Editorial
Trix Bakker
May be to your surprise, you'll find in this issue still four papers of the 32nd LIBER Annual General Conference Extending the Network : libraries and their partners, Rome, 17 - 21 June 2003. The reason for this is that these four papers couldn't be published anymore in the printed version,
published by SAUR at the end of 2003. So, in printed form, they will be published by SAUR at the end of 2004. The other two
texts are not conference papers, but articles, which we think, are of interest for the LIBER community.
The first three papers were in the context of "New publishing models".
Ed Pentz, Executive Director of CrossRef, gave a paper about the new developments of CrossRef and Digital Object Identifiers
(DOI). CrossRef runs a system that enables publishers to assign unique identifiers - Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) - to articles and it collects standardized metadata so that the identifiers can be retrieved using bibliographic data. Once
the DOI for an article is known, a persistent link to the full-text article can be created. CrossRef doesn't only provide
an organization for publishers to collaborate with one another on reference linking, but it also enables publishers to work
with libraries.
Sally Morris, the Secretary-General of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), UK, gave an interesting paper on 'Scholarship-Friendly Publishing'. ALPSP is the international trade association for society and other not-for-profit publishers. She paid much attention to the authors'
and readers' views of the self-archiving movement and how the publishers are reacting on this. Alternative publishing models,
such as Open Access, are of great interest to publishers but present difficult economic challenges, which need to be carefully
investigated. She concluded with saying that "publishers are making every effort to be 'scholarship-friendly'. They are taking
the trouble to find out what authors and readers, and librarians, need, and their publication practices are becoming steadily
more responsive to these needs."
David Prosser, Director of SPARC Europe, gave a paper on SPARC's view on scientific publishing. SPARC Europe is an alliance of European research libraries, library organisations and research institutions that supports increased competition
in scientific journal publishing, facilitates competition in the European scientific journals marketplace and introduces advocacy
initiatives tailored to the European research and library communities. It collaborates with the international SPARC organisation
based in Washington, DC, but will develop Europe-focused initiatives under the direction of a European managing board, in
which LIBER is strongly represented. Prosser gave a clear overview of new opportunities such as new financial models (Open
Access) and new technology (e.g. Open Archive Initiative standards) to better fulfil the functions of journals and better
serve authors, readers, and, ultimately, research. For SPARC Europe is open access the future of scholarly communications.
The fourth paper was in the context of 'Measurement methods'.
Karl Krarup, Deputy Director of the Royal Library in Copenhagen, Denmark, gave a paper on the use of the balanced scorecard
since 2000 as an instrument for creating a better connection between its day to day activities and its strategic goals. One
of the library's major strategic goals is to increase the digital part of its content, its services and its internal processes.
Next, you'll find an article about the LIBER MARC Harmonization Task Force published on request of the former President of LIBER, Professor Elmar Mittler from the Göttingen State and University Library. The Task Force was founded at the LIBER Annual Conference in July 2001 in London
with the aim of gaining an overview of format activities in Europe. After a second meeting at the IFLA 2002 Conference in
Glasgow the resulting report was revised and concluded with recommendations to LIBER regarding the use and development of
data formats in Europe. In January 2004 the LIBER Executive Board fully agreed with the recommendations made at its meeting
in Groningen. One of these is to establish a MARC21 European Interest Group.This Group will be assigned to the Access Division
of LIBER.
The second article is written by Elisabeth Eide, Head of the National and Special Collections of the Oslo branch of the National
Library of Norway, about their conservation and card conversion project, 2001-2004. The article presents the projects, with
the main emphasis on the conservation project, which was her responsibility. The reason behind these projects was the decision
in 1990 that the national collections of the University of Oslo Library were to be moved to the newly established National
Library of Norway. Most of the National Library's book collections will move back into new stacks in June - August 2004, whereas
the staff and all the special collections will move to the rehabilitated library in June 2005.
In the next issue of LIBER Quarterly the papers of the seminar "The Renaissance of the Library - adaptable library buildings"
organized the LIBER Architecture Group, Bozen/Bolzano, 17-19 March 2004, will be published.
WEB SITES REFERRED TO IN THE TEXT
LIBER Quarterly, Volume 14 (2004), No. 1