ABSTRACT

Speaker: Alex Byrne

TITLE: Building Scholarly Information Infrastructure through Partnership

Achievement of the innovation agendas and eResearch initiatives which are being promoted in many countries, as well as the aspirations of the Millennium Declaration and the World Summit on the Information Society, depends on high quality scholarly information infrastructure

The scope of that infrastructure extends beyond the domains traditionally supported by academic and research libraries and their accepted boundaries. Its development depends increasingly on fostering effective partnerships among libraries, with the academy and with other players. Examples extend from joint services such as online reference and collaborative lending to consortial acquisition of content, digital theses and repository initiatives, and ventures into epublishing. These collaborative partnerships are delivering significantly enhanced benefits to researchers, teachers and students very efficiently but their success depends on the foundation principles of clarity, commitment and collaboration.