Open access at the British Library presented by Dimity Flanagan at the Oxford OpenCon satellite event, 30 November 2018

1. Open Access at the British Library
OpenCon Oxford 2018
Dimity Flanagan
Scholarly Communications Lead
@2warpthreads

2. www.bl.uk
‘Open’ and the British Library
• In 1972, the British Library Act established the
British Library as “… a national centre for
reference, study and bibliographical and other
information services” and tasks us to contribute “to
the efficient management of other libraries and
information services”.
• In 2015, the Living Knowledge vision stated that
the best way to deliver this mission today is for the
British Library to become the most open, creative
and innovative institution of its kind in the world.
2

3. www.bl.uk
Strategy and collections
3
• Content paradigm: Enhancing BL collections with global content
• Services paradigm: From content to services
• Set the Library in a global (digital and open) knowledge environment

4. www.bl.uk
EThOS: (new) research available for everyone
4

5. www.bl.uk
Developing a new open repository platform
5
• BL repository content on a single platform
• Refresh national preservation system
(>5m items, petabyte-scale)
• Access layer with multiple repositories
• Pilot developed with:
Preservation Layer
Services Layer
Access Layer
EThOS Data.bl.uk
BL
Institutional
Repository
Partner
Repositories

6. www.bl.uk
OA @ the BL
6

7. www.bl.uk
Community outreach
7

8. www.bl.uk
It’s not open if you cannot find it…
• Workshop (21/09/18) organised by the British
Library, with support from the Arcadia Fund
• Bringing together key players in open access
discovery to understand current developments
and identify challenges and potential solutions
• Decision to continue as informal network to
develop and maintain a joint roadmap
• Report to be published soon
8
• BASE: Bielefeld Academic Search Engine
• British Library
• COAR: Confederation of Open Access
Repositories
• CORE: Connecting Repositories
• Crossref
• DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals
• EBI: Europe Pubmed Central
• Impactstory
• Internet Archive
• Jisc
• Open Access Button
• ORCID
• University College Cork (for the Irish
National Open Research Forum)

9. www.bl.uk
Help the public to find and understand research
9

10. www.bl.uk
Open Access Week 2018
10https://blogs.bl.uk/living-knowledge/2018/11/open-and-engaged-open-access-week-at-the-british-library.html

11. www.bl.uk
Future events
• 29th January - LIS Bibliometrics Forum: Open Metrics and
Measuring Openness
• 5th February - Publisher workshop: metadata, Open Access
and more (with Crossref)
11

12. www.bl.uk
Dimity Flanagan
Dimity.Flanagan@bl.uk
@2warpthreads
12