The way that researchers generate, analyse and share information keeps evolving at a rapid pace. The British Library’s key programme, Everything Available, will ensure the Library’s continued support for research with services to enable access to information in an open and timely manner. This paper describes the activities planned, with a particular focus on the aims of the Library’s recently refreshed Research Data Strategy. It will give an insight into the challenges and opportunities faced by a National Library in providing relevant services in an ‘open’ world.

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has published the ARL Statistics 2016–2017, ARL Academic Law Library Statistics 2016–2017, and ARL Academic Health Sciences Library Statistics 2016–2017. These three publications present information describing the collections, staffing, expenditures, and service activities of the Association’s 124 member libraries in fiscal year 2016–2017.

The minutes from the Metadata Interest Group’s 2019 Midwinter program and business meeting are now available.

On November 19 & 20, 2018, a repository workshop was held in Zanzibar City, Tanzania. The workshop was jointly organized by West and Central African Research and Education Network (WACREN), EIFL and the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) in conjunction with the UbuntuNet Alliance Conference as part of the LIBSENSE Initiative. This is the first in a series of meetings to develop a more cohesive strategy for strengthening and building repository networks in Africa. The participants identified a number of areas in which libraries and Research and Education Networks (RENs) can collaborate to improve and strengthen repositories in the region. 

The DARIAH Beyond Europe (DBE) event, held on 2-4 October 2018 at the Library of Congress (LoC), was a workshop dedicated to international cooperation and knowledge exchange. It brought together digital humanists from the US East coast and Europe to exchange ideas and discuss the state of play in the two continents. The Horizon 2020 funded project, NewsEye, was presented as well as the LoC funded National Digital Newspaper Program.

Open access to digital research output is increasing, but academic library policies can place restrictions on public access to collections. This paper reports on a preliminary study to investigate the correlation between academic library access policies and institutional positions of openness to knowledge. The results show that academic library policies may suggest open public access, but multi-layered user categories, privileges and fees charged can inhibit access, with disparities in openness emerging between library policies and institutional open access policies.

At the IFLA Governing Board meetings held in mid-December 2018, further important steps have been undertaken. Board members, representing all library types and regions, explored how the evidence produced by the Global Vision can be turned into a strategic plan. For the next World Library and Information Congress, a strategic plan will be launched for IFLA as a whole, as well as action plans for all Professional Units.

In October 2018, Ithaka S+R published a brief, The State of Digital Preservation in 2018: A Snapshot of Challenges and Gaps, which is based on interviews with 21 experts to survey their perspectives on the state of digital preservation. The brief highlights some assessment- and metric-related matters as it is becoming more complicated to articulate what success entails in digital preservation. One of the areas highlighted in the report is the difficulty in preserving the outcomes, methodologies, and context of such engagements. Ithaka S+R is looking forward to hearing reactions to the brief to carve out a research agenda through the wisdom of the community.

Digital preservation service Portico recently completed a two-year project to rebuild its preservation infrastructure from the ground up with the support of its publisher and library participants. This initiative helped create a stable, scalable, elastic architecture that will enable Portico to keep pace with the ever-increasing amount of content. It will also allow them to provide preservation for new and complex forms of scholarly publishing. Portico’s Managing Director gives an insight into the infancy of the service, and in the two-year project to rebuild that infrastructure.

Andrew K. Pace, OCLC Executive Director, is convinced that libraries need linked data platforms. It is one of the last chances to embark on innovations that are not possible with the increasingly arcane and anachronistic MARC record. He explains what linked data cataloging means for library workers and end users, and gives an insight into the OCLC Research linked data Wikibase prototype, built to reconcile data between legacy bibliographic information and linked data entities.