1. LIBER
Association of European Research Libraries
Lluis Anglada - Director of the Consortium of
Academic Libraries of Catalonia & LIBER Board
Member

2. What is LIBER?
• The largest network of European research/academic
libraries: more than 425 institutions, from over 40 countries
• LIBER's network is not restricted to the area of the European
Union and it covers the whole of Europe
• LIBER was founded in 1971. Since 2009, LIBER has had its
seat in The Hague (Netherlands)

3. LIBER’s portfolio of EU projects
• Content
• Europeana Libraries = Aggregation of research library content
• Europeana Newspapers = Adding newspaper content to Europeana
• Infrastructure
• APARSEN (Digital Preservation Best Practice Network) = Common vision
for digital preservation: trust, sustainability, usability, access
• ODE (Opportunities for Data Exchange) = Explores libraries role in linking
data to publications and in supporting data exchange
• AAA study (Authentication, Authorisation, Accounting) = A researcher
passport- facilitating seemless access and reuse, overview of RI landscape
• Policy: MedOANet

4. • www.europeana-libraries.eu
• www.europeana-newspapers.eu
• http://www.ode-project.eu/
• www.alliancepermanentaccess.org
• https://confluence.terena.org/display/aaastudy

5. LIBER’s strategy 2013-2015
Key Performance Areas:
Scholarly Communications & Research Infrastructures
Reshaping the Research Library
Advocacy & Communications

6. OA in the LIBER’s strategy 2013-15
• By 2015, LIBER will:
• Enrich the student experience by providing services and resources that meet the
changing profile and increasingly high expectations of learners based in LIBER
institutions
• Engage new audiences, using the best of its collections, expertise and spaces
• Strengthen its partnerships with the EU, European University Associations and cognate
library organisations and consortia
• Build on LIBER’s work in Scholarly Communication to construct
research infrastructures which serve LIBER members
• Increase its advocacy activity on behalf of European research and national libraries to
the EU, LIBER member institutions, research funders, sponsors
• Help build a workforce in LIBER member institutions whose skills continue to keep pace
with change

7. Strategic goals
• To transfer the mission of research libraries into the digital
world and re-position the research library as a key actor in
the digital knowledge infrastructure
• To enable the research library to become a central point-of-
contact for researchers and faculty in the area of scholarly
publishing and research data management at institutional
level for all academic disciplines

8. LIBER’s vision
• Research Infrastructures (RIs) and Scholarly Communication
relate closely to each other, as RIs support changes in
Scholarly Communication
• Issues for LIBER
• Scholarly Communication
• Research Infrastructures (RIs)
• New roles for the research (and national) libraries

9. Scholarly Communication issues
• Open Access
• green
• gold
• Managing transition
• combining licensing with OA
• creating and implementing new business models
• Linking research publications to research data and learning
materials,
• Creating repository networks (such as DART)

10. Research infrastructures issues
• Repositories
• institutional
• disciplinary
• Digital collections
• Digitalized (heritage) collections
• Digital born collections
• Research data (big data)

11. New library roles for research (and national)
libraries
• Library roles in Research Infrastructures (RIs) and Scholarly
Communication, support:
• Access, use and re-use
• Interoperability and standards
• Metadata, authorities, ontologies
• Preservation
• Usage statistics, research profiles, etc.
• Develop new skills for librarians

12. It is important to bring different
stakeholders together
• key projects, initiatives and organisations such as
• OpenAIRE and OpenAIREplus,
• COAR,
• Knowledge Exchange; SPARC-Europe,
• researchers and disciplinary research infrastructures
• university organisations
• EUA, LERU, COIMBRA...
• funders on the European and national level
• EC, ERC, EuroScience etc.

13. DART-Europe
• is a partnership of research libraries and library consortia
who are working together to improve global access to
European research theses.
• Help to provide researchers with a single European Portal for
the discovery of Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs),
• Participate in advocacy to influence future European e-
theses developments.
• Is a networking forum on ETD issues.

14. DART
• DART-Europe E-Theses portal
• www.dart-europe.eu
• 307.264 Open Access theses (as of 10th of July 2012)
• 24 European countries
• 432 Universities
• A LIBER service for members (Association of European
Research Libraries)

15. Open Access to research theses
• Theses freely available in
Open Access are more heavily
used than paper equivalents
• Example: Dublin City
University, 2009
• 518 consultations of
paper theses
• 16,212 downloads for
the equivalent digital
theses See: Hill, R. and Moyle, M. (2010) http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/19955

16. Credits
Some slides are reused from presentations by:
• Dr. Paul Ayris (UCL)
• Susan Reilly (LIBER)
Nicely blended for Medoanet attenders by
• Marieke Willems (LIBER)
• Lluís Anglada (CBUC)
Thanks for your attention