Diana Patricia Restrepo, director of the National Library of Colombia, participated in the seminar “Libraries and the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda”. In this discussion, the official spoke of the centrality of these places in the midst of the pandemic, since they have managed to reach “more areas and spaces.”
Libraries are in “all” the Sustainable Development Goals. This has been the main message of the seminar “Libraries and the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda”, organized by the Spanish Ministry of Culture and Sports in Madrid. This seminar, the central event for the celebrations of the Ibero-American Year of Libraries in Spain, and held in person and virtually, was opened by the Spanish general director of Books and Reading Promotion, María José Gálvez. Among others, the Minister of Culture of Costa Rica, Sylvie Durán, and María Angélica Fuentes, director of the Latin America and the Caribbean Section of the International Federation of Library Associations and Libraries (IFLA, in its acronym in English) participated. ) and president of the College of Librarians of Chile. Diana Patricia Restrepo, director of the National Library of Colombia and president of the Association of Ibero-American States for the Development of National Libraries of Ibero-America, and Enrique Vargas, coordinator of the Ibero-American Cultural Space and Ibero-American General Secretariat also spoke.
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“We want to make libraries visible in this Ibero-American Year of Libraries and value the role of libraries and general culture in the 2030 Agenda, as well as in the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals”, highlighted the general director of the Book and Fomento de la Lectura, María José Gálvez, who opened the event in the absence of the Spanish Minister of Culture and Sports, José Manuel Rodríguez Uribes, who had to attend the funeral of the musician Cristóbal Halffter.
Among the representatives of Ibero-American culture who took the floor, the Minister of Culture of Costa Rica stated that the work of the libraries “has to do with the full development of people, with working in spaces of people for people. We are that information center that provides citizens with all kinds of information and knowledge, a space committed to proximity and trust ”. For her part, María Angélica Fuentes, IFLA director and president of the College of Librarians of Chile, highlighted that, despite not having any Sustainable Development Goal dedicated to culture, the role of libraries is present “in everyone”, in the seventeen marked by the UN. Likewise, the director of the National Library of Colombia and president of the Association of Ibero-American States for the Development of the National Libraries of Ibero-America, Diana Patricia Restrepo, stressed that “today more than ever” the role of these places is important because of ” transversally guarantee access to information ”to citizens. For this reason, for Restrepo, currently, due to the health emergency, libraries “have more importance”, especially because their digital initiatives have made it reach “more areas and spaces”.
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Enrique Vargas indicated that “being in the seventeen objectives” of the UN “is a huge job”, but he affirmed that, with the union of all Ibero-American countries, it will “be possible to do.” Meanwhile, the president of the Ortega y Gasset Foundation, Gregorio Marañón and Bertrán de Lis, valued the role of libraries as the institutions that have the “responsibility to bring knowledge to the public through books”. The event was attended by other names from Ibero-American culture, such as Elvira Lindo, president of the Royal Board of the National Library of Spain, Alfons Martinell Sempere, honorary director of the Unesco Chair: Cultural Policies and Cooperation, and Giuseppe Vitiello, director of the European Bureau of Library, Information and Documentation Associations (EBLIDA).
