Mission
A primary role of a research library is to offer the members of its user community the most efficient means of accessing and preserving the globally-accumulated scholarly knowledge in their field of interest. The present system of scholarly communication is far from ideal, and LIBER’s Access Division will support activities that harness the opportunities offered by modern technology to create improvement. The Access Division is also working to secure developments in the field of European digitisation activity, digital preservation for European libraries and a European library passport for members of LIBER institutions.
Members
Work Plan and Progress Reports
LIBER Access Division has an annual Work Plan and reports three times a year on progress achieved in pursuing the goals identified by the Division and discussed by the LIBER Board. The latest Work Plan and Progress Report can be found here.
At the end of August 2008, the LIBER Access and Preservation Divisions submitted the LIFE 2 Report to the JISC. LIFE, Lifecycle Information For E-literature, has established Lifecycle and Generic Preservation costing formulae to help stakeholders ascertain the long-term costs of the curation of digital objects and their long term preservation.
Phase 2 of the LIFE project, funded by the JISC in the UK, has validated LIFE's approach to economic modelling and has tested the revised formulae on digital repositories, a prototype national digital preservation service in the UK, and the outputs of digitisation projects in the British Library, comparing analogue and digital preservation costs.
At the 2007 LIBER Conference, LIBER and the e-Depot of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the National Library of the Netherlands, signed a Memorandum of Understanding to work together to investigate issues around the long-term digital curation of research content from Europe’s research libraries.
The LIBER Access Division is supporting LIBER’s emerging work on the digitisation of content in Europe’s research libraries. In October 2007, LIBER held a Digitisation Workshop in Copenhagen, attended by 95 people from 23 countries.
Following the Workshop, LIBER and EBLIDA made a submission to Commissioner Viviane Redding concerning future directions for European digitisation activity.
Following research, commissioned by the European Commission, on the digitization of European cultural heritage in 2007, Numeric have released the first results of the research.
LIBER is working with the Digital Library Federation (DLF) and OCLC to help co-ordinate the production of a global register of digital masters. Libraries who create digital masters can upload their metadata records to EROMM (European Register Of digital and Microfom Masters), from where the records will also be loaded into the global Register of Digital Masters (RDM).
In the context of the Bologna process, LIBER is committed to drawing up a European library passport, which will aid academic staff and students who wish to use a number of European research libraries. Modelled closely on the SCONUL schemes in the UK, the Passport will deliver important benefits for Europe’s researchers.
In August 2007, LIBER made a response to the EU's Green Paper on the European Research Area (ERA). LIBER's response, prepared by the Access Division, is given below.
In April 2008, the EU issued the results of the Public Consultation on the Green Paper and their Next Steps. This can be found below.
LIBER's MARC 21 Interest Group is devoted to furthering European interests and concerns in the development and evolution of the MARC encoding format.
Renate Gömpel and Christine Frodl, 'LIBER MARC Harmonization Task Force - Format Activities in European Countries' in LIBER Quarterly , 14 (1) 2004
LIBER MARC Harmonization Task Force - Formataktivitäten in Europa, 2004 in
Zeitschrift für Bibliothekswesen und Bibliographie 3 (2004), pp. 164 - 166
LIBER MARC Harmonization Task Force -
Recommendations to LIBER
rev. draft version (2003-10-14) (currently unavailable)
Questionnaire for European national libraries (CENL) on data format activities
2002
Results of the Questionnaire for European national libraries (CENL members) on data format activities
In 2003, the LIBER MARC Harmonisation Task Force made a series of Recommendations to LIBER about the future of their work and activity. As a result of their Report, the Task Force was transformed into the LIBER MARC 21 Working Group. The Report, which led to this development, can be read here.
The LIBER MARC 21 Interest Group has its origins in an initiative of a former President of LIBER, Professor Elmar Mittler from the Göttingen State and University Library. Following a meeting of the MARC Harmonizing Committee in Ottawa in May 2001, in which Dr. Elisabeth Niggemann, general director of the German National Library took part, a LIBER MARC Harmonization Task Force was founded at the LIBER Annual Conference in July 2001 in London.
This LIBER MARC Harmonization Task Force held a kick-off meeting in January 2002 at the German National Library Frankfurt site, with the goal of gaining an overview of MARC activities in European countries. The group decided to concentrate on European developments and to build up stronger co-operation in the international library world in order to strengthen their European influence.
One of the major goals of the LIBER MARC Harmonization Task Force was the discussion of data format activities for libraries at the European level which led to co-operation with the Conference of European National Librarians CENL in order to get an overview of format activities in all European countries.
In October 2002, an online questionnaire was compiled with the aim of collecting information on data formats, cataloguing codes and migration activities, and to ascertain the level of support for a MARC 21 European Interest Group.
At the Groningen meeting in January 2004 the LIBER Executive Board decided to change the name of the group to the LIBER MARC 21 Interest Group.
Members
Renate Gömpel, German National Library, Frankfurt am Main, Germany (Chair)
Caroline Brazier, British Library, London, UK
Gordon Dunsire, Centre for Digital Library Research, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
Rosa Maria Galvăo, National Library of Portugal, Lisbon, Portugal
Gunilla Jonsson, The Royal Library, Stockholm, Sweden
Dr Mirna Willer, National and University Library, Zagreb, Croatia
LIBER's Access Division works closely with a number of European partners to deliver Workshops which deal with emerging Open Access issues. The CERN Workshops on Innovations in Scholarly Communication are chaired by the Chair of the Access Division and provide a premier European focus for debate and dialogue with colleagues, including those from the Los Alamos National Laboratory Research Library.
The OAI5 Workshop in 2007 was the most successful of the series to date.
Open Scholarship is a companion series of Workshops, also chaired by the chair of the LIBER Access Division. These are based in the University of Glasgow and concentrate upon Open Access repositories. The first in the series was held on 18-20 October 2006 entitled Open Scholarship 2006: New Challenges for Open Access Repositories .
In matters concerning Scholarly Communication, the LIBER Access Division works closely with SPARC Europe, and the Division has membership on the SPARC Europe Board. SPARC Europe is an alliance of European research libraries, library organizations, and research institutions advocating change in the Scholarly Communications process.
A primary role of a research library is to offer the members of its user community the most efficient means of accessing and preserving the globally accumulated scholarly knowledge in their field of interest. The present system of scholarly communication is far from ideal, and LIBER will support activities that harness the opportunities offered by modern technology to create improvement. During the period 2007-2010, LIBER will implement the following actions: ACTIONS 1.1 As an early supporter of the Open Access movement, and having signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities in 2005, LIBER will continue to support this and future approaches to the improvement of access to scholarly literature. 1.2 Through reciprocal representation on the LIBER and SPARC-Europe Boards, LIBER will continue to work closely with SPARC Europe in helping to develop its agenda and activities in the pursuit of change in the scholarly communications market, the support of competition, and the encouragement of new publishing models (in particular, open access models) that better serve the international researcher community. 1.3 LIBER will continue actively to support the CERN Workshops on Innovations in Scholarly Communication held in Geneva and will play a major role in organising the next Workshop planned for 2009; and the Open Scholarship meetings, in which LIBER plays a major organising role, the second Workshop of which will be held in Southampton in 2008. 1.4 LIBER will work with the Frankfurt Group and EBLIDA and the European Commission to find a means of lowering the effects of the level of VAT on electronic publications. 1.5 LIBER will seek closer participation and the involvement of LIBER member institutions with European projects such as the DRIVER (Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research) Project. 1.6. LIBER will seek to stimulate debate among its membership on issues to be resolved in the field of scholarly communications.
The Access Division reports to the LIBER Board three times a year. The most current Divisional Report is given below.
The Access Division produces a Newsletter three times a year, to illustrate progress in a number of selected areas of its Work Plan. The text of recent LIBER Access Division Newsletters appears below.
The LIBER Access Division is developing a one-stop portal to the full-text of European research theses, to give greater visibility to this important output from European universities and to aid researchers gain access to this material.
LIBER and DRIVER have agreed to collaborate to investigate the delivery of the full-text of research theses from European universities via the emerging European repository network.
The Access Division's Work Plan is updated three times a year, following discussion in the steering groups which oversee the Division's activities and agree in the LIBER Board.
The Work Plan for 2008 is attached below.