Every Time a Library Cannot Do Its Job, the Public Interest Loses: Tell Us Your Story

The mission of libraries is under threat. Not from budget cuts or censorship alone, but from a quieter crisis: a legal and market framework that is systematically limiting libraries’ ability to function. Publishers can refuse to license digital materials. Contracts can override rights granted by law. Digital locks can make legal activities impossible. Copyright rules written for classrooms leave libraries out. The result is the same every time: a user who needed something, and a library that could not provide it.

Knowledge Rights 21 (KR21) named these barriers in its action plan, Safeguard Access, Empower Europe: An Action Plan to Let Libraries be Libraries, launched in February 2026. Today, 23 April, on UNESCO’s World Book and Copyright Day, we are taking the next step.

Launching the #LetLibrariesBeLibraries Case Study Repository

Evidence matters in policy. Legislators and regulators need to understand not just that these problems exist in theory, but that they are happening in real libraries, to real users, right now. That is why KR21 is launching a case study and resource repository on the Library Action Plan page, seeded with initial examples covering each of the barriers the action plan identifies.

The repository is a living resource. It will grow as the library community contributes to it. And that is where we need your help.

Have You Been There?

If you work in or with a library, the chances are that at least one of these situations will be familiar.

• You found a title your users needed. However, the publisher is not offering it to libraries at any price or on any terms. The title exists, it’s just that your users cannot access it.
• You negotiated a licence for digital content and were asked to accept terms that no public institution should have to accept: unlimited liability for what users do with the material, obligations to share personal data, or clauses that remove rights the law explicitly grants you.
• You tried to preserve a digital work in your collection and found that the technical locks on the file made it impossible, even though preservation is exactly what copyright law says you are allowed to do.
• You wanted to lend an e-book the way you lend a physical one: one copy, one user, returnable. The licensing terms made that model unavailable or unaffordable.
• You run workshops, reading groups, or learning programmes for your community and found that the digital education exceptions that schools can draw on do not apply to you.

The KR21 library action plan was written to address each of these barriers. The more concretely we can document them, the stronger the case for reform becomes.

An Open Call for Contributions

KR21 is inviting libraries and library organisations across Europe, and beyond, to submit case studies describing their experience with these barriers. We are particularly interested in contributions from EU Member States as well as those looking to join the Union, where the policy levers the action plan identifies are most directly applicable. However, examples from other jurisdictions are also welcome to add valuable comparative context.

We are looking for accounts that are specific: what happened, in what type of institution, in relation to which barrier. Contributions are anonymised. A submission does not need to be long or formally written. It just needs to be real.

Why This Matters Now

The legal framework governing what libraries can do in the digital environment is not fixed. The Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM) Directive is due for review. Other relevant instruments are under discussion. Member States could be swayed to move. The window for influencing what reform looks like is open, and stories from the ground are exactly what the debate needs.

Libraries were not written out of the digital age by accident. A case study repository will not fix the law on its own. But it builds the record, and the record is what makes the argument.

If your library has a story to tell, we want to hear it.

23 April 2026