Australian public library mission statements and the IFLA–UNESCO Public Library Manifesto

Abstract

The IFLA–UNESCO Public Library Manifesto (2022) identifies 11 key missions that ‘should be at the core of public library services’. The mission, vision and purpose statements of a sample of 50 public library networks in Australia were analysed to gauge the extent to which they reflect these 11 key missions. It was found that the public library mission statements typically only touched on one of the Manifesto 's missions, most of which were covered by few, if any, of the statements. The analysis was repeated for a smaller sample of the networks’ strategy documents. Although these touched on more of the key missions, typically it was still only about a third of them. The ways in which each of the Manifesto 's missions was covered, or not covered, are detailed, and possible explanations for the lack of coverage discussed.