By Kristian Benic, Rijeka City Library, Croatia

​A small boy walks through the library door at 4pm. He is a fifth-grade student from the local elementary school, and a participant in our library’s 3D modelling workshop.

"But Emil", I tell him," the workshop is at 6pm, you have come too early."

"Yes I know, but I wanted to do something before everyone arrives. I have some cool ideas."

This year the Palestine Library and Information Consortium (PALICO) marks their 10th anniversary.

Members have organised a series of events to pay homage to many years of successful participation in EIFL programmes. 

EIFL Director Rima Kupryte joined PALICO in Birzeit on May 4, 2015, to highlight the occasion.

Celebrations will also include a workshop on Intellectual Property Rights, celebrating Open Access Week in both West Bank and Gaza, and marketing campaigns for the use of e-resources provided through EIFL by each consortium member institution.

Local users and global resources

Digital technologies have changed libraries, access to information, and indeed the world. The information landscape has been revolutionized, especially for academic and scholarly resources in university libraries.

Open Government Partnership Initiative (OGP) provides an international platform for domestic reformers committed to making their governments more open, accountable, and responsive to citizens. OGP has 65 participating countries, which include among others the following EIFL partner countries: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Serbia, Ukraine, as well as Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania and Malawi.

The International Literacy Association (ILA) has declared April 14 2015 - that’s today - ‘Leaders for Literacy Day’. To celebrate, the ILA has invited thought leaders, writers and bloggers, journalists, tweeters, instagramers and more to contribute to a digital dialogue about how best to advance literacy for all.

On 11 March 2015, the United Nations Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights presented her report ‘Copyright Policy and the Right to Science and Culture’ at the 28th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

EIFL has released a new video that shows the impact of an EIFL Open Access Programme (EIFL-OA) supported project that succeeded in opening up critical research from Kenyan researchers to the world.

The video features students, librarians, faculty and research administrator (DVC) from the University of Nairobi. The university is the largest in Kenya, serving over 60,000 students.

This month, in wintry Lithuania, I visited Emilija Banionyte, president of the Lithuanian Research Library Consortium (LMBA), and her team in their office in the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. Over a cup of hot coffee we discuss how LMBA ensures high usage of their licensed e-resources.

Jevgenija Sevcova, Manager of Databases at LMBA, explains that monitoring usage is essential in ensuring high usage, because it allows the consortium to identify and taregt institutions with low usage.

“Copyright divide in numbers”, the graph on the first page of the newly launched ‘The Copyright Manifesto. How the European Union should Support Innovation and Creativity through Copyright Reform’ tells a story.