Abstract

The Europeana project progress is presented, emphasizing its importance among other strategies of the European Commission. In 2011 important recommendations and standards were published that clarify the future development of Europeana. Documents produced by the W3C are highlighted and Spanish contributions, particularly from Hispana, are listed. The collaboration between Europeana and the Digital Public Library of America is mentioned. Finally, the differences between various concepts like open access, open data and open source are explained.

Abstract

The most important developments that have taken place in virtual libraries during 2014 are described. We focus on projects with a great impact, technological advancement and normative influence, especially Europeana, the Digital Public Library of America, and Hispana. We note how these large projects, based on the use of common standards and linked open data, have made it possible for archives, libraries and museums to form consolidated virtual libraries with an enormous volume of data and information of all kinds.

Abstract

When the Latin America and the Caribbean Social Sciences Network of Virtual Libraries was created 10 years ago, it was an easy decision to work with open software because the Latin America and the Caribbean Social Science Council (Clacso), an academic network with 195 member institutes located in 21 countries, promotes the use of open software and open access to communicate and exchange research results in digital formats. The development and daily operations of this cooperative digital library are described, including Greenstone for the reading room with advanced search capacity and Plone for the graphical interface; both allow decentralized content management with 9.000 full text publications (books, journal articles, working documents, papers) and databases.

Abstract

Library cooperation in Germany is a tradition that predates the emergence of internet. This is explained partly by the absence of a “classic” National Library, as a single central institution. This absence has been replaced by the three major German libraries, which have distributed among themselves the function of a national library. The other reason for this tradition is the Federal political system and the responsibility of each of the Federal States in cultural matters, including libraries. This meant that at both regional and interregional levels, there has traditionally been a solid cooperation, at least among scientific libraries. Later, the arrival of automation has facilitated the production of collective regional catalogues. With the entrance into the so-called “digital age”, the tendency to cooperation has been intensified, so that today one can talk about an “age of cooperation”. One example of the ease and assiduousness of this cooperation are the new services which, in most cases, supply several libraries together; others are the specialised virtual libraries, the consortium acquisition of digital media user licences, including national licences for certain items, and the cooperative creation of a long term national digital archive.

Abstract

The Sedic Health Science Group organized the 1st Technical workshop on health science libraries in the 21st century: electronic, virtual, digital and hybrid. The aim was to update the view of health science libraries within the technological environment, sharing professional experience, methodologies and practices. In the first session, 12 autonomous communities (a designation for geopolitical regions within Spain) reported on their virtual library projects, which are in different phases of development. The second session addressed new concepts in acquisitions, such as national licensing of electronic resources and “pay per view”; new approaches to accessibility, including open access repositories and open access digital books; and new tools for integrating catalogue listings of library resources with metasearch, webbridge, and individualised data bases.