Martin Svoboda is director of the National Library of Technology (NTK) in Prague.

He has a MS in computer engineering (1965) and is interested in text processing and information retrieval systems. He has been a lifelong advocate of co-operation in sharing information resources with help of ICT. He has experienced of library automation in the Czech National Library, Czech and Slovak Library Information Network – A. W. Mellon Foundation supported international project and later through Open Society Library Network Programme in post-communist countries.

As a director of NTK, he negotiated “big deals” with publishers for the entire Czech scholarly and R&D community. He is a member of the LIBER Architecture Group Forum; ELAG Programme Committee; Journal of Documentation Editorial Board; Czech NCP in SCOAP3 project.

He has moved the National Library of Technology closer to academia, is the co-author and Head of Experts Group for the CzechELib project.

Martin is also co-author of USS – an SDI system processing around 3000 profiles on dozens of abstract services (CAS, CIN, INSPEC, INIS, Compendex, PA, FSTA, Excerpta Medica, Derwent, etc.) back in mid 1970s. He is the co-father of the CASLIN project for Czech and Slovak Libraries, and the author of concept of the Virtual Polytechnic Library – a Czech cooperative resource sharing system and its innovative version Ziskej/Acquire.