French culture minister has big plans for libraries

French Culture Minister and former publisher Françoise Nyssen has said that a national debate on reading will be held in France next March, and that she plans to turn libraries into cultural public service centres.
 
These were just two of the points she made in the first media interview that she has given since she was appointed to prime minister Edouard Philippe’s government six months ago to the day, and is published in the magazine version of Livres Hebdo dated 17th November.
 
After travelling extensively in France since May, Nyssen said “the big challenge is to guarantee real access for all” to the richness, diversity and practice of culture, and that this will entail working closely with the education ministry.  She aims to extend French library opening hours--the shortest in Europe—and have at least two libraries in each of the country’s 95 departments open on Sundays by the end of next year. At the moment, only five are open on Sunday.
 
She added that she wants to transform libraries into places for people to meet and for students to work, for creating links and for providing a crossroads for different cultural public services. She also promised that authors would be compensated for an across-the-board social charge increase next year.
 
One of the few ministers with a budget increase slated for next year, Nyssen denied that her career as a publisher was at odds with handling book dossiers in her new job. She noted that the cultural events of all kinds she has organised over the years have fed “a 360-degree reflection,” and given her inside knowledge of the questions and needs of both the world of culture and the general public. “This is rather an advantage for the book ecosystem,” she added.
 
Nyssen, the first publisher ever to hold the post of culture minister in France, also said she had proposed to her European Union (EU) counterparts to create an Erasmus exchange programme for artists and culture professionals, and to extend throughout Europe the 500-euro culture pass for 18-year-olds that will be introduced in France next year.
 
She stepped down as chief executive of the Arles-based publisher Actes Sud, in the south of France when she entered the government. The house was founded by her father Hubert Nyssen, and received The Bookseller Adult Trade Publisher Award at the London Book Fair in April 2016.