Towards an Information Society for All: Better lives, better communities British Council, Bucharest, October 2004 The Abside Project Italy Pier Giacomo Sola, Amitié

Abside is a project carried out within the framework of the EQUAL Programme, launched by the European Union to facilitate inclusion of disadvantaged population. The acronym means: Learning in Libraries: the Information Society facing discrimination and exclusion

Abside starts from the consideration that the library, one of the few structures uniformly distributed in Italy, can be a perfect place for learning. This resource is particularly efficient towards a public who can perceive the library as a friendly source, open and available for the most part of the day, reachable without long journeys, otherwise necessary to attend courses offered in big cities.

The following public administrations supported the project: -Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali -Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione -Ministero di Grazia e Giustizia -Regione Abruzzo, Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Emilia-Romagna, Lazio, Lombardia, Piemonte, Puglia, Sardegna, Toscana, Umbria, Veneto -Comune di Roma -Province di Parma e Salerno Actors involved

A) Market opportunities, to support SMEs on the market; B) Young people, to promote skills for self-employability; C) People living in rural and mountain areas; D) Social exclusion, focusing on people in or quitting prison; E) Linguistic discrimination, integration of recent migrants; F) Youngsters, mainly in main cities suburbs; G) People physically and psychically disabled; H) Women with difficulties in (re-)entering the labour market; I) Cultural discrimination, limiting job opportunities to young people with a humanities degree; J) Access to information, to support educational and training systems easily accessible by everybody in each library, wherever located.

1.Creating Learning Centres within public libraries; training librarians to act as tutors: New libraries have been encouraged to set up multimedia halls and become demonstration centres. An agreement has been reached with the Italian Ministry of Justice in order to stimulate the creation of Learning Centres offering courses for people in or quitting prison. 2.Identification, design, development and purchase of training materials for the ODL. The PULMAN Guidelines Manuals Knowledge Management in the Library Marketing for Libraries The "one person library The on-line information services The multi-lingual and multi-ethnic Library Etc. Outcomes

3.Activation and experimental supply of course Currently, the Abside platform includes: 3 Forums: General, News, Librarians A choice among 20 training materials on different subject, (documents and files in pdf and html format) 940 users have signed up until now 4. Development of a credits system The partnership is working on the creation and development of a credit system which should guarantee the fruitful use of the skills achieved during the training activities in the labour market, both for intermediate (librarians) and final (people suffering discrimination) groups.

- High communication and relational competences are requested to librarians. - He/she does not play only the traditional role of static interface to the fruition of knowledge, but also assumes the role of tutor, consultant, guide for people going to the library. - The approach is flexible, because it adapts modalities, quantity and typology of the services offered, according to the specific local needs. Lessons learnt

The librarian/tutor does not substitute other people and organisations already present on his/her area, but becomes the main reference point (one stop shop) of the training needs, providing advice and addressing the users to other offices with more specific competences.

The role played by the national, regional and local administrations in the project is very important, because it guarantees: - the quality of the process of updating the skills of library personnel; - the availability of spaces dedicated to learning, hosted by public libraries; - a close connection with the other organisations working on social issues.

Tel: Fax: URL: Francesca Magrefi, Chiara Scorzoni, Pier Giacomo Sola, Alessandra Tagliavini Amitié via Val dAposa, 3 I BOLOGNA To know something more