Two librarians from the Latin American and Iberian Collections team at Cambridge University Library have tackled problems related to Open Access books’ metadata and accessibility. From a particular case regarding work publications by CLACSO (Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales, a network of 700 research institutions from 52 countries), this article points out the challenges that librarians encounter when dealing with Open Access books with poor bibliographic description. Nearly 200 CLACSO records were updated and enriched, which led to discuss the broader issues and challenges that poor-quality metadata for Open Access books imply.

The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) members released their journal subscription cost data for collections and packages negotiated by Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN), as part of their commitment to greater transparency of licensing information. The current release, which is accessible via the Federated Research Data Repository (FRDR), covers subscription costs for 2019-2020.

Research libraries are faced with a pressing demand to assess the value of their services and evidence their impact. In order to develop a better understanding of how research libraries respond to this demand, the authors collected and analysed case-study and survey data from across the RLUK membership. The authors present some of the key findings, showing the pathways to impact, and reflect on the opportunities and challenges that the digital era presents for increasing and measuring this impact.

Casalini Libri joins forces with its historic partner @Cult, a software house based in Rome and specializing in the design and development of solutions for information management and knowledge sharing. The union both strengthens and furthers the Casalini mission to promote the dissemination of culture through increasingly advanced services to libraries, institutions and publishers. They both promote Share-VDE, a collaborative endeavour and a library-driven initiative. This prototype platform for searching and accessing bibliographic resources according to the BIBFRAME data model brings together the bibliographic catalogues and authority files of a community of libraries in a shared discovery environment based on linked data.

This book addresses multiple aspects of how public and academic libraries can deal with the increase in self-published titles.

The latest IFLA Asia and Oceania Regional Quarterly Newsletter is out. You will know what is trending in the Asia and Oceania region. But also,  discussions have taken place about the current situations affecting libraries, and about unprecedented changes that are reshaping the library communities.

Please open the PDF newsletter to access the links.

The Wikicite Discussion Series was organised by the IFLA Wikidata Working Group and supported by the Wikimedia Foundation. These discussions, led by the IFLA Wikidata Working Group,  address several themes such as open citations, language revitalisation, knowledge equity, access to scholarly publications, linking and visualising bibliographic data, the global wiki community, and much more!

IFLA compiled some key resources for libraries in responding to the Coronavirus pandemic. The information and resources are provided on a non-exhaustive basis but will be updated regularly. It is based on publicly available information, and information that is submitted to updates@ifla.org. Additional ideas, references, suggestions and corrections can be sent to this address.

There is an upcoming special issue of the IFLA Journal focused on innovations in libraries during the COVID-19 pandemic. For more information, please see the call for submissions.

Researchers, librarians and publishers all play a role in promoting research, but those roles aren’t clearly defined.  In a survey conducted in 2020 by AIP Publishing, librarians were asked about their contribution to promoting research, and what they feel their role should be. The results of the survey are presented in this whitepaper.

OCLC and LIBER announced the launch of a discussion series on Open Science through webinars and discussion groups from 24 September-5 November. The series, based on the LIBER Open Science Roadmap, will help guide research libraries in envisioning the support infrastructure for Open Science (OS) and their role at local, national, and global levels. This initiative aligns efforts between research libraries in Europe and North America.