About us

Bibliotekschefforeningen (BCF) – or in English – the Danish Association of Public Library Managers – is an organization of professionals bringing library managers and others with management responsibility working in public libraries together.

The Association has two main areas of focus: to further professional leadership in public libraries and to ensure strategic and informed advocacy work on national library developments.

To strengthen local library development

BCF aims to strengthen library leader’s opportunities to manage and develop local library services through cooperation with and inspiration from other library managers across Denmark. Each library is embedded locally but national cooperation has always had a high priority in the public library sector.  

The association’s goal is to create networks between managers and leaders and create opportunities to get to know one another. The basis for this are a number of annual membership meetings as well as our annual conference. Each month a member of the association contributes a short piece to our blog, outlining challenges and experiences from his or her daily work as a library manager.

In order to strengthen leadership talent in our libraries and to ensure new forms of cooperation the association has recently established a mentoring scheme, where manages and emerging leaders, working together, can explore new perspectives in the roles of leadership.

Meetings across the year have a strong professional focus – both in regard to leadership as a profession in itself, but also strategic issues that are relevant and on the agenda for libraries. These meetings afford again the opportunity for knowledge exchange amongst colleagues from across Denmark.

Bringing our influence to bear on issues of national library development

BCF works to ensure that our public libraries develop in accordance with society and the needs of its citizens. Public libraries are the natural places to find knowledge and inspiration, but also more and more they are becoming community spaces for dialogue and interaction. The expectations of our citizens are that public libraries reflect the society they operate in and are part of the technological and thematic tendencies of an ever changing modern society.

The association actively seeks influence and dialogue with many different partners to ensure a sustainable library evolution and to contribute with practice based knowledge and experience. There is continuous cooperation with the Ministry of Culture, Local Government Denmark, The Danish Library Association, KOMBIT (IT-infrastructure) and many others. As well as this board members are represented on a number of committees e.g. Bibliotekernes Dialogforum, Strategisk Biblioteksudvalg, Bibliotekernes Koordinationsforum etc. The whole list can be found here.

International cooperation

BCF is a member of two international library Associations, IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations) and EBLIDA (European Bureau of Library, Information and Documentation Associations). BCF is committed to European and international engagement and collaboration in order to actively lobby and advocate for the importance of libraries in society and to ensure that economic and legal issues do not hinder access to information and content for citizens around the world.