47th IAMSLIC/19th EURASLIC Conference

The first EURASLIC online meeting was held successfully from 12-14 October, 2021. It was joint 47th IAMSLIC/19th EURASLIC Conference and was hosted by Marine Institute, Galway, Ireland. The conference theme Libraries Supporting Our Ocean: Sustaining and preserving our shared ocean for our shared future was chosen to be in accordance with UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.

The conference nicely moderated by Stephanie Ronan gathered around 97 participants from all over the world, including 19 EURASLIC members. Even though it was in accordance with European time zone, the program was extended until the night in order to cover other time zones as well. Barbara Lison President-elect of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) had a virtual presentation and keynote speaker Lynn Silipigni Connaway gave presentation how libraries can support the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). All together there were more than 20 presentations and one poster presentation. The evenings of first two conference days ended as movie night with documentary Ireland's Deep Atlantic, part 1 and 2 by director Ken O’Sullivan.

Among EURASLIC members Olivia Karin Diehr from Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Library was talking about the effects of the German Projekt DEAL, Sofija Konjević and Marina Mayer presented information infrastructure projects developed by Centre for Scientific Information of Ruđer Bošković Institute. EURASLIC members were involved in AquaDocs project that was presented at the conference. Tamsin Vicary and Maria Kalentsits, with co-authors presented ASFA activities with emphasis on CECAF-PESCAO project, while Jen Walton and Pauline Simpson presented IODE updates. There were several very interesting presentations from Marine Institute’s researchers. EURASLIC as a group was presented by poster entitled “EURASLIC: Connecting Libraries Through Time and Distance”.

During the conference EURASLIC Board and Business meetings were held. As the polls for EURASLIC elections were closed right before the conference the old Board was discharged and the new one was appointed during the EURASLIC Business meeting. Stephanie Ronan as new member of the Executive Board is elected for the position of vice-president.