The IFLA Social Responsibilities Discussion Group first met at the 1997 Copenhagen meeting under the auspices of the Section on Education and Training. The first priority has been to address the growing gap between the information rich and the information poor both between countries and within countries.
All countries have information gap problems to a greater or lesser degree.
Several discussion papers were developed on various subthemes, and they were presented and discussed at the 1998 Amsterdam meeting. The recommendations were further refined at the open session at the 2000 Jerusalem meeting. The recommendations below are arranged in the order of the discussion papers, except Recommendations 12 and 13 which were advanced at the 1999 open forum. Rural Library Development IFLA should develop a research program on rural library development in coordination with national library agencies. The focus should be on empowerment of local authorities to process information required by the community in comprehensible formats for diverse rural populations.