OPPORTUNITIES FOR CONSTRUCTING AN ONLINE CATALOGUE OF THE NATIONAL AND ACADEMIC LIBRARIES IN THE SOUTH EAST EUROPEAN REGION: A ROUND TABLE

 

A round table dedicated to the opportunities for constructing an online catalogue of the major libraries on the Balkans took place at the Conference (Mirror) Hall of the Sofia University (Feb 21, 2014). The meeting was organised by the NALIS Foundation and representatives of 16 institutions from 7 countries from the region took place in it, namely from: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia.  (See the programme here.) 

The event was opened by Prof. Ivan Ilchev, the Sofia University’s rector. Dr. Dincho Krastev presented the NALIS activities, projects, results, achievements and perspectives. After the break Christian Motovsky introduced the audience with the presentation of the Ex Libris Vice President and Sales Manager for Central and East Europe, dedicated to the corporate strategy of the company and the most modern library software products it offers. Then there was a discussion in which all the participants expressed quite a positive attitude to the idea of integrating bib information from the major Balkan libraries into a single online catalogue and to the plans how to do it. They spoke about the opportunities this would give their libraries also by integrating their digital collections.

 

Prof. Ivan Ilchev, the SU’s rector, opens the event. On the left - Dr. Dincho Krastev, the NALIS Executive Director (Photo: E. Voleva)			Aneta Doncheva, Deputy Director of the Bulgarian National Library,  Dr. Anna Angelova,  SUL Director, and with Bilyana Yavrukova, SUL Deputy Director (Photo: E. Voleva)
Dincho Krastev speaks about the history of the NALIS Foundation in facts and figures, presents its ongoing projects and shares his vision about its future and about the need of a union online catalogue of the biggest libraries on the Balkans (Photo: E. Voleva)			Silvia Naydenova, CL-BAS Acting Director, Daniela Atanasova CL-BAS Deputy, Edin Jahić, Director of the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Tuzla and Nicola Stoyanov, the system administrator, responsible for the NALIS Catalogue, among the audience (Photo: E. Voleva)
Vesna Stevanović, Deputy Director of the Virtual Library of Serbia, Prof. Dr. Aleksandar Jerkov, Director of the Svetozar Marković University Library of Serbia, Edin Jahić, Director of the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Tuzla and Marko Orešković, Aleph coordinator at the National and University Library in Zagreb in an informal discussion (Photo: E. Voleva)			Dr. Ivan K. Zarov, Director of National and University Library of Macedonia and Christian Motovsky, Senior Account Manager of Ex Libris talk during the coffee break (Photo: E. Voleva)
Jelena Djurović, Director of the National and University Library of Montenegro among her colleagues from other leading libraries in the South Eastern Europe during the coffee break (Photo: E. Voleva)			Stefania Mazilu, Head of Collections and Communication Department and member of Administration Council of the Carol I Central University Library of Bucharest before the second session of the event (Photo: E. Voleva)
Mariuca Stanciu, Head of the IT Library Services Department  within the Romanian Academy Library introduces her listeners with the ongoing Romanian project for digitising Byzantine icons (Photo: E. Voleva)			Christian Motovsky, Senior Account Manager of Ex Libris, presents the main trends in the company’s development (Photo: E. Voleva)
Marko Orešković, Aleph coordinator at the National and University Library in Zagreb, appreciates the upcoming project for creating an online catalogue of the key libraries on the Balkans and underlines the need of the developed ILL module through the catalogue (Photo: E. Voleva)			Vasiliki Mole, Librarian of the Central team of the Hellenic Academic Libraries Link (HEAL Link) and Athanasos Petridis, Computer Specialist and System Librarian at the Aristotle University Library in Greec (Photo: E. Voleva)
Sabina Aneva, NALIS Deputy Executive Director and Ekaterina Dikova, NALIS Project Manager (Photo: E. Voleva)			Rumen Avramov, Chairman of the NALIS Board of Directors, and Evegeni Dimitrov, NALIS System Administrator and developer of the ILL loan module (Photo: E. Voleva)