Research Libraries - LIBER Working Groups

Project Overview

LIBER is the voice of Europe’s research library community. Some 450 national, university and other libraries are part of LIBER and our wider network includes goal-oriented partnerships with other organisations in Europe and beyond. LIBER’s aims to help European research libraries to support a functional network across  national  boundaries  in  order  to  ensure  the  preservation  of  European  cultural  heritage,  to improve  access  to  collections  in  European  research  libraries,  and  to  provide  more  efficient information  services.  Enabling  Open  Science  is  a  major  priority  for  LIBER,  including  promoting innovative scholarly communication, fostering digital skills and services, and engaging with world-class  e-infrastructures. 

In the context of SSHOC, LIBER participates in activities related to Communication, Dissemination and Impact, Lifting Technologies and Services into the Cloud, Governance/Sustainability/Quality Assurance, while is the work package leader for Fostering Communities, Empowering Users and Building Expertise. 

LIBER operates several working groups that address important areas of work for the research library community. Being a SSHOC partner, LIBER aims at actively engaging its community in the context of the project. It does so by fostering interaction and building expertise, taking into consideration the role of libraries as trainers, but also in supporting and advocating for excellence in research. SSHOC has synergies with the following past and current LIBER working groups: 

LIBER Digital Humanities & Digital Cultural Heritage Working Group - LIBER Europe

LIBER Research Data Management Working Group - LIBER Europe

LIBER Citizen Science Working Group - LIBER Europe

LIBER Data Science in Libraries Working Group - LIBER Europe

The Synergy

Below the efforts in creating and maintaining synergies between SSHOC and the research library community are listed, one of the main stakeholder groups that the project is targeting: 

• SSHOC Workshop: at the LIBER2019 Annual Conference: Social Sciences & Humanities Open Cloud: What’s in it for research libraries? co-organised by SSHOC, LIBER working group on Digital Skills for library staff and researchers, and LIBER working group on Digital humanities and digital cultural heritage.
• SSHOC Train-the-Trainer Bootcamp for Librarians at the LIBER2020 Online conference. Aim of the Bootcamp was to introduce research librarians to the SSH Training Discovery Toolkit and the CLARIN repository. A discussion followed on online training best practices and methodologies.
• Citizen Science: What it means for SSH and how can multidisciplinarity be achieved?, in the context of the Realising the EOSC event. The session was a collaboration between SSHOC and the LIBER Citizen Science working group, with the support of the INOS project. 
• Representatives of the LIBER Steering Committee and the LIBER working group on Research Data Management have contributed as external stakeholders and reviewers in the work of SSHOC WP3: Lifting technologies and services into the SSH cloud. 
• SSHOC at LIBER 2021 Conference - Onboarding Citizen Science and the role of research libraries: barriers and accelerators co-organised by SSHOC and the LIBER working group on Citizen Science.