week17

WEEK17

– The National Library Week for Sustainable Change and Development

Last year, Denmark organized for the first time WEEK17 (week number and 17 SDGs).
WEEK17 is now a nationwide Theme Week focusing on UN’s 17 sustainable development global goals. Based on a combined national and a joint local library campaign building on grass roots, citizen involvement and information around the SDG’s.

WEEK17 activates and forms partnerships among libraries, organizations, other institutions and civil society. WEEK17 takes place at the local libraries.

Our hope last year was that 20 libraries would take part in the campaign, but in the end over 70 (out of 98 municipal libraries in DK) joined WEEK17 together with over 200 local partners.

The basic idea is that local libraries work with the importance of the SDG’s in cooperation with local organizations, institutions and individual volunteers.

Centrally, we support the local effort by establishing agreements with national partners plus we develop common announcements materials, posters, press releases ect.
We also run a common countdown up to WEEK17 – SDG 1 in Week one, SDG 2 in week two and so on.

We believe in the slogan – Leave no one behind. So to join the campaign all the local library needs to do is an exhibition og organize an event on the SDG’s. However most of the libraries do a lot more.

Join WEEK17 as a LIBRARY PILOT

Now we would like to expand and share the idea with libraries in other countries.

We plan to start this year with what we call a “WEEK17 Library Pilot”, to then have the opportunity to upscale it next year (2025).

We already have an international WEEK17 “logo”.
We can also offer guidance for your work efforts if you want to come on board, and afterwards a workshop if more libraries would like to participate.

Just send a mail to tsr@db.dk, to Thomas Sture Rasmussen, The Danish Library Organization/DB2030, and we’ll find out what more you need to do to get started.

WEEK17 LIBRARY PILOTS 2024

Örnsköldsvik Biblioteken (SVE), Amtsbókasafnið á Akureyri (ISL), Universitetsbiblioteket i Oslo (NO), Bergen Offentlige Biblioteker (NO), Norway’s UKE17 (WEEK17) site (NO), Sunnfjord Bibliotek (NO), Frosta Bibliotek (NO), Levanger Bibliotek (NO), Sogndal Bibliotek (NO).

INSPIRATION

Best-practice/SDGs and LIbraries Inspirational examples
Public meetings, swap markets and floral meadows. Ideas and new initiatives are coming thick and fast from the local library. 

Design Thinking for Libraries
The Public Libraries in Aarhus (Denmark) and Chicago (USA), with funding from the Gates Foundation, created the Design Thinking for Libraries toolkit to introduce a way of working that will help you understand the needs of your patrons and engage your communities like never before. 

Futures Literacy
Using the Future – This report is an exploration of how to enable future-ready decision-making in organisations, through strategic foresight, through fostering futures literacy and broader inclusion of the public in futures work in general. Participatory futures – a guide to how mass involvement with shaping the future can solve complex problems. Transforming the future – anticipation in the 21. century.

Second European Report on Sustainable Development Goals and Libraries (p. 33-36).

Sustainability in Danish Public Libraries – How do the Sustainable Development Goals Inspire their Work? From Bibliothek Forschung und Praxis (2021).

The World’s Best Solutions Live – SDG festival concept from Ballerup Library

Upscaling sustainable collaborative consumption using public libraries, from Nordic Journal for Library and Informations Science. Vol. 4, no. 1 (2023).

LOGO in englisH

WEEK17 Logo horizontal English – png

WEEK17 Logo vertical English – png