Universal Bibliographic Control (UBC) was created jointly by IFLA and UNESCO as part of a global effort to ensure better access to information. UBC has long been a fundamental part of the international framework for the bibliographic aspect of libraries’ work. IFLA’s UBCIM Programme has been responsible for the creation of the ISBDs as well as UNIMARC. 20 years after it closed, and about a decade after IFLA’s last collective reflection and declaration on UBC (IFLA Professional Statement on Universal Bibliographic Control and Lyon Declaration), the IFLA Sections on Bibliography, Cataloguing and Subject Analysis and Access invite metadata specialists from all around the world to convene at KBR in Brussels to start discussing a new framework for the coming decades. At a time when IFLA is re-examining its technical and strategic infrastructure for metadata standards creation and maintenance to take into account the new environment of data exchange for data interoperability, each individual term of the “UBC” concept can be questioned.

The meeting whose topic is The Global Impact of Library Publishing seeks to explore how the growth of this passionate and energetic work by library publishers is impacting three areas of high value for society:  (1) Library Publishing Supporting open science; (2) Library Publishing Supporting open pedagogy; and (3) Library Publishing Supporting an educated society.

The value of open access in scholarly communication has been understood for almost as long as the internet has offered the potential to disseminate information and materials immediately and universally. Twenty years after the start of the open access movement, the scholarly communication ecosystem is rapidly evolving into an open paradigm, and we can easily imagine a not-so-distant future in which open scholarship is the norm.

The 2023 LIBER Annual Conference will take place from the 5th to the 7th of July at the Library and Information Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest. More details will be made available nearer the time.

Attend a panel discussion featuring experienced journal editors who use OJS, and library publishers, as well as organizations that support them, to learn more about inclusion in the DOAJ.

The SciELO 25 Years Week will bring together a series of events that will be designed as a global forum for face-to-face and online discussion on the state of the art and perspectives on the execution and communication of open science research and its contributions to the development of collections of research communication objects operated by SciELO with a focus on journals of increasing quality that the SciELO Network indexes, publishes, and interoperates.

Universal Bibliographic Control at the crossroads: the challenges of unifying IFLA bibliographic standards

Date: 18 – 19 August 2023

Location: KBR, Brussels, Belgium

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The  World Library and Information Congress WLIC2023 Programme is now live on the Congress website. A wealth of innovative and thought-provoking sessions awaits you! Explore the Congress Programme, pick sessions of your choice and set up your own agenda. Use the iPLANNER to view the entire week’s worth of sessions.

111. BiblioCon2023, Germany’s central library and information science congress, will take place in Hanover from 23 to 26 May and feature the motto “Vorwärts nach weit” (Forward to Far). The congress, established in 1900, will gather 3,500 participants from 18 countries. The German National Library will again be present with a stand and numerous presentations and contributions to the discussion.

Look at the programme.

The topic for the June open teleconference will be a recap of the ISO Technical Committee 46 Plenary meeting week, which held in Paris, France from May 22-26, with international participants.

Five TC 46 Subcommittees will hold plenary meetings, among others SC 9 (Identification and description), along with meetings of other subcommittee working and discussion groups and of course the final TC 46 plenary.