Next from the KRIK conference in Zagreb is a panel session: Academic Libraries between their Critical Mission and Institutional Constraints with the panellists: Monika Batur (University of Zagreb, Croatia); Sunniva Evjen (Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway); Dejana Golenko (University of Rijeka, Croatia); Mario Hibert (University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina). Invited comment: Marko Kovačić (University of Rijeka, Croatia) and moderator: Dijana Šobota (University of Zagreb, Croatia).
This involves rounds of questions. Firstly, Golenka, responded to a question on the status of librarians. She felt that responsibilities have expanded, but recognition from management has not kept pace. Looking at law librarians, you need understanding of legal aspects, and they are likely to have a law certificate as well as information science. Also there is a need to understand research and scholarly communication: the role has become even more important with AI, with increased need to distinguish accurate legal information. Law librarians are now participating directly in the educational process.
Asked about academic libraries and democratic mission, Evjen talked about the Norwegian Library Act which identified libraries as democratic institutions: however this applies to public libraries and does not address academic libraries. She felt that the macro protection of academic libraries' democratic mission was not there, although the librarians were aware and wanted their democratic mission. The government body responsible for academic libraries was closed down, so there were less safeguards. It is important how libraries are placed in the organisation, in the strategic plans, and in terms of the number of managers between the library and senior university managers (so that you have a voice in decisions). Evjen also talked about freedom of expression and increased debates about this in the university as a whole, and in seeing the library as an arena & hub for discussion. Golenka added that there was an issue in that librarians were classified as staff rather than faculty, and this did not aid visibility and being heard.
Next, Hibert was asked to reflect on macro issues and the tension between the service function and empowerment mission of academic libraries. Hibert felt there was an important responsibility on teachers of library and information students to make librarians prepared to be critical. He emphasised that librarians should be educated to be proactive rather than passive, and to reflect on issues of viewpoint, values, neutrality and ethics. Also the teacher should offer different perspectives on a topic, encouraging the students to reflect and question. Šobota followed this up by questioning whether this should be an individual responsibility, but whether, rather, it should not be a responsibility of the institution to provide an enabling environment.
Batur was then asked how student librarians and information scientists saw themselves (note that they have undergraduates as well as postgraduates) - what did the students think of their profession? Batur said that their views tended to be based on the individual student's own personal experiences of libraries. Also, the experiences are decreasing, with students having fewer library experiences (Batur contrasted this with her experience in the war when the public library was an important place). Therefore the library educator had to introduce what a library, and a librarian's profession, could be. The follow up question was what students thought of the future of the profession. Batur noted that fewer students identified themselves as communicators at the start of the undergraduate programme, so they had to work on these skills. By the end of their studies, however, students are mostly full of enthusiasm, aware that the profession is constantly changing and should be met with creativity.
Following a question from me about educational policy, Golenka mentioned how information literacy is now mentioned in an Act, so the library can go with this remit to argue for IL development: however IL is still not in strategic documents in the university, which makes it difficult to engage with disciplinary departments to implement IL education. Also Hibert talked of a UNESCO MIL project to implement a MIL curriculum in Bosnian school libraries, and how the educational representatives involved in the projects thought of IL as a new school subject, and did not think of the librarians' expertise (whereas Hibert proposed the obvious (to us) solution of librarians talking charge of this curriculum). Golenka also mentioned that now there is a topic, IL, in Croatian primary schools, but IT teachers have responsibility for teaching it, not librarians.
Moving to the topic of digital capitalism, Golenka talked about the importance of her PhD work in leading to her being involved in a digital working group, and being involved in AI Literacy development. Batur added comments on library professionals' roles and capabilities in this area. Evjen prefaced her commentary by remembering how she had taken a year out from academia by becoming an academic librarian. She talked about how she had been introduced around as a new librarian in a helpful, friendly way, and she also worked on a youth library project where the librarians said it was "all about relationships". This led to her reflecting on how important relationships were, and how we should address this aspect more in library and information education. She later interviewed school librarians, who are mostly solo librarians, and who have to develop relatonships with the school communities, which is a complex task. Student/new librarians can be insecure and need support in developing confidence.
Batur noted that she wanted her students to not just become critical librarians but also critical thinkers. She also talked about activities to support students' development of the ability to paraphrase (using pen and paper). However, still it seemed that people had done little of their own thinking (as evidenced by their use of words that didn't actually fit the context, if they had thought about the writing). Then they discussed that in class, which hopefully motivated students to deblop their own thinking.
Hibert was asked to comment on critical pedagogy and how it might be enacted. He went back to the UNESCO project, where UNESCO recognised the library role, but the managers and teachers etc. they were dealing with did not. Hibert felt we needed to go out of our boxes to reach this critical pedagogy, making strategic partnerships e.g. with activist communities. Another question that Šobota posed was about whether AI might give opportunities to develop more democratic curricula.
Kovačić came in at this point to provide a commentary stimulated by the conversation so far. Institutions used to have a more stable and well defined mission, that is changing, and so are the people that institutions serve. Added to that, there is the neoliberal idea that you justify yourself by numbers, rather than impact or outcome (also with the idea of people being consumers or clients). He referred to recent European publications: one on libraries [I think this]which identifies the importance of culture and libraries, and another policy document [I think this] on the "democratic shield" which doesn't mention libraries or the great value of culture. So libraries are acknowledged as important, but this is not followed up with funding and strategic positioning. Kovačić talked about a project looking at two public libraries, and identifying various activities, but not [I think] events to do with critical citizenship. He also also looked at the learning outcomes of LIS curricula as to whether they were educating for community youth work and [I think] critical pedagogy - and finding the learning outcomes did not cover this.
There was also a lively discussion after this, but as you may have guessed (from the "I think"s), I am flagging a bit in my liveblogging role (it was a long session), so I will finish at this point!
Photo by Sheila Webber: Zagreb, September 2026
