With Knowledge Against Deception – Building a News-Literate Society Through Libraries

Abstract

The paper presents the international project ˮEnhancing Key Civic Competences for the Post-truth Era: News Literacy and Critical Thinking” dedicated to developing news literacy and implemented by the Belgrade City Library and three other partners within the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union. The paper provides essential details related to the project, such as its goals, target groups, partners, duration, and main activities. Additionally, the paper emphasizes the achieved results and hints at the project's future development. The project, known as ESSENTIAL, as the project’s acronym reads, has been recognized as a project of good practice in adult education in 2022. As such, it can be a paradigmatic example of how excellent results can be achieved through international cross-sector cooperation. The paper also showcases how libraries can utilize their potential and resources, such as good locations, space, technology, and highly qualified employees, to educate the local community. In a practical sense, the created and publicly available educational content and tools enable interested libraries (and other cultural institutions) to quickly introduce a new service – the education of citizens in news literacy. This is particularly important in the context of the development of public libraries as centers of non-formal education in their communities.