National Library tools highlighted in Poland’s Digital Strategy to 2035
The Digital Strategy for Poland, published on 18 June and adopted by the Council of Ministers and signed by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, states that “a key task in the field of digitalisation is to ensure access to information on the collections – not only digitalised collections – of museums, archives and libraries in publicly accessible central catalogue systems. At present, many of these institutions still do not have fully catalogued collections, or this data has not yet been digitalised.”
The document continues: “This will not only increase knowledge of these resources, standardise data and define digitalisation needs, but will also have a significant impact on their protection and security. These tasks are currently being carried out, among others, by […] the National Library of Poland, which is implementing the Integrated Library Resource Management System, created as part of the development of a nationwide library network, in which 153 libraries conduct shared cataloguing, as of September 2025. These activities should continue to be developed and implemented in other entities, such as museums.”
This is one of the most important references to cultural institutions in the history of Poland’s national digital strategy. The strategy sets out the direction of Poland’s digital transformation until 2035, covering public administration, business, science and culture, with the overarching aim of improving quality of life through the use of modern technologies.
The fact that the Digital Strategy for Poland mentions the National Library of Poland by name confirms the importance of the Library’s shared cataloguing services and its work to provide access to information about library holdings. These services make it possible to build a coherent body of knowledge about library resources, improve access to information and create modern digital infrastructure that serves both cultural institutions and their users.
In doing so, the strategy present central systems for cataloguing collections and providing access to information about them as one of the foundations of digital access to knowledge and culture. The National Library of Poland is already implementing this model, while the experience gained through the ALMA and PRIMO systems has now been recognised as a solution that could serve as a model for other areas of cultural heritage.