The Secretary General of the Conseil Supérieur des Bibliothèques de France, Dominique Arnet, has recently released the figures concerning the building of new libraries in France: over 300,000 square feet have been added to university library space in the past ten years, while public library space has increased by 100,000 square feet over the last two years alone. “Such a large number of libraries has never been built anywhere in the world”. And all such changes have taken place during the explosion of the Web phenomenon.

Libraries evidently manage to merge the reading needs of the private individual with the more general (albeit tacit) sharing of this valuable experience. Indeed, access to libraries is useful and in increasing demand because it implies easier access to information.

This is the heart of the matter: the problem of information accessibility is one of the crucial problems of a society that regards itself as the information society.

It is quite clear that those who have access to information can participate fully in our society and in the advantages it offers (in terms of job opportunities, education and entertainment), while those who are excluded or have only partial access do not participate (or participate only partially) in such a society. Orwell was not wrong: some are more equal than others.

Nowadays, those who work in libraries work in one of the strategic centres for the distribution of information, one of the most important public-service sectors for all – including the disabled and the socially disadvantaged.

The Community “Testlab” project, which I spoke about here at Sudak only last year, has created workstations that are accessible for the visually disabled in two public libraries and in a special library for the blind here in Genoa.

Some of you may remember the positive results of our work: about one hundred and fifty users in eighteen months and solid growth of the new service for the visually impaired, which was received with great interest by libraries all over Italy.

Following the establishment of contacts and the interest shown in the project all over Italy, we have recently founded the project work-group for equal access to library services. The group does not yet have an official name, although I personally call it “Giusto” (meaning “That’s right!” in English and “Provilno!” in Russian), because it is indeed right that everybody should be guaranteed the same service and the same access to information.

The project involves the libraries of Genoa, Milan, Turin, Florence and Bologna and is recognised by the Italian Library Association (A.I.B.).

This group’s first task was to translate into Italian the “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0” laid down by the WAI (Web Accessibility Initiatives) International Committee.

This is because we believe that online information, which very many libraries now provide, is one of the main services in demand by our users. From this point of view, in a notably deregulated environment such as the Web it is fundamentally important that public libraries should play their part, especially as a means of safeguarding the rights of the disadvantaged, for when they do actually manage to have access to information, it is through the library reference service.

That is why we have devoted such attention to the Web. As you all know, besides the ‘solid library’ there is today the reality of the virtual library, which is providing information that is every bit as real as the information supplied by books.

One of the main services of a library is (and always has been) giving access to information, however that may be conceived. Accessibility to the Web is, in this sense, a ‘detail’ to which libraries must pay careful attention.

The guidelines are an essential vehicle for all those who produce Web contents and believe that equal access to information should be everybody’s right, including the disadvantaged (such as people suffering from physical disabilities).

The guidelines in English can be consulted at the following web address : http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT .

As far as Italy is concerned, ours is a ground-breaking initiative and has attracted a great deal of interest in the library sector and in the area of Web-content development, for public-sector web sites are often developed without considering the needs of the disadvantaged.

The following extract from the Guidelines gives a clear idea of the document’s purposes:

“… following [the guidelines] will also make Web content more available to ALL users, whatever user agent they are using (e.g. desktop browser, voice browser, mobile phone, automobile-based personal computer, etc.) or constraints they may be operating under (e.g., noisy surroundings, under- or over-illuminated rooms, in a hands-free environment, etc.). Following these guidelines will also help people find information on the Web more quickly. These guidelines do not discourage content developers from using images, video, etc., but rather explain how to make multimedia content more accessible to a wide audience”.

A list of references can be consulted at the end of the document.

If we reflect upon this extract, we discover a concept of Web accessibility that involves everybody, not only the weaker social categories. For instance, even those who do not have state-of-the-art software or hardware very often need to consult a wide range of Web sites. Why not develop sites that can be consulted with less advanced configurations too? Why shouldn’t those using a voice browser have access to a range of Web sites and, consequently, to a mass of information?

But when dealing with the subject of accessibility, we also need to consider the range of access, which is what our “Giusto!” project aims to cover.

Some years ago, around 1995, when the Web really started to get off the ground, there began to be talk of disintermediation in the economy and in libraries. The concept of disintermediation – meaning the overriding importance of the end-user with regard to any kind of mediation – questioned the role of the broker in the financial world and of the librarian in the world of information.

At that time, many people lost and still are losing money through misplaced investment and, perhaps less seriously, many suffered the effects of the information overload that continues to threaten anybody who wishes to carry out research. While you can quite easily find a mass of information, much time is wasted trying to find exactly what you are looking for or the answer to your query, etc.

The task of the library service, therefore, is to supply information access that is as precise as possible: a Dewey system applied not only to books but also to the Web.

Thus, accessibility is not a discriminating factor only in a physical or intellectual sense, for it regards anybody who is unable to find information.

One of the tasks of libraries is to reduce this ‘noise’ or ‘disturbance’ to a minimum.

Another aspect of the concept under consideration concerns communication from the library to the outside world.

Our users come to the library to find what they need: books, information, a pleasant place to study or to read. We must be sure that they all have the service they require, but we must also be sure that everybody is aware that the library can supply all the information they need when they need it.

A library can supply services for all types of disabled people – with sight and hearing disabilities or both – and it can even extend its opening times to 24 hours a day, but if people do not know or even imagine that there is a service made especially for them everything will have been done in vain.

Libraries all over the world are far from being without users but this does not mean that we should not try to attract new ones, for we must insist on the importance of information as a fundamental factor in every citizen’s opportunity to exercise full and equal rights in our modern global society. This society is increasingly marked by individualism and exclusion and it is crucially important that the public domain of knowledge should continue to exist and expand.

The “Giusto!” project will involve planning measures to allow access to information in libraries to a wider range of citizens and will particularly work towards optimising the quantity and quality of information accessed on the Web.

The Genoa Public Library System has planned other similar activities. Apart from the reference service, we are organising information literacy courses for adults, especially the elderly. We are still offering guided visits to the Berio Library, thus allowing users to become familiar with our spaces and services.

However, the service I would like to discuss briefly is our ‘Kiosk’ service. Our IT team have created four kinds of workstations called ‘Kiosks’ on five PCs that are at the disposal of the general public.

One of these is dedicated to bibliographical data bases in Italy and abroad. Two are dedicated to legal information, where users can consult CD-roms containing Italian and European laws. The Testlab personnel are currently working on the creation of a CD-rom especially dedicated to collating the laws, rights and opportunities for disabled people in the city of Genoa, the region of Liguria and in Italy as a whole in order to offer a more detailed service.

The third Kiosk is dedicated to scientific information, with particular emphasis on the biological sciences, thanks to the cooperation of the Centre for Advanced Biotechnological Studies of the National Cancer Research Institute

The fourth kind of kiosk is dedicated to animals: it allows the user to consult data concerning the life of animals, including the results of the regional animal census, and it also offers the opportunity to apply to adopt dogs and cats from the municipal kennels and catteries.

In my opinion, a library is a social space, a meeting-point where people can feel close to others. Our readers are basically the history of our libraries and constitute its memory. In such a social environment it is essential to include experiences from all walks of life, including the lives of those who must live with hardships, in order to add value to the history of the library.

The library is a closed, protected space but it is also a space that is crossed by people, by information and even by the cables that carry the information. Moreover, it must be projected into the outside world by the facilities it offers. The library is as solid as a piece of Swiss cheese, with all the holes crossed by the light/information and all the mice/users on it. It must particularly make its presence felt in the outside world in those neighbourhoods blighted with unemployment and social problems.

Users should also be sought in places such as hospitals and prisons.

This does not mean that the librarian should be seen as some kind of ‘information missionary’, although it might be said that one of his duties is to do everything he can to find new users, attract their attention and keep them.

In such a way, libraries can play an active part in our modern information society.