These reports were produced a little while ago, but they are worth the look.

The International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) produces the IFLA World Report a biennial series that reports on the state of countries of the world relating to freedom of information, freedom of expression and other related issues.

So I checked out the 2010 report on Australia, fully expecting that I would know everything that was there.  Not so. The report was quite interesting and reported on numbers of libraries – broken down by type, libraries and the Internet – including filtering used and national policy towards it, legal issues, open access, social issues, ethics and more.

You can view individual or multiple country reports, using the Google Map to access them, either in full or customised form. You can also access the Analysis and Conclusions of the World Report 2010 and comment on the whole report.

Well worth a view and an interesting insight into libraries and information worldwide.