{apologies for egregious cross-posting}

Call for Papers:

Libraries in the sky: large-scale collaboration strategies and infrastructures to enhance the use of digital heritage collections

IFLA RBSCS mid-term conference National Library of Norway (Oslo) April 12th 2018

In many countries, libraries have worked together to enhance the visibility of their national heritage through a national digital library. In Europe, Europeana is the continental digital library, and humanity as a whole has a World Digital Library to discover its most precious treasures. 

Now the time has come to reinforce and expand these collaborative initiatives over the cloud, to foster new research opportunities and include born digital documents as well.

New kinds of collaborations, large-scale or international, are now needed. Tools like IIIF are becoming standards which must be mastered by librarians, and Research Infrastructures are being created which demand the expertise of librarians on their collections and on information management. Born-digital documents represent new challenges that probably need to be addressed collaboratively, and solutions are still to be found.

The IFLA Rare Books and Special Collections is inviting speakers from all over the world to Oslo on April 12th, 2018, to present their experiences and projects regarding the building of large-scale collaborative tools and infrastructures to enhance the access to and the reuse of digital heritage collections, born-digital or digitized items. An interactive training session on IIIF will also be provided by the National Library of Norway. 

The call for papers runs until December 31st, 2017. Selected speakers will be informed by January 31st at the latest. Speakers please be aware that no financial support is available from the organizers. Presentations will be made available online after the conference.

 Proposals should be sent in English to both Frédéric Blin Frederic.blin@bnu.fr and Hege Stensrud Høsøien hege.hosoien@nb.no, with abstracts of no more than 500 words or less plus a single-paragraph C.V.