council in the UK) is legally required to provide either by itself or in cooperation with another district council a library service. If the population of the area is more than 5000 the council must ensure that this service is provided ‘full time’ and employs at least one qualified librarian. A qualified librarian must head the library system. This Head Librarian reports to the district council.

Structurally Danish library authorities operate on a smaller scale than in the UK. In the UK the library service is run on a county basis rather than the much smaller district basis in Denmark. UK library authorities therefore tend to be much larger in size and consist of more libraries as they typically cover a greater geographical area. The Head of the Library Service in the UK reports to county councillors rather than to the district councillors. Libraries in Denmark are funded and controlled on a much more local level.

There is, however, some provision for one library in each county (which is made up of districts) to act on a larger scale as a county library. The role of the county library is defined in the Danish Public Library Act as

(Danish National Library Authority, 1993)

This library therefore acts as a superstructure for other libraries in the area and facilitates interlibrary loans for the region - ensuring that books are made available from outside the county and in non public library institutions. These county functions take place on top of the library’s more localised public library role. The county library is usually therefore the central library in the area’s largest town.

Danish public libraries are funded directly by their district councils. The funding for the library service is raised through state taxation which is managed by the district council. The library is very directly responsible to its local community and it is possible for that community to choose to increase or decrease the amount of funding which the service receives. The amount of funding received therefore varies from region to region and consequently so does the quality of the library service provided.

County library functions are funded directly by the national Government. In this way the county library system ensures that

(Vig, 1994)

Two of the libraries used as case studies in this paper operate as county libraries.

Public libraries also have access to a special fund that is provided by the Government and administered by the National Library Authority (NLA). This fund is for the ‘stimulation of development of public and school libraries’. It is an annual fund worth 16 million Kroner (£1.5m). A large percentage of this fund is reserved for specific purposes. In 1991-1995 this money was made available as matched funding for basic library automation.

At present the bulk of this fund is being used to assist public libraries in setting up public Internet access. If a library wishes to set up this service the NLA will give it a grant of £2000 to install ISDN or leased lines. An additional £6000 grant is then available to allow the library to install a WWW server and consequently be able to offer OPAC access over the WWW and create and make accessible WWW pages.

In addition to these focused grants there is an annual call once a year for public library research projects from the NLA. These projects are not restricted to networking topics but are simply for ‘library development’.

The Danish Public Libraries Act states that

(Danish National Library Authority, 1993)

With the development of the Internet there was widespread debate about whether the Internet fell under this objective and therefore whether access to it had to provided for free. In essence the librarians had to decide whether the Internet was simply ‘old wine in new bottles’ or a completely new service. If it was simply a new medium through which the library could ‘spread knowledge education and culture.’ it had to be provided as a service for free.

After long discussion it was agreed that the Internet was only a new medium rather than a new service and therefore access to it had to be provided for free. In law therefore Danish public libraries should not charge for public Internet access. (A small number of libraries however do charge as they still argue that the Internet is not covered by the National Libraries Act. The Committee on Libraries in the Information Society (UBIS) was due to report on this issue in Autumn 1997 and was expected to make explicit the legal responsibility of libraries for providing free public Internet access).

Denmark also has a strongly defined vision of a national networking future. This vision has its basis in a 1994 report produced by the Ministry of Research entitled ‘Info-Society 2000’. This report had as its aim to

• line up the possibilities for the Danes in a future Information Society.
• formulate an overall Danish policy for information technology.
• identify specific target areas for the next few years, and where necessary identify the need for law reforms.

Info-Society 2000 outlined the ways in which Denmark could best respond to the developments of the information society. It was a strategic document that proposed an agenda of future initiatives. It has been extremely influential in terms of Danish networking strategy and many of its recommendations are now being taken up. These recommendations range from outlining a possible scenario for future Government services and their interaction with the public, to networking technology use in schools, the welfare society, health services and libraries.

There are two main principles for ‘libraries in the age of IT’ in the report. Firstly, libraries must remain at the centre of the developing electronic information society and act as a mediator to information no matter which format it is in.

Secondly, public libraries must act as information nets for Danish society. Public libraries must provide free Internet and other networked information access so to ensure that every member of society has one free access point to electronic information e.g. act as the information net. The report recognises that not all members of Danish society will own a computer or be able to get access through facilities at work or in an education institution. Access through public libraries is seen as the means to ensure that Denmark will not develop into an information haves and information have nots society.

Public libraries therefore have been given a central role in the developing governmental expectations for the Danish information society. However, no specific money has been made available as a result of the Info-Society report for public libraries to take up these roles. The funding for this development must come from the local governmental level. It is therefore up to the libraries themselves and bodies like the NLA to ensure that this funding is forthcoming. The three libraries used as case studies in this paper all secured additional funding from their local governments for exploring how to take up the role defined for them in Info-Society 2000.

The three libraries used in these case studies were selected because of their innovative use of the Internet in their services. Roskilde is particularly interesting because it offers public Internet access on a large scale and had to develop new policies in order to manage this new service. Silkeborg operates in a management structure which is ideally suited for a library developing IT services. Århus is an example of a library that is changing its structure and focus due to its development of IT services.

Roskilde itself is medium sized town with a population of 51,000. It is 30km west of Copenhagen and lies at the head of the Roskilde Fjord. It is a county town and acts as a commercial and trade centre for this part of Zealand. The county as a whole has a population of 205,000 people. Roskilde public library is the county library for this area. It has 101 members of staff. The Librarian is Stig Hansen.

The library has been able to develop a number of wide ranging and high level Internet services with the aid of special funding from its local council. This is a result of the Government’s clear vision of its expectations for the public library service of the future as presented in the Info-Society 2000 report. Roskilde Council responded to this vision in the form of an additional 1.6 million Kroner (£142k) for four years for the library budget. This additional funding has been used to invest in extra staff, hardware and software in order so the library can develop Internet services on a large scale.

Interestingly this high investment in IT did provoke a small number of complaints from some members of the public who felt that the money could have been better spent on more traditional library services. However, once the new services became established these complaints ceased and the services quickly became heavily used.

The library offers a full range of Internet services. These services consist of

• 42 public access PCs with free Internet access (including several in the children’s library) via a leased line
• full staff access to the Internet
• daily free Internet training classes for the public
• a library WWW server
• WWW pages about the library
• WWW accessible OPAC
• WWW pages written and hosted for the local council.
• e-mail addresses for library users

Internet services have been integrated into all parts of the library. The 42 Internet workstations are scattered throughout the library building with the majority clustered in two main areas. One room has been set aside for Internet access only and operates often as a training room. The library has targeted society as a whole for its training sessions and has specific classes in order to attract sections of the population who may not otherwise attend. There are training classes for women only, older people only and children’s classes. These training classes are offered for free. Everyday there is at least two hours of training classes. As well as the general introduction classes there are more specific ones such as ‘how to answer difficult reference queries’. These classes are usually heavily booked.

The library is committed to ensuring that children are given as many opportunities as possible to become IT and Internet aware. There are therefore four Internet access points in the children’s library in addition to five PCs dedicated simply for educational games. The other Internet access points in the library are also heavily used by children and teenagers as they are not restricted to just using the workstations in the children’s library.

The library and the council have been working in partnership with each other developing accessible Internet services and resources for the citizens of Roskilde. This partnership is immediately obvious in the level of funding that the council has given the library to develop these services. This partnership extends to the provision of high quality information services about the council and the town of Roskilde. The library, under the direction of the council, is responsible for producing WWW pages for the council. The council decides the content of these pages but it is the library staff who write them and it is the library server which hosts them. This relationship between library and council is indicative of the council’s view of the central role of the library as a disseminator of electronic information about the community.

The library’s own WWW pages include information about the library, the OPAC is WWW accessible and very soon patrons will be able to reserve books over the WWW.

There seems to be a number of issues that need to be addressed before a library can offer public Internet access. These issues tend to centre on the following topics:

• whether to charge for public access
• the pornography issue
• protecting the library legally from being responsible for material viewed
• which Internet facilities to make available
• security and virus issues
• booking systems
• deciding what is acceptable use

As Roskilde is offering public access on such a large scale, all these issues needed to be considered and policy formulated.

As all Danish public libraries should legally not charge for public Internet access this was one policy decision that had already been made for the library.

The issue of library users looking at pornography is one that has gained a lot of attention from the library profession. The issue is twofold - how to prevent children from looking at pornography and secondly how to ensure that the library is not held legally responsible if a user (or parent of a user) is offended by material they come across using the library’s connection.

To prevent these situations arising many libraries use ‘nannying’ software that prevents users looking at WWW sites which may have ‘dubious’ content. This software may be installed simply on the workstations used by children or on all workstations in the library. Libraries which don’t use this software often have a disclaimer on their WWW pages which states that they will not be held responsible for any material library users view. Another option is to make library users sign a statement agreeing that they will not use library equipment to look at ‘offensive sites’.

Roskilde, however, has chosen not to use ‘nannying’ software or have a disclaimer. The library took the policy decision that they wished their users to ‘get the most out of the Internet’ which meant that the library could not decide what the users could and could not look at. This liberal policy has been rewarded as the library has found that the Danish public police themselves and the library has had very few incidents where users have been caught looking at pornography or other offensive sites. The pornography ‘issue’ simply did not turn out to be an issue at all.

The library has chosen to make all Internet facilities such as Telnet and FTP available to the library users. This makes it possible for library users to download material to disks and also connect to other computers and use their workstation as a dumb terminal for that computer. Again the library offers these facilities because it is committed to ensuring that their users are given the greatest opportunity to make the most of the Internet.

The library has taken some precautions to ensure that this open access policy does not result in problems such as hacking and viruses. All the library workstations are protected against viruses simply by the use of a piece of software which automatically checks for viruses. Every disk inserted in the workstation is automatically virus checked before it can be used. If a virus is found the software disables the disk before the virus can be passed on. In the eight months since public access had been offered there had been roughly 20 disks which had viruses on them. Again the library found that the ‘virus’ issue did not turn out to be an issue at all. The library operates all its own systems behind a firewall which prevents them from being at risk from hackers.

As the users have access to Telnet it is possible for users to log on to interactive chat facilities such as MUDs and MOOs. Also through their WWW browser it is also possible to use facilities such as Internet Relay chat (IRC). These facilities allow real time textual communication to take place and in the case of MUDs this is often in the context of a Dungeons and Dragons game.

This type of use is the subject of considerable debate in North America where it is viewed as a problem. Children tend to use these facilities for a considerable length of time and can prevent other people from using Internet workstations who may have a more traditional and less ‘frivolous’ reference need. Many librarians are therefore looking for ways to control or stop this type of use considering it a waste of valuable resources.

However, the attitude at Roskilde library is that such chatting should be encouraged as it helps children become computer literate. It also brings children into the library who may also then (whilst waiting to use a workstation) start to browse the more traditional library stock and so be encouraged to read more. Finally, as most of this chatting takes place in English it is viewed as a very useful and fun way for children to develop their foreign language skills. The children still use the computers for a long time but the library also operates a booking system which ensures that there is some controlled access to the computers.

The library plans to develop more services which will be available over the Internet itself. One possible development will be the creation of reference service that operates through e-mail. The library will be exploring how it can take more services to the user rather than the user having to come to the library. There are plans to therefore make more use of multi-media facilities such as video-conferencing.

Silkeborg is 43km west of Århus, Jutland’s largest city. It has a population of 50,000 people and is traditionally a centre for the paper mill industry. The library is busy and popular and in 1996 had more than 390,000 visitors. It has a stock of 280,000 books and in 1996 the annual expenditure on library services per inhabitant exceeded the national average by more than 30%. The library has the equivalent of 64 full time staff of whom 27 are professionally qualified. The Deputy Manager is Søren Hansen. Silkeborg Library was highlighted in the recent European Union ‘Public Libraries and the Information Society’ study (Thorhauge et al., 1997) as an excellent example of a public library which has integrated IT into its services. Much of the library’s successful implementation of IT services is a result of the progressive management structures the library uses.

Silkeborg Library started experimenting with offering Internet services in 1992. The library had a single dial-up connection that was mainly used for ‘playing’ and for the reference librarians’ mailing list Stumpers. The concept of ‘playing’ is one that the library feels is extremely important when introducing new technology (Larsen, 1996). All staff are encouraged to ‘play’ with new equipment and discover what it can and can’t do at their own pace. By allowing the equipment to be used for ‘non-serious’ reasons the staff become more enthusiastic about the technology as they use it out of interest rather than duty. The time which is spent in ‘playing’ is not wasted as the library ends up with staff who are far more likely to be motivated and enthusiastic. This concept of ‘playing’ shows how the library operates in a ‘learning environment’ where staff are constantly encouraged to learn new skills not simply out of a sense of duty but through their own enthusiasm and desire to learn.

These aims are also seen in the way in which the library is managed. Each library department has its own budget that is independently managed by that department. It is up to the staff in that area to decide how they wish to spend their budget. This is designed to encourage staff to feel in control of their work and so develop a sense of commitment and responsibility. The department may choose to spend its budget as it wishes, for example the department staff will decide how much they wish to spend on books or IT. The department staff are therefore totally responsible for the service that they provide and must defend the service they offer themselves to the public.

Members of staff are also encouraged to develop and take responsibility for projects which will explore new ways of managing the library or new services. A team of staff will be put together from different departments to run and manage these projects. This ensures that all staff become aware of the project as someone from their department will be involved in it. It is also the responsibility of the project team to ensure that all staff are informed of what is going on and also trained on how the new tool or service functions. Silkeborg has the policy that

(Larsen, 1996)

The project team is therefore wholly responsible for the success or failure of the project and has complete control over the management of its budget in the same way as departments do. Again this is to encourage the staff involved to feel responsible for the project instead of simply viewing it as a duty. This devolvement of responsibility and being given the freedom to experiment has lead to much greater job satisfaction and made the staff more willing to take on the challenges that IT, in particular, offers. When a project is completed it is the project staff rather than the Librarian who receives the plaudits or takes responsibility for its failure. Again it will be the project staff who will write up or present their project to the profession as a whole not the Librarian.

Due to this management structure the library is well placed to seek outside research grants as it is already operating in the necessary ‘project’ culture. As staff are encouraged to develop projects they become familiar with the idea of seeking money from outside sources to fund new initiatives. The success of the library staff in achieving this is found in the large number of research grants which the library has obtained over the last decade.

Silkeborg Library has received a number of grants from the National Library Authority for several IT projects. For the period of 1995-7 the library was awarded a grant of approximately £100,000 for a project known as the ‘virtual’ library. This has the aim to provide as many services as possible to the library user over the WWW. The library has a specially appointed web-librarian to take charge of these WWW services. The library now has its own WWW site that provides information on all of the library’s departments. It also has a WWW accessible OPAC and provides tourist information about the area and community information (e.g. local council information). Local clubs also have been given their own WWW pages and the library has established some e-mail discussion groups.

Another project underway is the creation of the ‘Silkeborg Electronic Town Hall’. Silkeborg council wishes to make itself as accessible as possible over the WWW (in accordance with the recommendations of the Info-Society 2000 report). The council is working with the library and is using the library WWW server and library staff expertise to develop this project. The library is receiving funding from the council for their role in this initiative.

The Internet services the library offers are:

• free public access to the Internet on 17 PCs
• e-mail accounts
• free training classes
• WWW server with

• OPAC
• pages about the library
• tourist information
• Electronic Town Hall
• pages on local clubs and societies

• staff Intranet
• acting as an Internet Service Provider (ISP)

All these services have been well received by the library’s users. The public Internet access workstations have been heavily used by a fairly wide selection of the public though still tends to be predominately male. In order to encourage more women to use the Internet the library has dedicated one of its Internet access points to women-only use. Since starting to offer public access the library has had an extra 20-25,000 visits per year and circulation figures have increased by 2.3% a month. The Internet is therefore drawing people into the library who would not normally visit it. These people are not only using the Internet but are also taking out books.

Silkeborg Library is especially committed to the development of children’s services and has a bustling and vibrant children’s library. It has a high number of computers that are available for the children to use. In addition to two workstations dedicated to Internet use there are seven computers dedicated to multimedia applications. These seven computers make up a multimedia workshop that is funded by a grant from the National Library Authority. This workshop allows children to explore and develop the creation of graphics, video and sound through the use of computers. Also available in the workshop is a colour scanner.

Many of the library’s WWW services are part of their Virtual Library project or the Silkeborg Electronic Town Hall. As a result of these two projects the library has an extensive WWW site. The library is still looking to develop Internet services further in order to be able make more efficient uses of its resources. One possible future service is to use e-mail to contact their patrons for reservations and overdue notices. The library is also using the Internet to keep in touch with the opinions of its readers and has set up a mailing list on the topic of the library.

Perhaps the most innovative of Silkeborg Library’s Internet service is its role of Internet Service Provider (ISP). ISPs are organisations which provide connections to the Internet e.g. Compuserve, Demon and Pipex. Usually a customer pays a monthly subscription charge and using a modem dials into the ISP which then connects them to the Internet.

In Silkeborg the library has taken on this role and sells Internet connections to the public at £10 for the initial connection and then £50 per year. At present the library has 500 subscribers to this service and it can handle 30 people dialling in at any one time. This service is being developed so it can be offered to commercial organisations who will be connect to the library via leased lines. The library is also used as an ISP by the local council and a number schools.

The library found this a very easy service to set up and manage with the most difficult thing to deal with being its success. Most of the online help is managed by a number of volunteers who advise and help other users through e-mail. The library employs one half time member of staff to run it and it cost approximately £15,000 to set up. However, the service is profitable with current profits estimated at about £15,000 per annum.

The library also sells e-mail accounts to its users that can then be accessed either through a home PC or through the computers in the library. These accounts can be bought for a one off fee of approximately £10. These e-mail accounts have been very popular.

A large majority of Silkeborg’s community Internet services are therefore being provided by the library. It has actively taken up the position of electronic information provider. In this way the library has positioned itself not only at the centre for the provision of electronic information content but also for the provision of electronic information connection structure. The library is establishing itself as an electronic information and communication centre.

Århus is Denmark’s second largest city and is the cultural centre of Jutland. It is situated on the eastern cost of Jutland and is the capital of the municipality of Århus. The municipality has a population of 280,000 of whom more than 200,000 live in the city. Århus Central Library is an extremely busy library that also acts as the county library for the area. It has 123 members of staff of whom 51 are qualified librarians. In 1995 it had circulation figures of 2.1 million items and a budget of approximately £4 million. The librarian is Rolf Hapel. As the library is an inner city library it has to deal with the same issues of poverty and community breakdown faced by inner city libraries in the UK. The city also has a large immigrant population that the library needs to provide specialised services for.

The library has four political objectives which are that:

• the library is a meeting place - the local space for experience and knowledge.
• the citizens must be offered a broad library selection including the latest cultural production.
• all information media are equal.
• the citizen must have free and equal access to information in a society where development is based on knowledge.

(Århus Public Library, 1997)

To achieve these ends the library has redeveloped its internal structuring and finances. The main library has, for example, no ‘reference section’. The reference library has been integrated into the library as a whole so all staff have to develop reference skills rather than simply refer library users to one section of the library. In this way the whole library and its staff are both a reference library and reference staff. With the development of IT and its increasing use in reference work all staff have had to learn new skills and the library as a whole has integrated IT into its services instead of just certain areas.

To complement this view of the library as a whole instead of discrete units the library operates under a three-part-library plan. The first section of the library the reader encounters when entering is designed to be as welcoming as possible - with the removal of high shelves and clutter - presenting a spacious and attractive area in much the same way shops design their initial entrance point. The next section the users encounter is where all the technology can be found - open access Internet workstations, OPACs and self service facilities. The final section of the library is the open stacks where the user can find the books. Through this positioning of materials the library user will be introduced to IT on their way to more traditional services and will be encouraged to use facilities that if simply placed among the shelves would not be so prominent. This arrangement makes a strong statement about how the library views itself in the context of IT.

The Internet services the library offers are:

• free public Internet access on 35 workstations
• public library WWW server
• library WWW pages
• local history database available through the WWW
• WWW accessible OPAC
• WWW service for immigrants to Århus

The library maintains an extensive WWW server which makes available information about the library and the services it offers. The library has recently taken the Århus censuses of 1787, 1801 and 1845 and made them into an Internet accessible database so people researching their family history can make use of them.

The library has also developed a WWW service for immigrants to Århus. These pages provide both local and national information that would be of interest to immigrants. The pages also contain links to material in the native language of the immigrants. The aim is not only to provide information but also to get people to feel involved. Volunteer members of the immigrant community are therefore to find material in non-English and non-Danish languages.

The children’s library also offers access to the Internet. Århus does use software that prevents children from looking at sites that may contain pornography. The software the library uses is called ‘Surfwatch’ however, this software is only installed on the workstations in the children’s library - with the library having the opinion that you can’t control the Internet anyway. The library is also involved in a children’s project with other libraries in other Danish cities where children are putting a newspaper they write themselves up on the WWW. This newspaper allows children in geographically dispersed areas to communicate with one another.

The library also aims to include the local people in IT as much as possible. The local libraries offer ‘IT workshops’ which can have themes like days for women and also days for children. Local History resources are also being explored as a way of encouraging people to use IT. The library is developing a local history bulletin board that will be aimed at the readers. The main library also runs a regular series of sessions introducing the Internet to the public. These sessions are run each week by different staff from different sections of the library so IT training of the public is seen as the responsibility of the library as a whole rather than just one section. This training is delivered in a very interactive way with the audience suggesting topics for the session to search on and therefore making the training relevant to their needs.

The library has a concerted action to get new users into the library. Regular presentations about the library are made to other organisations. IT services are being used as a hook to get more people to use the library. This is also a two way process whereby the library learns why these people have not been using the library and uses this information to change the library so it becomes more welcoming.

The library is dedicated to getting non-librarians involved with the library and making them feel that this is ‘their’ library. The main aim of these projects are to make the library a better resource for its community but there is also a more hard edged reason for these activities. With libraries beginning to suffer from funding cuts and with the world becoming more IT orientated the library must adapt and have the support of its community if it is to survive. Libraries are already fighting from a ‘defensive position’ and activities and initiatives like this make this position stronger and easier to defend.

Århus, like Silkeborg, also operates in a project culture where staff are encouraged to develop ideas for new projects. Seventy different projects have been developed in this way. Over 100 staff have been involved in these projects and consequently have developed new skills and transferable enthusiasm. Project teams are selected from different sections of the library in order that all sections of the library are aware of the projects’ work.

The library’s training policy is again similar to Silkeborg’s with most of the training being done through the project environment. This training is done through temporary projects and consequently the training is very hands-on and engages the staff in the projects. This is a very practical way to train staff. The library also encourages staff to play with IT. The library recognises that staff need time to get use to new technology and are likely to do this much more quickly if they are allowed to do this on their own terms and based around issues that they find interesting themselves.

It is heartening to see how the libraries at Roskilde, Silkeborg and Århus have ‘grasped the nettle’ of networked services. All three libraries are now at the centre of their local developing electronic community. This central position has been achieved either through the provision of networked information, providing the access point for the community to resources like the Internet and facilitating this access through the provision of training for the public.

The 1995 Library and Information Commission public library Internet survey revealed a different picture for UK public libraries (Ormes and Dempsey, 1995). It found that only 3% of all public libraries had Internet access and only 0.7% of all public libraries were providing public access to the Internet. Connections were generally low level dial-up and were available only to a limited number of senior management staff. Internet use was generally limited to low scale exploration and experimentation. A small number of libraries were offering public access but this tended to be as a revenue raising service. There was little public training taking place and library WWW pages were usually static and providing just the library’s opening hours and address.

In the two years since this survey was undertaken there been a considerable amount of development. Many more public libraries now have connections to the Internet and it is likely that most central libraries may now have some form of Internet connection (though this is probably still via a dial up connection). However local authorities are becoming interested in the Internet and are putting in authority-wide networks. Some libraries (usually central libraries) housed near the main authority headquarters have been or are in the process of being included on this network. However, branch libraries will still typically not have any form of Internet access.

Public Internet access services are still very rare but there does seem to be an increasing trend for this service to be provided for free. This may depend, however, on the funding situation of the library service.

Public libraries in the UK are therefore generally still at a relatively early stage in their development of Internet services as they are still exploring how they can integrate the Internet into their services. But even at this early stage it is possible to see that the majority of UK public libraries are not developing Internet services on a similar scale to many Danish libraries. Their role in the local electronic community will not be so defined or central as it is for some Danish libraries. It is important to identify the reasons why this is the case.

There are a number of barriers that are preventing UK libraries from developing in the same way as their Danish equivalents. These barriers were identified by the EU funded ‘Public Libraries And The Information Society’ study (Thorhauge et al, 1997) and are the:

• lack of understanding of the role of public libraries in the information society.
• lack of willingness to change, such as reluctance to accept a decrease in budget for printed material (and the productivity of public libraries is still judged by circulation figures). Despite the introduction of IT the internal organisation remains much the same and really new services are not introduced;
• lack of skills - lack of time and money to keep up to date.

These are barriers which libraries need to overcome in order to develop the type of services offered by Roskilde, Silkeborg and Århus. By identifying how the Danish libraries overcame these barriers it may be possible to suggest ways in which the UK public library community can also overcome them.

The libraries used as case studies were all actively involved in repositioning their role. Silkeborg has become a provider of Internet connections, Roskilde has developed a full scale training public training programme and Århus is launching new information services using the WWW. These libraries are working towards the vision defined for them by the Info-Society 2000 report. This report was very important in the way that it provided a national and governmental view of the way in which libraries should be developing.

By having a strong vision of the library service in the information society the libraries were able to both plan for future services and sell this vision to councils and other organisations. The libraries had been given a mandate by the report to take the initiative and develop new roles for themselves. In order to achieve these new roles the libraries had to actively promote the Info-Society 2000 vision. They had to make it not only their vision but also the council’s vision of its library service. If the libraries had remained inactive they would have been in danger of allowing the library to become marginalised in the developing local electronic community.

UK public libraries have not developed a national vision of their role in the information society. The one vision that has been developed was the failed 1997 Library and Information Commission/Library Association Millennium Bid. This however has been criticised for its concentration on ‘conduit’ rather than services. By concentrating on technical details it lacked a level of imagination which would enthuse possible funding bodies. It is to be hoped that this national vision will be provided by the newly formed Library and Information Commission Public Library Networking Plan working group. This was charged by the Government to report by the end of July 1997 on how public libraries can ‘respond effectively to the challenge of new information and communication technology’ (DNH, 1997).

Once this vision has been produced it could aid individual library authorities in defining and developing Internet services in the same way as Danish libraries benefited from Info-Society 2000. The provision of a national vision however will not be successful unless libraries are willing to champion it and be willing to undertake the changes that it may suggest. The three Danish libraries have been successful in taking up the Info-Society 2000 vision as they were willing to change their focus. This willingness to change was in many ways encouraged by the management structure under which they operate.

The three Danish libraries operate under a different management style than commonly used in public libraries. Management is often informal with the libraries working in a ‘project’ culture. In this culture responsibility is often devolved to project groups created solely for the lifetime of a particularly project or task. Budget controls are not solely the responsibility of the senior managers but the responsibility of project groups or library sections. These sections and groups allocate the budget as they wish.

This type of management style is moving, as already mentioned when discussing Silkeborg library, the library from a duty culture to a responsibility culture. It allows staff more control over their own work and consequently gives them more flexibility. This flexibility and control allows staff to be more positive about change and view it as a challenge rather than a threat as it is no longer simply imposed upon them. It is a style of management which encourages experimentation, a continual re-development of services and a willingness to accept and encourage change.

The ‘project’ culture was identified as essential if libraries are to be able to meet the demands of the information society by the EU’s Public Libraries in the Information Society study. Public libraries in the information society will need to alter the focus of their service and be willing to quickly react to changes in technology. The project culture has been identified as the one in which library staff most effectively integrate developing IT into their services. This has been proved very effectively in both Århus and Silkeborg.

A knock on effect of this style of management is that all the libraries were willing to experiment with offering new services as soon as possible. This meant that ‘user policies’ seem to develop in an ad hoc manner afterwards. The emphasis is placed on getting new services up and running rather than spending huge amounts of time developing policy. This avoids endless discussions that aim to identify and solve problems that have not yet arisen and may never arise. This is indicative of all the libraries’ experiences of formulating pornography policy.

The project environment has important implications in terms of how the libraries are able to fund their developing IT services. The three libraries funded the main development of their Internet services from outside sources. (Århus does have a policy of spending 1/1000 of its budget on IT but this does not account for the majority of Internet funding).

The familiarity with the project culture and sense of responsibility and enthusiasm it can develop makes it much easier for the library to look for and attract funding from outside traditional library funding streams. The library staff are already used to the concept of project proposals, fixed length projects and the type of management required. Therefore when the staff wish to develop a new service they are able and willing to look outside of the library and the local authority for money to fund it - typically for research grants from bodies like the EU. As the library attracts more funding in this way it will become easier to go through this process again. Successful research projects tend to attract more research money or even money from the local authority.

Silkeborg has funded all of its Internet and IT service development through project money. The Danish experience shows that if libraries are willing to be inventive and to look beyond the traditional local authority budget they may be able to fund these type of services. This whole process of seeking project funding is made much easier, however, through the adoption of the ‘project culture’.

There are many opportunities to learn from the experience of the three Danish libraries in developing Internet services. The three most important differences from most UK libraries appears to be

• the libraries strong vision of what their role will be in the information society.
• a management culture which encourages staff to have more control over their work and consequently look on change as a challenge rather than a threat
• the ability to be flexible and look for funding from outside of normal sources.

It is interesting to see that the Danish libraries also put a great emphasis on developing children’s Internet services. This indicative of the way in which the Internet was being integrated into all parts of the libraries. It was not seen simply as just one new service but as a new opportunity for all aspects of public library services. If public libraries are to thrive in the information society this willingness to take on change and begin to redefine oneself will be essential.

I would like to thank Rolf Hapel, Søren Hansen and Stig Hansen and the staff in their libraries who all spared time from their busy schedules to show me around their libraries and answer my never-ending stream of questions. In addition I’d like to thank Gitte Larsen and Hanne Albrechtsen for their continual good advice.

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Committee on the Information Society by the Year 2000 Secretariat (1994). Info-Society 2000 : Report from the Committee on the Information Society by the Year 2000 [online]. Available at http://www.fsk.dk/fsk/publ/info2000-uk/ [Accessed 3 July 1997].

Danish National Library Authority (1993). Danish Public Libraries Act. Danish National Library Authority: Copenhagen.

DNH (1997). Reading the Future : A Review of Public Libraries in England. Department of National Heritage : London.

Larsen, Gitte (1996). Public Libraries and the Information Society — Case Study : Silkeborg Public Library [online]. Available at http://www.silkeborg-bibliotek.dk/netbib/Projekt/silkbibeng.html [Accessed 3 July 1997].

Ormes, S. and Dempsey, L. (1995). Library and Information Commission public library Internet survey [online]. Available at http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/publib/lic.html [Accessed 15 July 1997].

Thorhauge, J. et al (1997). Public Libraries and the Information Society: Study on behalf of the European Commission, DG-XIII/E/4. European Commission: Luxembourg.

Vig, M. (1994). Danish Library Legislation. Printed in 14^th Anglo-Scandinavian Public Libraries Conference Proceedings.