The Swiss National Library is building a digital collection of Wikipedia articles related to Switzerland. The articles are to be permanently archived for future generations and made freely available online. The collection began in 2023 and includes more than 125,000 articles with a connection to Switzerland. Wikimedia expects an increase of around 5,000 Wikipedia articles a year. The archive is listed in the library catalogue Helveticat and can be consulted in e-Helvetica AccessExternal link, the entry portal to the National Library’s digital collections.

Pour accentuer l’alignement des données “éditeurs” de Mir@bel avec le référentiel IdRef, Mir@bel interroge IdRef pour récupérer automatiquement plusieurs données (nom, dates, pays…) si la structure éditoriale est déjà référencée dans IdRef. Cet objectif d’alignement du référencement des éditeurs français fait partie des jalons fixés par les quatorze partenaires du projet Mir@bel2022, dont l’Agence bibliographique de l’enseignement supérieur (Abes).

Ainsi, 167 nouvelles notices de collectivités éditrices françaises viennent d’être créées dans le référentiel IdRef, à partir des données de Mir@bel. En juin 2023, 4837 notices d’éditeurs de Mir@bel étaient alignées avec IdRef, dont 2458 pour la France (soit 94%).

IFLA is announcing the appointment of Sharon Memis as the new Secretary General. Sharon’s appointment was a unanimous decision of the Governing Board following a global search and recruitment process.

Sharon has been introduced to the IFLA HQ team and will begin her role in earnest on 1 June 2023. She will join the June meeting of the Governing Board and is looking forward to meeting members and delegates at WLIC 2023 in Rotterdam.

As part of the UN Science, Technology and Innovation Forum, IFLA was proud to host a side-event whose recording is available.  It focused on how libraries help make open science work in ways that maximise its contribution to development. At the heart of this is the need to apply principles of sustainable development – leaving no-one behind, taking a holistic approach – to open science itself.

This study by Karen Kohn from Temple University investigates how article downloads from ScienceDirect changed after Temple University Libraries downsized its all-inclusive Elsevier big deal bundle to a selective custom package. After the libraries lost current-year access to nearly half of Elsevier’s active journals, the total downloads from Elsevier journals declined by 16.2 percent over three years. Combined use of still-subscribed and open access journals fell 10.6 percent in the same three years, suggesting that the drop in total use is due not only to the loss of journals but also to factors that would affect the remaining journals, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and a slight decrease in enrollment. Patrons may have substituted articles from still-subscribed and open access journals for those that were canceled, though the data are not conclusive. Reliance on open access appears to have increased.

Like many national libraries around the world, the National Library of Indonesia’s (Perpusnas) Preservation Center is facing the problem of the decay of its collection of early printed newspapers. To date, only 2.5% of this collection has been digitized. The goal is to upload these materials on the library’s online platform Khastara, but online access is limited due to Indonesian copyright laws.

The IFLA’s Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Division Committee explores the contribution that libraries can provide to making a reality of an inclusive internet and broader digital environment. Libraries and librarians have continuously advocated for inclusive and equitable access to knowledge and information resources. Around the world, the digital divide is a common reality – particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa where data from the World Bank indicate that Internet penetration for individuals is hovering around 30% of the population. Despite the accelerated digitalisation of societies and economies during the Covid-19 pandemic, Sub-Saharan Africa is still the region with the widest coverage gap.

The complete collection of the magazine Amauta: doctrina, arte, literatura, polémica (1926-1930) archived by the National Library of Peru (BNP), has been declared Cultural Heritage of the Nation, through the Ministry of Culture. This collection, made up of 32 volumes, presents unique features such as exlibris and stamps of Peruvian intellectuals.

The National Library Board of Singapore has just released 10 datasets comprising the metadata of their digitized collections. The digital library comprises over 42,000 digitized books, magazines, newspapers, web archives, images, sound and video recordings. A data API is available to query and retrieve descriptive data including ISSNs.