A new IFLA report highlights greater understanding of the contribution of libraries to delivering the United Nations 2030 Agenda among local governments, in a wider range of areas, than in national reviews of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) implementation. The report is designed to be used as a reference by libraries and library associations in their own advocacy for inclusion in Voluntary Local Reviews, as well as more broadly around the SDGs.

Download the report as a pdf.

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL), the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), and EDUCAUSE have released their final report on Mapping the Current Landscape of Research Library Engagement with Emerging Technologies in Research and Learning.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, remote library services are becoming more and more important. NDL Gallery features digital exhibitions of the NDL’s unique collections. The Web Archiving Project / WARP has been collecting and preserving websites published in Japan since 2002. Notably, it includes a collection of e-journals. Browse the periodicals collection from year 1000!

The GND (Integrated Authority File / Gemeinsame Normdatei) is the largest authority data collection for cultural and research data in German-speaking countries. In November 2020, the German National Library (DNB) published the WikiLibrary Manifesto together with Wikimedia Germany. The aim is to promote the expansion of a semantic network for data from culture and science by improving and standardizing Wikibase for use by institutions. The project and the manifesto were presented in detail by Barbara Fischer at the Sharing is Caring 2021 Conference and earlier in this blog post.

IFLA’s elections and appointments process is coming to an end. On 26 April 2021, voting will open for almost all posts across IFLA. All those eligible to vote will receive relevant information in time to be able to make choices, with wider information available through IFLA’s website and social media.

This study is the first to consider how academic librarians’ understanding of and participation in the peer review process influences their information literacy pedagogy and practice.

A team of Penn Libraries staff has been analyzing an accumulated history of periodicals in the collection—journals, magazines, newspapers, academic journals, comic books—to determine which are no longer restricted by copyright and are therefore available for free and unrestricted use. The Penn Libraries have more than 8.6 million volumes. Many of them did not maintain their copyrights but need to be researched to confirm that. All told, the Deep Backfile project is researching more than 10,000 such serials.

KBR – the National Library of Belgium – has announced an ambitious new project entitled LOD-ISNI – Linked Open Data and ISNI – as a crucial bridge identifier for cultural heritage that will set the foundations for an international network of LOD and ISNI users. It will explore novel uses of, and the advantages to be gained from, LOD/ISNI information exchanges. The international project team includes partner organizations ISNI-IA, major national libraries, OCLC plus Belgian Universities. Find out more about this project in your preferred language here: English, Dutch, French.

On December 9, 2020, the Library for Foreign Literature and the Russian State Library (RSL), with the support of the Russian Library Association and  the IFLA Russian-Language Center at the RSL, held an online round table Russian Libraries at IFLA: New Forms of Engagement. The main goal was to raise awareness of the Russian library community about changes in the IFLA governance structure, the content of amendments proposed to be introduced into the IFLA Charter, the results of the IFLA General Assembly held in November 2020, and the strategic tasks until 2024.

On 26 January 2021, Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Mikhail Mishustin signed an order, transferring the duties of the Russian Book Chamber to the Russian State Library. The decision should advance the implementation of government initiatives, proposed by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and other agencies, aimed at the development of literacy and literature. The merger of workflows, technologies, and best practices will eliminate duplication of efforts in such areas as cataloguing, accounting, and storage, streamline the digital transformation of the legal deposit system, reduce costs for publishers, and ultimately, improve compliance with the legal deposit regulations.