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LIBECON2000 is a project to collect and publish library statistics of 29 European countries on a Web‐site, (www.libecon2000.org). The LIBECON‐2000 survey area comprises: states in Central and Eastern Europe (CEEC): Bulgaria; Czech Republic; Estonia; Hungary; Latvia; Lithuania; Poland; Romania; Slovak Rep; Slovenia. Member states of the European Union (EU): Austria; Belgium; Denmark; Finland; France; Germany; Greece; Ireland; Italy; Luxembourg; The Netherlands; Portugal; Spain; Sweden; UK. Other states within the European Free Trade Agreement (EFTA): Iceland; Liechtenstein; Norway; Switzerland. The work is funded by DG13 of the European Commission within the Telematics Applications Programme and has been in progress since mid‐1998 and will continue until the end of 2000. The primary objective is to provide a position statement on the state of European libraries at the turn of the century. This paper gives some account of the project’s initial progress and speculates about the future of the collection and publication of library statistics at the international level.

[The following article is the first of a pair of articles on the activities recently undertaken by the Commission of the European Communities in the field of libraries. Readers will no doubt be aware that a Plan of Action for Libraries in Europe is proposed, aimed at stimulating cost‐effective cooperation between libraries in the EC to the benefit of users, through the appropriate and efficient application of new information technologies. The following article describes the published studies undertaken principally in the preparatory stages, prior to the definition of the Plan. A future article will describe briefly the Plan itself and give an overview of current actions and projects. These artices are the first of what will be a continuing ‘European’ focus in VINE, covering not only the activities arising out of the Plan of Action but relevant automation developments in libraries in Europe. Ed.]

This paper aims to explain how the Global Libraries (GL) Initiative of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation plans for and assesses the impact of its programs on libraries and communities as part of their commitment to improving lives by increasing public access to computers and the internet in public libraries.

GL encourages libraries to design programs and services that address local and national priorities. Impact assessment processes assist libraries in collecting, analyzing and reporting on evidence to show: whether activities are conducted effectively to enable learning and improve processes; whether the program makes a difference to users and communities; and what impact evidence to use in advocacy for continued support and funding. GL's process and philosophy are described and case studies from two grantee programs in two countries are provided.

The Polish‐American Freedom Foundation (PAFF) adopted innovative methods developed for them by the Information Society Development Foundation to determine baseline library usage in rural public libraries in Poland. Rather than counting borrowers, which was the approach facilitated by the available data, they conducted random sampling in target areas. This allowed them to count users who do not borrow books, and to gauge scale of repeat usage and user demographics. In so doing, the team found that libraries have a substantially higher reach than book‐lending data alone suggested. The International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) assessed community information needs and determined that education, health, and employment are the issues about which Romanians want more information. Libraries in Romania will design services based on a careful understanding of those needs.

The research findings reported are drawn from systematic quantitative and qualitative evidence gathering undertaken as part of the impact‐planning and assessment programs being implemented in the two countries.

The paper presents a current view of the GL approach to impact assessment and service sustainability as well as two early reports, one on the results of baseline evidence collection and the other on community needs assessment in the two participating countries.

The African Caribbean Library Association's (ACLA) current Chair is Gloria Lock of Wandsworth Libraries. I interviewed her recently about the Association — the results of which are reproduced here with her consent.

The first European Conference on Library Automation and Networking was held in Brussels during 9–11 May, 1990 and was attended by about 700 participants from some 26 countries. Most participants came from the Northern European countries such as Scandinavia, Belgium, Netherlands, the Federal Republic of Germany, France, Switzerland and the UK, but there were also some from Southern Europe (e.g. Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece), as well as a few from Eastern Europe (e.g. Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland, Yugoslavia) and even three from the USSR. The conference was organised on the initiative of the EFLC, the European Foundation for Library Cooperation. EFLC was founded in 1986 and is an organisation of some 19 members, acting in a personal capacity, from nine countries. EFLC's aims are to strengthen library co‐operation in Europe and to manage libraries' information resources in order to improve user services in Europe. However, other European groups related to libraries also helped in the organisation of the conference; these were:

Though the Call for Proposals for projects under the libraries programme has only just been launched (July, 1991), the Commission of the European Communities (CEC) has for the past three years been supporting a number of projects which provide essential preparatory work and support for eventual projects under the programme. There is a popular myth that CEC actions are shrouded, if not in secrecy, then in an impenetrable fog of bureaucracy. However, for all work funded or supported by the CEC, dissemination is regarded as a high priority. Indeed, all projects have a contractual obligation to disseminate information about their projects and their results as widely as possible.

The cultural determination of information behaviour is deeply influencing the way information is looked for, used and handled. Therefore, libraries in Central and Eastern Europe show, to a certain extent, the same characteristics due to the centralist information environment of the previous socialist rule. However, the deeply rooted belief in education and knowledge which was the pursued idea, regardless of frequent misuse by the Communist government may, in comparison to Western countries, ease the way into a knowledge society. The newly created information infrastructure in all European countries due to the technological development which will change libraries, for example in Germany, could be useless, or maybe even dangerous, without being embedded in a solid base of learning and knowledge.