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This report argues that a standards-based digital platform is the only viable technology for realising recent strategic goals articulated by leaders for England's public libraries. The platform would allow libraries and their partners to innovate, collaborate and share in ways they cannot now do. The report further argues that that the primary mode of service on this platform must be co-production -- among library authorities, and among library staff, national and local partners, and importantly, end users. We show how new digital divides have made the mission of libraries -- literacy, learning, and community inclusion -- as relevant as it ever was. And that in order to provide and energetic response, libraries must invite their users into their digital spaces: their catalogues, their websites, their ebook readers, their online events calendars. We argue that these two measures, a standards-based digital platform and co-production of services, will reinvigorate libraries and create substantial, tangible outcomes in literacy, digital and social inclusion, health, education, and economic participation.
