UNESCO Library

Building inclusive Knowledge Societies through information and communication” is one of the key objectives for UNESCO’s Medium-Term Strategy. By adopting this objective, UNESCO Member States have recognized that knowledge plays a key role in economic growth, social development, cultural enrichment and democratic empowerment. This decision of the Members States has influenced UNESCO‘s Open Access program, through which the organization received a unique mandate to work on OA policy issues; bridge knowledge pools on OA across the world and build capacities to better understand Open Access. Within the overall framework of the organization’s strategy on OA, the recent launch of OA curricula for Researchers and Library Schools by UNESCO highlights its efforts for enhancing capacities to deal with Open Access issues. The carefully designed and developed sets of OA curricula for researchers and library and information professionals are based on two needs assessment surveys, and several rounds of face-to-face and online consultations with relevant stakeholders. These curricula will soon be converted into self-directed e-learning tools, which will enable users to self-assess their knowledge on Open Access and take a learning pace that is initiated and directed by the learners themselves. UNESCO also aims to strengthen this initiative by translating the OA curricula into several languages that will increase their reach and impact. The complete set of four OA modules for library schools is in this collection