The Stichting LIBER Foundation
The Stichting LIBER Foundation (Stichting LIBER) is the principal association of the major research libraries of Europe (http://www.libereurope.eu). It was founded as an association in 1971 under the auspices of the Council of Europe and became a Foundation under Dutch law in 2009. Its current membership includes over 400 research libraries of more than forty countries, mainly but not only, in Europe. Its overall aim is to assist research libraries in Europe to support a functional network across national boundaries in order to ensure the preservation of the European cultural heritage, to improve access to collections in European research libraries, and to provide more efficient information services in Europe.
LIBER actively promotes co-operation with all library-related organizations; it has strong links with the Council of Europe, the Commission of the European Communities (CEC) and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), as well as with national library associations. LIBER has been involved in several projects such as Europeana (http://www.europeana.eu), Europeana Travel (http://www.europeanatravel.eu/) and DART Europe (http://www.dart-europe.eu/). LIBER has excellent relations with SPARC Europe, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) in the United States and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) with the potential for collaboration.
Digital Preservation is a priority in the LIBER Strategy 2009-2012, building on three successful phases of funding in the LIFE project (http://www.life.ac.uk/) which is creating a digital curation costing tool. LIBER is member of the Alliance for Permanent Access (http://www.alliancepermanentaccess.eu/), has been involved in the Parse.Insight survey on digital preservation (http://www.parse-insight.eu/) and has been involved in the writing of the Final Report of the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access (http://brtf.sdsc.edu/). Finally, LIBER organised a very successful international Digital Preservation Workshop (http://www.kb.nl/hrd/congressen/curatingresearch2009/index-en.html) in April 2009 and is planning a second edition in 2011.
Within APARSEN, LIBER will in particular focus on the following aspects: business case and sustainable uptake. LIBER will use its established dissemination channels to promote the outcomes and networks to its target audiences. This will happen through the LIBER Annual Conferences and a bi-annual pan-European Workshop to be organised by the LIBER Digital Preservation Working Group.
