Public libraries policy consultation

Overview

The Department for Communities (DfC) is the Executive department with responsibility for public libraries in Northern Ireland and is developing a new policy for public libraries.

Libraries NI is Northern Ireland’s single public library authority. It receives its funding from DfC and is an Arm’s-Length-Body of the Department. Under the Libraries Act (Northern Ireland) 2008, Libraries NI has a statutory responsibility to deliver ‘a comprehensive and efficient public library service for persons living, working or studying in Northern Ireland.’

The new policy for public libraries will replace the current policy which is called Delivering Tomorrow’s Libraries. It was published in 2006. For more background information on the public library service, please click on the following link: https://www.librariesni.org.uk/

DfC has developed a draft vision statement for Northern Ireland’s public library service along with 15 draft policy aims. The draft vision and aims are suggested as the basis of the new policy for public libraries.

Through this consultation your views on the draft vision and the policy aims are being sought. The consultation also provides an opportunity for you to provide your views on the public library service in general.

Your views are important to us and will help inform the policy development work for Northern Ireland’s public library service.

For further information and to access the consultation documents please click on the following link: https://www.communities-ni.gov.uk/consultations/consultation-public-libraries-policy-northern-ireland

DfC is seeking your views through a questionnaire. If you are responding on behalf of an organisation, we would ask that only one person from each organisation submits a response. A paper-based questionnaire is available on request from HCCpublicconsultation@communities-ni.gov.uk. To support an effective and holistic analysis of all responses, we ask that all respondents answer the questions set out in the questionnaire and use the questionnaire format.

For this consultation, we may publish all responses except for those where the respondent indicates that they do not wish for their responses to be published. All responses from organisations and individuals responding in a professional capacity may be published. We will remove any personal data, including email addresses and telephone numbers, from these responses; but apart from this, we may publish them in full. For more information about what we do with personal data please see our consultation privacy notice.

Your response, and all other responses to this consultation, may also be disclosed on request in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR); however, all disclosures will be in line with the requirements of the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (UK) 2016/679.

If you want the information that you provide to be treated as confidential it would be helpful if you could explain to us why you regard the information you have provided as confidential, so that this may be considered if the Department should receive a request for the information under the FOIA or EIR.

In order to facilitate the survey, Citizen Space, which is not operated by DfC, is used as a data processor. Details of Citizen Space's privacy policy can be found online at Citizen Space Privacy Policy.