The Netherlands Public Library Association (Vereniging Openbare Bibliotheken - VOB) is the national association of public libraries and related organisations in the Netherlands. All 160 public library organisations are members of the VOB.

With their 10.000 employees (4500 FTE) and an annual turnover of around 600 million euro, they serve around 6 million individuals and most of the educational institutions in the Netherlands (current population: 16,5 million).

Contrary to many other countries, the association is an Association of public libraries as institutes. The legal statute of most public libraries in the Netherlands is a non-profit foundation, not so much a department of the local municipality. So every public library has its own library board. An upscaling process in the last decade has resulted in larger library organisations, beyond municipal borders. Provincial library service organisations work for development, innovation and implementation at the regional level, and are also partners and members of the VOB.

In 2011 the library association merged with the public library employers association, thereby strengthening its advocacy for public libraries, cultural entrepreneurship and modern employment in the public library sector.

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VOB advocates the common entrepreneurial interests of the public libraries and the provincial and national support organisations. It maintains close relationships with politics at the national level, representatives of the administration and other organisations in society. It participates and develops statements in the political, governmental and social debates about cultural politics and social economic themes. It supports the public library field professionally and internally through guidelines, agreements ( a.o. on certification) and externally.

Services are mainly focused on supporting and strengthening societal entrepreneurship, modern employership, market development, networking and knowledge sharing within the sector.

As employers’ association VOB works for good employment conditions, and negotiates with trade-unions on Collective Work Agreements (CAO).

The working programme of the Association includes activities to gather data from the public libraries. Statistics are part of a larger project of building a data warehouse (in cooperation).