What is the Winter Event?

The LIBER Winter Event is a one-and-a-half-day event that takes place every year in person at a LIBER Library host venue. It is designed with and for the core LIBER network; people working at LIBER Libraries across Europe, those taking part in our Working Groups and Steering Committees, and our partners from LIBER’s portfolio of International Projects and other collaborative initiatives.

The Winter Event serves as a stimulating forum for the presentation and discussion of work undertaken by LIBER Libraries across Europe. Do you want feedback on a new initiative? Advice on a project? Or are you looking to seek inspiration for the future? Through workshops and interactive sessions, the Winter Event gives LIBER members the space to set their own agenda and discuss the topics most important to their work. 

The 2024 edition will take place at the University of Maribor Library, Slovenia. The event will be preceded by a national pre-event in collaboration with the Slovenian Library Association, scheduled to take place on November 25th, 2024.

Set your own agenda; join us at the Winter Event 2024!

Who is the event for?

We invite all LIBER Participants (people working at LIBER member institutions) Working Group members and our range of partners from Projects and other collaborative activities to join us at the Winter Event.Up to 150 attendees can join us for one and a half days of interactive workshops and discussions on the core topics that drive the LIBER Strategy.  


Why should you attend?

The LIBER Winter Event will be a space for us to connect and gain new inspiration for a range of topics within our field.  

Through workshops and interactive sessions, participants get the chance to share knowledge, enjoy vibrant discussions, and collaborate on the topics at the heart of research library work. This is your chance to bring the topics that are most important to you for discussion with peers from across Europe! 

Registration

We are pleased to announce that registration for the LIBER Winter Event 2024 is now open

All LIBER Participants (people working at LIBER member institutions), Working Group members and our range of partners from Projects and other collaborative activities can register for the Winter Event.

Please refer to the programme below before you start your registration.

Register Here

 

If any issue occurs related with the payment, contact the event organising team at: winterevent@libereurope.org.

The registration deadline has been extended until November 10th, 2024. Register as soon as possible to secure your spot! 

 

Theme and Topics

The topics of interest for the Winter Event will be based on the strands of LIBER’s 2023-2027 Strategy.

The theme of the 2024 LIBER Winter Event is “Expanding Horizons: Research Libraries and Social Engagement.”

Preliminary Programme

  • Tuesday 26 November

    08:00 – 09:00 Registration

    08:00 – 09:00 Working Group/Project Meetings (by invitation only)

    09:00 – 09:30 Welcome Speeches

    09:30 – 10:15 Keynote Speech by Dan Podjed, Senior Research Fellow at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Institute of Slovenian Ethnology), and Associate Professor at the University of Ljubljana (Faculty of Arts, Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology)

    “The relevance of the book in the age of digital transformation”

    The syntagm “digital transformation” has become a popular catchphrase, heralding a new era in which humans, much like in Kafka’s short story The Metamorphosis, are transformed into something completely new. So what role does the book play in this digital age? Can it compete with digital content, social media, and computer games? This talk explores these questions using the example of the recently published book duo Crisolation, which fuses science and fiction into a “science fiction” work. In this way, the talk seeks to demonstrate how books can continue to act as generators of innovation, objects of desire, and portals to virtual worlds that take shape within the human imagination. In this sense, the book remains a crucial tool for expanding human horizons and promoting social engagement.

    10:15 – 10:35 Group photo

    10:35 – 10:55 Coffee Break

    11:00 – 13:00 Parallel Workshops

    Workshop 1. Expanding Horizons: LIBER Rights & Values – Heading towards 2027

    Organiser: LIBER Rights & Values

    Speaker: Cécile Swiatek Cassafieres

    The LIBER 2023-2027 Community-driven Strategy outlines three driving factors impacting research libraries and LIBER, amongst which “upkeeping Rights & Values”. The LIBER members and partners phrased it as “an increasing awareness and demand by society and academia to uphold rights and values in the digital scholarly environment”. How can our Community grasp the subject and lead it towards the horizon that the LIBER strategy gives it: “by 2027, research libraries embody and uphold values of integrity, diversity and inclusion inside and outside the research community”? If you would like to take part in the debate on this subject, join this workshop!

    Workshop 2. Revolutionising Research Library Services with Collaboration, Social Engagement, and Living Labs — The LibrarIN Guide to Innovation

    Organiser: LibrarIN Project

    Speakers: Marieke Willems and Olivier Hersperger

    Libraries, including research libraries, have evolved from providing information to users to complex service systems. In this process, libraries have embarked on an innovation journey. Social innovation in libraries are increasingly important trends, but literature is not very helpful to novices looking for the basics & best practices. Aiming to bridge this gap, LibrarIN presents a practical implementation guide. The workshop will showcase examples of living labs in research libraries, an experimental approach to innovation processes by engaging multiple stakeholder groups. LibrarIN aims to validate these guidelines with the workshop audience, tailoring them to the needs of library management & staff.

    Workshop 3. “Enhancing the discoverability of open textbooks” – Let’s work together to finish the “Guidelines for (LIBER) libraries about how to include more open textbooks into their discovery systems”

    Organiser: LIBER Educational Resources Working Group

    Speakers: Helen Moore, Tamara Pianos, and Nicole Krüger

    The LIBER ER WG worked on improving the discoverability of open textbooks in 2023 and 2024. During this period, we extracted the existing knowledge, gained an overview of the situation in different libraries across several countries and are currently working on guidelines for libraries who would like to enhance open textbook visibility in their own discovery systems. We would like to get input from the LIBER community on the guidelines-draft. We will share the draft with workshop participants before the event and will work together to make the text work for everyone who is interested in improving the situation.

    Workshop 4. Diamond OA Capacity Centres (DOACCs) and their relationship with libraries

    Organiser: LIBER Open Access Working Group

    Speakers: Sofie Wennström and Olaf Siegert

    As a result of the Diamond OA Study (https://scienceeurope.org/our-resources/oa-diamond-journalsstudy/) and the following action plan published in 2022, there have been quite a few national and international initiatives that aim to reduce the fragmentation of single isolated institutional publishing entities in universities and research institutions. Some of these initiatives to collect resources, knowledge and funding capacity are now framed as “Diamond Open Access Capacity Centres” (DOACC). With our workshop, we want to showcase DOACCs in the making and explore how they could serve the academic community and the libraries interested in supporting these initiatives.

    13:00 – 14:00 Lunch Break

    14:10 – 16:10 Parallel Workshops

    Workshop 5. How can libraries promote open research publishing practices? Insights from the Open Research Europe Librarian Advisory Group

    Organiser: Open Research Europe (ORE) Librarian Advisory Group

    Speakers: Kelly Woods, Liam Bullingham, Alenka Princic, Andrew Simpson, and Kristoffer Holmqvist

    This workshop will be an excellent opportunity to share past successes and learn from activities and strategies that have not worked to encourage movement from researchers towards open research practices. Participants will benefit from the hivemind of the collective through the sharing of experiences but also through new idea generation through the world cafe method. The workshop should lead to potential practical activities participants can take back to their own institutions and hopefully start to apply them there, to drive the open research movement forward.

    Workshop 6. How to be a trusted partner with stakeholders

    Organiser: LIBER Leadership Programmes Working Group

    Speakers: Gyöngyi Karácsony and Thomas Chaimbault-Petitjean

    The theme of the winter event “Expanding Horizons: Research Libraries and Social Engagement” calls for leadership – it is crucial as a leader to work on building trust. The workshop ‘How to be a trusted partner with stakeholders´ addresses how we as leaders work both within and outside of our organisations in order to build trust – with a view to expanding horizons. The workshop consist of exercises and discussions among peers.

    Workshop 7. Translating Recommendations into Actions

    Organiser: LIBER Copyright & Legal Matter Working Group

    Speakers: Judith Ludwig and Maurits van der Graaf

    Translating high level policy recommendations into tangible action for the research library community can be challenging. This workshop will focus on a project trying to do just that- to take several policy papers with recommendations critical to research libraries and transform them into a practical/ tangible action plan for library leaders and practitioners. This session will be relevant for colleagues interested in digital scholarship, AI, data science, Open Science, Copyright, data management.

    Workshop 8. The role of data sets in scholarly publishing and Open Science ecosystems: Supporting LIS Scholars and Practitioners

    Organiser: LIBER Quarterly in collaboration with Open Science NL

    Speakers: Trudy Turner, Ann-Sofie Axelsson, and Elisa Rodenburg

    This workshop will convene a group of panel experts specialising in scholarly publishing, research data management and LIS practitioner-focused research. Panel members will provide positions on the role of datasets in the larger scholarly publishing and Open Science ecosystems, discuss how scholarly journals might better support Open Science and the FAIR principles and reflect on some options for making datasets underlying research papers available. Participants of the workshop will be invited to contribute to these reflections through a World-Café exercise. The workshop will conclude with the panel providing some various outcomes.

    16:10 – 16:30 Coffee Break

    16:30 – 17:30 UnConference – Engage with us!

    In this session, attendees are given the freedom to create the agenda they want and provide the topics they would like to discuss. In the UnConference – Engage with us! session, we invite you to share your experiences, issues, frustrations, successes, or failures. You get the opportunity to discuss, inspire, get feedback, challenge, or surprise colleagues by claiming a 15-minute slot with a discussion topic of your choice. You can address any related to the event’s theme, Expanding Horizons: Research Libraries and Social Engagement. topic in any format you like. Submit your proposal here. We look forward to your contributions!

    19:00 LIBER Winter Event Dinner, featuring music by the Maribor Octet.

    Slovene National Theatre Maribor
    Address: Slovenska ulica 27, 2000 Maribor

  • Wednesday 27 November

    08:00 – 09:00 Registration

    08:00 – 09:00 Working Group/Project Meetings (by invitation only)

    09:00 – 10:00 LIBER Strategy: Where Are We with Rights and Values

    Organiser: LIBER Rights & Values

    Speaker: Cécile Swiatek Cassafieres

    10:10 – 11:10 Parallel Workshops

    Workshop 09. Two Hot Takes: A Debate on Citizen-Enhanced Open Science in Research Libraries

    Organiser: CeOS_SE Project

    Speakers: Dolores Mumelaš and Ivana Matijević

    This debate will conclude the final year of the CeOS_SE project and will encompass the topics of its five PRs. It invites participants to engage in a dynamic debate on the role of citizen science in research libraries. Focusing on open science policies, partnerships, librarian skills, curricula, and societal impact, the session will use interactive discussions and collaborative activities to explore these themes. Participants will gain insights into the challenges and opportunities of integrating citizen science in libraries and develop a nuanced understanding of its impact on research and community engagement.

    Workshop 10. The 6 Pillars of Engaging Researchers in Research Data Management (RDM)

    Organiser: LIBER RDM Working Group

    Speakers: Elisa Rodenburg and Mari Elisa Kuusniemi

    The document The 6 Pillars of Engaging Researchers with Research Data Management (RDM) (2020) outlines six strategies for libraries to encourage researchers to engage with RDM, including an RDM policy and training researchers.
    It is a rich resource for research libraries building RDM services. Four years on, the RDM Working Group wants to take another look at the resource. Is it still up to date? Are the pillars still relevant? Should some pillars be discarded and new pillars added? We invite participants to dive into the document with us and discuss for each pillar what could be updated.

    Workshop 11. Articulating Values and Engaging Stakeholders: Dilemmas for Libraries in Advancing Open Publishing Platforms

    Organiser: Leiden University Libraries

    Speakers: Alenka Prinčič and Fleur Praal

    This workshop will explore the possible tensions between the responsibilities assigned to research libraries and the incentives that drive researchers’ publication practices. Such tensions emerge despite the values research libraries and academics share regarding the scholarly communication system. We will consider the implementation of values and principles, through discussing dilemmas that appose both libraries and researchers, in particular regarding the use of open publishing platforms, such as ORE. Libraries may want to advance such platforms, yet meet hesitation from scholarly authors. How do libraries engage stakeholders, without stretching the bounds of their responsibilities? Through perspective-taking, the workshop will exercise articulating and prioritizing strategic values, resulting in a framework of principles that inform practice.

    Workshop 12. Trusted Scholarly Communication Services in support of University Alliances

    Organiser: OpenAIRE AMKE

    Speaker: Maja Dolinar

    This workshop will explore how university alliances can implement sustainable and trusted services to support Open Science practices. Participants will learn how OpenAIRE’s customisable tools—such as gateways for research discovery and the OpenAIRE MONITOR for tracking outputs — can improve visibility, collaboration, and knowledge-sharing within alliances. Through hands-on demonstrations, group discussions, and co-creation activities, attendees will gain practical insights into promoting Open Access, centralising shared services, and creating training resources to foster engagement. Designed for librarians, research managers, and administrators, this workshop offers strategies to enhance alliances’ research impact and sustainability.

    11:10 – 11:30 Coffee Break

    11:30 – 12:30 Parallel Workshops continue

    12:35 – 13:15 Feed Forward Session & Closing Ceremony

    13:15 – 14:00 Lunch

    14:30 – 16:30 Social Programme: Old Vine House Visit

    Wine tasting at the house of the oldest vine in the world.

    Location: Old Vine House
    Address: Vojašniška ulica 8, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia

The University of Maribor Library

The University of Maribor, established in 1975, stands as Slovenia’s second-largest and second-oldest institution with 17 faculties, including the renowned University of Maribor Library. As the central hub of knowledge dissemination, the library curates, preserves, and provides access to a rich tapestry of human thought and creativity. It fosters intellectual growth, supports educational endeavours, and champions scientific research and artistic pursuits. As a guardian of cultural, scientific, and local heritage, the library plays a pivotal role in preserving the essence of Slovenian identity. Through its comprehensive collections and services, it serves as a vital learning centre, nurturing its usersacademic and personal growth. 

Co-organised by CTK
(Central Technical Library at the University of Ljubljana)

Travelling to Maribor

Maribor is conveniently located at the crossroads of a major European route, providing easy access from Western, Eastern, and Southern Europe. It is only 20 km from the Austrian border, 45 minutes from Graz, and 1.5 hours from Zagreb.

Information about the region and Maribor is available at Visit Maribor.

By plane

The nearest airports are Vienna (260 km), Ljubljana (150 km), Zagreb (132 km), and Graz (64 km).

We recommend booking a transfer to Maribor with GoOpti. Tip: Provide your accommodation address as the pick-up/drop-off location for direct service to and from your hotel.

By train

Maribor is accessible by train from several European countries.

To plan your route and calculate travel costs, use the international journey planner. Check the current timetable using the international timetable finder or an international ticket offices before your journey.

By bus

FlixBus offers easy connections to 132 destinations from Maribor, including Zagreb, Vienna, and Budapest. For more information, please find here.

By car

If you are arriving by car, please contact your hotel for parking arrangements. Please note that the University of Maribor does not provide parking for participants of the LIBER Winter Event.

Staying in Maribor

Accommodation

You can choose from a wide range of hotels in Maribor. We have negotiated special rates with the hotels listed below using the promo code LIBER2024.

Important: The promo code LIBER2024 is only valid when you book through the specified communication channels for each hotel in the list below.

Please note that the availability of rooms with the promo code is limited. We encourage you to book promptly to secure your reservation.

 

Centrally located hotels (within walking distance from the venue):

Hotel City 4* (reservation by email at info@hotelcitymb.si or by phone at +386 2 29 27 000)

BB Hotel Maribor 3* (reservation by online booking: enter the promo code as the Discount Code in the final step of the online reservation under “Payment”)

Hotel Orel 3* (reservation by email at orel@hotel-orel.si or maja.medzimurec@hotel-orel.si; or by phone at +386 2 250 6700)

Fani & Rozi B&B (reservation by online booking: enter the promo code next to your name in the online booking form; or by email at info@fani-rozi.si)

Hotel Maribor City Apartments 4* & Garden Rooms 4* (reservation by email at info@hotelmaribor.si) 

Hotels at the foot of the Pohorje Mountains (6 km from the venue):

Hotel Habakuk 4* (reservation by email at booking@hotel-habakuk.si)

Hotel Arena 4* (reservation by email at booking@eh.si or by phone at +386 8 201 04 20) 

Make sure to book your stay using the specified communication channels to enjoy special rates with the LIBER2024 promo code. 

Please check the distances between the hotels and the University of Maribor in Google Maps.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about the event or the call for proposals, feel free to contact us via email: winterevent@libereurope.org

All LIBER Events follow the LIBER Code of Conduct. Read more information here

 

 

Photo Credit

Maribor photos are provided by the Maribor Tourist Board (https://www.visitmaribor.si/en/

University of Maribor photo is provided by the University of Maribor (https://www.um.si/en/)  

University of Maribor Library photo is provided by the University of Maribor Library (https://ukm.um.si/en