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Eric Van Lubeek is OCLC VicePresident, as well as managing director of the EMEA (Europe, Middle-East and Africa) and APAC (Asia-Pacific) Regional Councils. In the occasion of his visit to Italy, Anna Galluzzi interviewed Van Lubeek in order to submit a few questions concerning the main challenges libraries and librarians need to face nowadays: the role of physical libraries in an environment where access to information is mainly digital; the similarities and differences in national and supranational policies concerning Western and Eastern libraries; the strategies needed to relaunch bibliographic data in a global digital context; the relationships between libraries and the other key players in the information and knowledge realm; the challenges raised by ebooks; vthe librarians' competences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from the results of a comparative research concerning the European press during 2008-2012, which were already used for the article titled Le biblioteche nella stampa inglese. Filoni di dibattito e percezione (published in this same journal in October 2014), the present article analyses the French case, wondering about how much and how the French newspapers deal with libraries. This analysis highlights that the image of the library world coming from French newspapers is unique if compared with other countries taken into account. In fact, France is the only country where public libraries are not prevalent in newspaper articles (to the advantage of national libraries) and where the main issue in the debate is digitisation and building of the digital library, whereas the topic concerning the consequences of economic crisis on the future of libraries is quite absent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article, starting from the results of a comparative research concerning the European press during the 2008-2012 timelapse, analyses the British case, wondering about how much and how the newspapers deal about libraries and whether the economic crisis has changed the terms of the debate. In fact, British libraries are a benchmark for the Italian ones, since in this country libraries are strongly rooted in society and many new models and proposals about libraries come from here. The conclusion is that, despite the social acknowledgment libraries have in Great Britain, they are not safe from the consequences of the economic crisis and technological and social changes, so that they also need to prove their social relevance and the interest of citizens in keeping them alive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After more than ten years since the first strategic document which launched the Idea Stores, the article presents an update on the new Idea Stores' overall strategy (published in 2009), particularly on how it has changed according to the local and global changes, and an analysis of what has been done so far. In addition to the analysis and comparison of the two strategic documents, a report from the visit to two sites will be proposed. They are the first Idea Store, Bow, and the largest one, the Idea Store Whitechapel, which was already visited by the author some years ago. The aim is to point out the original contribution the Idea Stores hare given to library theory and practice, the difficulties they had to face, the answers they have given and the challenges ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay is meant to describe the Jaume Fuster Library in Barcelona, conceived by the Catalan architect Joseph Llinas, both from the viewpoint of the role it has in the urban requalification plan of Placa de Lesseps, Districte de Gràcia, and from the viewpoint of the overall library plan intended to redefine the urban library network. Under this framework the main organisational choices and the results of this intervention are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay is meant to describe and explain meanings and roles of the Municipal Library of Marseille from several points of view: first of all, the urbanistic and social one, as the library has a main role in the municipal project intended to rivitalize the neighbourhood called Vieux Port; secondly, the viewpoint of the national policy on libraries, as this library is one of the twelve Bibliotheques Municipales Vocation Regionale built over the last years and stands on the axis Montpellier-Marseille-Nice; last, the viewpoint of the functional organization related to services and collections. This case study is an opportunity to define the role of the public library as an urban and social space on a methodological and internal level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes the characteristics of two newly born North-American public libraries: the Seattle Public Library and the Vancouver Public Library. The two libraries are described from two points of view: their urbanistic and social value and their functional organization related to services and collections. The two case studies are the occasion to deepen the development of contemporary public libraries models, particularly their "experience" contents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]