Susan Reilly held a presentation "Reaching the researcher:Europeana Libraries- a patnership approach" at the Serbian Library Association’s 10th International conference "The World and European Horizons of Librarianship in Digital Age", October 2011
Mixin Classes in Odoo 17 How to Extend Models Using Mixin Classes
Reaching the researcher: Europeana Libraries- a patnership approach, Susan Reilly
1. Reaching the researcher: Europeana Libraries- a patnership approach Susan Reilly, LIBER SLA / 27/10/2011
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3. Portrait of an unknown male scholar, http:// www.vads.ac.uk/large.php?uid =86386
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6. University libraries and information services could help by providing a structure that maintains digital tools and archives and promotes development of innovative resources.
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9. Making it happen- the partnership Consortium of European Research Libraries Conference of European National Libraries Europeana Foundation Association of European Research Libraries
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Editor's Notes
Hello, my name is Susan Reilly and I am the project officer for liber- the association for european research libraries. I’m here to talk about one of the projects we are involved in, Europeana Libraries, and, more importantly, it’s motiviations and the implications it may have for research libraries in the long term.
I’m going to start by outlining the one of the reasonings behind Europeana Libraries, tell you more about the project, the key to the success of teh project, which is the partnership, and finally the potential that Europeana Libraries offers for future projects and collaborations.
So it all starts with this guy- the scholar or the researcher as he is more often referred to today. There he is. He’s got what he needs at his fingertips –a book. And he is working on his own. And this is very much representative of how humanities researchers traditionally worked- alone and primarily with text based physical objects. They have no tradition of working collaboratively and prefere in to work in depth with fewer sources of information rather than with a breath of information. While it has been clear to us for some time that researchers in the sciences have embraced the online environment to work collaboratively, to access and to generate research data, we are all familiar with the concept of the data deluge, the humanities has been slower to change and perhaps libraries have been slower to realise the potential that the online digital environment presents in term of supporting humanities research and encouraging collaboration.
So that’s the traditional view of a humanities researcher at least. However research practices in the humanities are slowly changing and a report carried out by the Researhc Information Network in the UK illustrates this. This report was released in early 2011..
So what did this report find? Well it found, unsurprisingly, that the way humanities researchers work has changed in the following ways. We, as libraries, can intone some needs from these: the need for collaborative environment to support systematic collaboration, where researchers can share their sources and find new ways to interpret them; the need to support more complex research for example in the digital humanities, where access to data is important; and, since researchers have less time to visit libraries, the need to be able to access information quickly and easily, ideally from one place.
This is one of serveral recommendations from the report but I’ve chosen it because it speaks directly to libraries and really sums up what the Europeana Libraries project aspires to.
We believe that one answer or solution to this recommendation is this. This is one solution to the barriers that humanities researchers face when dealing with digitlal content online and this presents a unique opportunity for research libraries to work together to maximize their reach to the research community and to address the needs of researchers who are increasingly exploring the possibilities of online content.
Which brings me to the project: Europeana Libraries seeks to harness this opportunity. It is a 2 year project, which aims to add over 5 million digital objects from 19 research libraries to Europeana.
Crucially, Europeana Libraries is a partnership. It’s a partnership between CENL, who represent the National Libraries and own the aggregator The European Library, CERL, who also represent research libraries and in particular those with an interest in standards, Europeana, and LIBER, who represent over 420 research libraries in over 40 countries,.
Apart from, of course, aggregating the content from research libraries, the project will achieve the following
To do this we need to establish:
Key to the success of this project is ensuring that the partnership is sustainable and can be built on. To do this we need to understand the aggregator landscape in which we are opperating. We need to know what our uniques selling point is and inform the development of our value proposition. We also need to ensure that we have a robust business model. One that both the national libraries and smaller research libraries can support and that addresses the governance and legalissues arising from making TEL the European aggregator for resaerch libraries. And the 2 exercises outlined here form a large part of the work of the Europeana Libraries project, but this does mean we will hopefully have created something that will last well beyond the duration of the project.
And, if we want to have all research libraries sign up to use this service, we need to find out want they want? What adds value to their content? We have been and will continue to consult research libraries about our value proposition, examples of which you see here…