The Minister of Cultural Affairs, Mrs Ellen Horn

Gateways to the New Knowledge Economy

Ministercolloquy in Frankfurt, Germany, 16 October 2000

Mister Chair,

First of all I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to our German hosts for facilitating this colloquy here in Frankfurt and to my European colleagues for sharing their experiences with us.

Norway, represented by the National Library, has taken part in developing the Council of Europe Guidelines on Library Legislation and Policy in Europe which are the background for our discussions here today. I am glad to see this important work completed and do really hope that the guidelines may provide useful guidance to European governments and constitute the standards of aspiration.

The different sectors of society have different tasks as far as grappling with the new knowledge economy is concerned. There is a number of strategies which cultural institutions – and cultural administrations – may adopt to meet what seems to be a transition. We really are constructing the bridge between while walking it. Being in this transition, we do not yet know if there are any best strategies, nor which should be the role of cultural authorities. I therefore cherish this opportunity to learn from my colleagues. In this address I will concentrate on two strategies in which the old – and often governmental – institutions may provide gateways to the new knowledge economy – the bridge between.

Firstly, the "old institutions" may provide content to the new knowledge economy.

One of the main ways in which the Norwegian government is building the bridge between is focused on content. This takes two forms – one is facilitating access to considerable parts of existing content in the "memory institutions" – archives, libraries and museums. This is done by encouraging and supporting the digitalisation and digital presentation of content and by establishing physical access. By "establishing physical access" I mean increased access to content from key institutions via the Internet. The other form is by providing a framework for new content. In Norway Culture Net Norway, a government funded web site with sector nets for archives, museums, libraries and the arts, has been doing both. It has both functioned as an interface to the existing collective memory – and provided a portal for other cultural initiatives regardless of origin. The Culture Net Norway will now be evaluated and while several aspects of the programme probably will have to be reconsidered, we remain confident that there are valuable experiences which can be expanded upon.

Secondly, the "old institutions" may provide access to the new knowledge economy, for instance by providing access to advanced multimedia services to groups which are experiencing difficulties in gaining access to the new knowledge economy – unemployed, young people without sufficient resources and also people with an uneasy relationship with the technical aspects of computers – for instance some elderly. By this I do not mean that the government should compete with private suppliers. What we are trying to implement is a scheme that will furnish public libraries with advanced, high bandwidth Internet services and localities specialised for two-way multimedia and education at a distance. The need for such services is backed up by the fact that visits to the libraries – most of which offer ordinary Internet access – are increasing while total book loans are decreasing slightly.

In addition to providing access to the aforementioned groups, high bandwidth facilities can provide opportunities for teleconferences and education at-a-distance for, among others, local administration in small municipalities and small and middle-sized enterprises. What we really are contemplating is the next phase of converting public libraries into resource centres.

These are two examples of how we in Norway try to exploit a few of the opportunities and meet a few of the challenges posed by the new knowledge economy. As I said, I welcome hearing about examples of how other European countries meet the challenges. There can hardly be a field where the need for dissemination of best practices is more important than in a field where we all are still looking for that elusive bridge between.