On January 15, 2020, Slovenian National and University Library (NUK) Director Viljem Leban was invited by National Central Library to speak on “Public lending right (PLR) in Slovenia and the rules of its implementation & Plans for the New National and University Library Building in Ljubljana, Slovenia.” The lecture was held in the international hall at NCL. NCL Director-General Shu-hsien Tseng stated in her remarks that NCL signed a collaborative agreement with NUL in 2017. It is an honor to be able to invite Director Leban to visit Taiwan with all the duties he has on hand to share Slovenia’s experience in this regard. This was valuable information given Taiwan began a three-year trial of public lending right in January 2020, as well as the construction of the southern branch of NCL and other large-scale libraries.

Director Leban first explained the origin of public lending right and related bills in Slovenia. Then the core of his lecture centered on quantity and quality: he first described the protocols of Slovenia’s public lending right, as well as the payment system that is based off public libraries’ borrowing data on the cooperative online catalog system and service. Payments by Slovenian libraries are in support of the authors, with the primary aim being increasing the creativity of creators in various cultural fields. These fields are the creative grounds of library resources and accord with public interest. Payments by Slovenian libraries can take two forms, each accounting for half of the payments made: (1) remuneration to living authors based on borrowing data from libraries, with the Co-operative Online Bibliographic Systems and Services (COBISS) used as the source of said data; the number of pages in a book is calculated in, and the number of times borrowed have minimum and maximum ranges set based on genre type. The value of each instance of borrowing is calculated by the payment to authors for that specific genre divided by the number of times it was borrowed that meet the public lending right criteria. (2) Competitive bonuses to encourage creators, focused mainly on the following five areas: novels, translated works, illustrations and videos, music, and movies.

In addition, he also spoke about the architectural plans for the new National and University Library building in Ljubljana, Slovenia, as well as recent conceptual changes to those plans. In 2012, the Chamber of Architecture and Spatial Planning of Slovenia (ZAPS) and the Ministry of Education, Science, and Sport put on an international building and city competition for the new library, which has been termed NUK2. The Ljubljanan architecture firm Bevk Perovic Architects won the bid. The finalization of project planning and the obtaining of building permit is anticipated to occur in 2020. Since more than seven years had passed, NUK 2’s team made some quick changes to their plans. The change in concept—which mirrors developments in university libraries around the world—means a reduction in stacks and an expansion of study space. NUK2 is designed to be a modern university library that will primarily support universities and other research organizations in teaching and research.