Policy and planning for data access in libraries

The idea of creating a collaborative data infrastructure that is open to all is very much in line with LIBER’s strategy.  As a representative of European research libraries within EUDAT, LIBER will lead the work for a task involving policy and planning for data access, and contribute to the investigation of environments and requirements from the library domain.

Just last week, what was dubbed the biggest LIBER conference in 44 years, took place in the UK. LIBER, (Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche – Association of European Research Libraries) the main network for research libraries in Europe, recently joined the EUDAT initiative.

Founded in 1971, the association has grown steadily to include more than 400 national, university and other libraries from over 40 countries.
“Every day we work to represent the interests of European research libraries, their universities and their researchers in several key areas”, says Melanie Imming EU Projects Manager at LIBER “We lobby policymakers on issues such as copyright and open access. Through events such as our annual conference, we create opportunities for library professionals to meet and learn from each other. We also collaborate with our member libraries on European-funded projects, including EUDAT.

EUDAT is in the process of creating an important infrastructure for the European Research Area, by providing solutions for managing electronic data that would be difficult for some research communities to provide on their own. EUDAT is there for anyone wanting to share or re-use European research data. The idea of creating a collaborative data infrastructure that is open to all is very much in line with LIBER’s strategy.  As a representative of European research libraries within EUDAT, LIBER will lead the work for a task involving policy and planning for data access, and contribute to the investigation of environments and requirements from the library domain. Moreover, LIBER is involved in the EUDAT communication activities".

“In addition to our involvement in EUDAT, LIBER is a partner in nine ongoing or upcoming EU projects, such as OpenAire2020, in which we are working on an FP7 post-grant Open Access publishing funds pilot – the Foster project, which is all about open science training – and two new upcoming projects all to do with text and data mining. Since LIBER is mainly involved in stakeholder engagement, policies, dissemination and advocacy tasks, there are great opportunities for crossover involvement between different projects we are participating in.” concludes Melanie

Melanie Imming is EU Projects Manager at LIBER. She is responsible for the coordination of the EU funded projects in which LIBER participates.