European information in public libraries in the United Kingdom: the implementation of the public information relay.

Abstract

In the early 1990s, during the lengthy and often heated debate over the United Kingdom's ratification of the Maastricht Treaty, the European Commission became increasingly aware of a communication gap between itself and the British public. Mindful of the need to bridge this gap, the London Office of the Commission convened a National Consultative Conference at Stoke Rochford Hall, Grantham, in January 1993. This conference, entitled 'Britain in Europe - filling the information gap together', assembled a wide variety of information providers who recognised that if the lack of consensus between Brussels and the general public was to be overcome, then a more decentralised approach to EC information provision was necessary. This article examines how the response to this was developed.