UKB / AGUB Meeting

Conference report UKB / AGUB Meeting Münster, 25-26 September 2003

Sponsored by Houtschild international book sellers


On 25 and 26 September 2003 the Association of Nordrhein Westfalen University Libraries (AGUB) and the Dutch Association of University Libraries (UKB) held a small conference in Muenster on three topics:

Benchmarking
Having first met in Bochum in 1989, this was the seventeenth meeting of AGUB and UKB , to exchange views, share experiences and further promote the cooperation between university libraries in Germany and the Netherlands. Many university libraries in both countries deal with the very same issues and the developments in the field of scientific information justify an international approach. The first topic at the conference was benchmarking. Both in the Netherlands and Nordrhein Westfalen instruments are being developed to measure and compare the performance of university libraries. These comparisons do not need to be restricted to national boundaries.

Electronic university presses
As Albert Bilo and Nol Verhagen - chairs of respectively AGUB and UKB - pointed out, the media market is a global affair. University libraries have to negotiate with large international commercial publishers about licensing agreements for e-journals in order to keep access to scientific information needed within the academic community. Digitisation has improved the accessibility of academic output, which is threatened at the same time by legal restrictions and rapidly increasing costs. Although the current system of licensing agreements between university libraries and publishers has slowed down the serial crisis, it is still all but solved. New business models, based on open access are being explored. Libraries, agents and publishers have to reconsider their positions in the information chain. University libraries aspire to a proactive role as an information broker in the scientific process. Therefore one of the topics in Münster was Electronic University Presses: how can libraries take part in publishing the academic output?

Organization of information / communication
Finally, the third topic dealt with the consequences of all these developments for the organization of the university library itself. Libraries have to adapt: an institution that is good at acquisitions, cataloguing, and collection management is not necessarily as good at e-publishing and providing e-learning facilities. Customer orientation, quality management, efficiency and staff training are the keywords in many libraries today. The conference revealed a diversity of attitudes and strategies.

The papers of the speakers (in powerpoint):
Bilo, Albert: Organization of Information
Daalmans, Peter: UKB Benchmarking Dutch University Libraries
Gilbert, John: Organization of information and communication services in the university
Heijne, Maria: Strategic directions in organization of information / communication
Houtschild, André: Developments in the Publishing Sector:The Point of View of an International Bookseller
Korwitz, Ulrich: German Medical Science
Poll, Roswitha: BIX-WB, Bibliotheksindex Wissenschaftliche Bibliotheken
Praetorius, Sigurd: Electronic University Presses
Savenije, Bas: IGITUR, Utrecht Publishing and Archiving Services
Waaijers, Leo: Electronic University Presses, an oxymoron

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