LIBER Ambassadors

Being the LIBER Ambassador in your country
LIBER Ambassadors is a new initiative that has developed and will be established based on the need for a group of professionals that can share their LIBER acquaintance with other professionals at national level in order to assist, promote and develop confidence and network opportunities.

LIBER Ambassadors will be a recognised face and a strong voice of LIBER in their country; they will be LIBER colleagues who are keen to represent the LIBER network, for example, at annual fairs, meetings, conferences, seminars, workshops and other events.


What are the benefits of being a LIBER Ambassador?
LIBER Ambassadors will have high visibility among peers at local mixer events, which is an opportunity to expand your communication and leadership skills, meet potential member libraries and new professionals, develop friendships and professional skills, and give back to LIBER.

Being an Ambassador should be challenging and rewarding. It should also be enjoyable. LIBER is flexible so you can fit being a LIBER Ambassador in with your other responsibilities. It may even help with some of them.


How to become a LIBER Ambassador
LIBER Ambassadors are recruited throughout the year. In order to become a LIBER Ambassador, you need to be enthusiastic, personable and positive about the work LIBER does. LIBER Ambassadors should be able to demonstrate a minimum of relevant experience in a leading position in a research library. They should be able to devote some time and effort to this task. Please ask for the formal consent of your Library Director if work time is involved.
What is expected of a LIBER Ambassador?
Ambassadors are expected to be knowledgeable about LIBER’s mission, activities and services.

They are expected to maintain close communication with their national colleagues, both in person and by email, in order to establish awareness of the LIBER network.
There are various ways in which LIBER Ambassadors can help, for example, assisting in the organizing of mixer events; offering prospective member libraries and their professional staff some guidance and information on the LIBER community; going out into the community and establishing awareness of LIBER events; networking with guests and members; translating the LIBER information brochure into their own language and distributing it among academic librarians when attending events; liaising with the research library community in promoting LIBER’s activities and services with short announcements to appear in e.g. blogs, newsletters and welcome packs, on their posters, or on their websites.

Ambassadors will be asked to write annually a short report to the LIBER Executive Board illustrating the work done by the LIBER Ambassador in his/her country, the progress made in terms of visibility of the LIBER community and the priorities for the coming year(s). On basis of this report, the Board will be able to adjust its support to the specific context of the Ambassadors.


Interested? Contact us!
To join our group as a member of the Ambassadors’ initiative, please send a mail to Wouter Schallier, LIBER Executive Director (wouter.schallier@kb.nl) with a motivation for your application and with 2 letters of recommendation from leading people in LIBER libraries. Your application will be considered by the LIBER Executive Board. If your application is accepted, you will be invited to join our 'Ambassadors Group', a subgroup of the LIBER Community in LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2141416&trk=anet_ug_grppro).