Europe's Digital Library, Europeana and The Germam National Library

This afternoon, I attended the talks by Dr Elisabeth Niggemann, Director General of the German National Library (Deutsche Nationalbibliothek).

This event is jointly organised by Goethe-Institut, the Digital Libraries Group of the Library Association of Singapore and Professional & International Relations, NLB.

With the insight of the speaker, first, I learned more about Europeana, Europe’s digital library, archive and museum and initiatives. In the second half of the talk, I have the opportunity of hearing the approaches the German National Library are adopting against the backdrop of digital revolution as the library celebrates its 100th anniversary next year.

Here are some details of the two talks:

TALK 1:

Date: 9 Dec 2011, Friday
Venue: Possibility Room, Level 5, National Library Building

Programme Outline

3.00pm Registration
3.30pm Professional Talk: EUROPE’S DIGITAL LIBRARY, ARCHIVE AND MUSEUM: EUROPEANA

4.15pm Light Refreshments

Synopsis:

Europeana is the name the portal that integrates the digitized holdings of Europe’s libraries, archives, museums and audiovisual collections. Currently it gives access to 20 million items held by 1.500 content providers.

Apart from being an aggregator, Europeana is also playing an important role as a facilitator and a distributor and it is engaged in many topics like standards, open linked data, public domain, copyright etc.

TALK 2:
4.15pm Registration
4.45pm Professional Talk: THE GERMAN NATIONAL LIBRARY AND THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION

5.30pm End of Programme

Synopsis

The German National Library will be celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2012. The tasks today are not very different from the tasks 100 years ago. What has changed dramatically are the publications and the processes (technical and organizationally) in the workflow. Constant change is necessary to cope with the digital revolution.

Speaker’s Profile

Dr Elisabeth Niggemann is the Director General of the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (German National Library) in Leipzig and Frankfurt am Main.

In 1987 she started her career as a librarian at the German Central Library for Medicine in Cologne as head of the acquisitions department.

In 1989 she became head of the cataloguing and subject indexing department at the University and State Library at the Heinrich-Heine University in Düsseldorf.

In 1994, she became the director of the Düsseldorf University and State Library. She came into her present position in 1999.

She has been involved in many national and international working groups and committees. Until recently she was Chair of the Board of Directors of CENL (Conference of European National Librarians), and Chair of the Europeana Foundation.

She is a member of the Board of Trustees of OCLC and a member of several Advisory Councils, a Board member of the “Stiftung Buchkunst” and one of the editors of the “Zeitschrift für Bibliothekswesen und Bibliographie”.

Source of information:
Email from las.honsec@gmail.com dated 29 November 2011.

LAS Professional Development Scheme (PDS) Points: 46
(Applicable only to librarians who are participants of PDS)