Imagine the Tower of Babel, but instead of chaos and confusion, it stands as a symbol of collaboration and understanding. This seemingly paradoxical image perfectly encapsulates the mission of the Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche (Liber).
The association brings together over 400 national, specialized, and university libraries from 40 countries. In July 2022, Julien Roche became president of Liber, after four years as vice-president. A library curator, Roche is the first French professional to hold this position. He serves as Director of the University Libraries and Learning Center, and Administrator of Research Data, Algorithms, and Codes (ADAC) at the University of Lille. Roche provides insights into Liber’s key initiatives and the evolutions that librarians are experiencing today.
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[From the Interview with Julien Roche]
Liber President Julien Roche (Image Source: Liber)
How can we change the perceptions of the different actors with whom academic libraries need to work when it comes to software?
[Julien Roche]: It’s up to each university and each autonomous national research organization to determine the optimal organization for its needs. Within universities, there are certainly virgin territories for libraries to occupy. By “virgin,” I mean not taken care of in a reasoned way at the institutional level. This is the case, I think, when it comes to algorithms, codes, and software. We need to be proactive in raising awareness among decision-makers. It’s a question of identifying unmet needs and demonstrating how the library if it decides to take them on, can contribute to meeting them.
Library services benefit from substantial budgetary and human resources, enabling them to develop their service offering in line with staff movements, funding opportunities, and changes in the training offered to professionals. In the fast-changing world of higher education and research, the challenge is to continually reorganize library missions, and therefore librarians’ profiles, to enable us to evolve our activity towards other sectors. In recent years, Europe’s major research libraries have repositioned their resources to focus on data. This work lies ahead for the software, for those libraries willing to take it on. This prioritization of activities is essential if we’re going to develop services sustainably, in a world where the evolution of library missions is inescapable.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
