More than 200 library professionals from 60 universities participated in conference panel sessions.
This year marked the conference’s highest international outreach; the conference was attended by leading experts in the field of librarianship from the USA, United Kingdom, Netherlands and Russia, including
- Pennsylvania State University;
- Princeton University;
- Coventry University;
- Auburn University;
- University of Amsterdam;
- Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences;
- Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation;
- St. Petersburg State University;
- St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University.
Sponsors of the event consisted of EBSCO Information Services company and Grebennikov publishing house.
Samazhan Umirzakov, the vice-rector for academic activities, doctor of economic sciences, opened the event with a keynote address. He noted that the conference continues to serve as a productive platform for discussing urgent issues of academic libraries. He emphasized that transformation of academic libraries is one of the most important steps in holistic development of world universities. The conference program consisted of several sessions and a master class titled “Modern digital technologies and services for libraries”.
Numerous issues were raised, among them:
- formation of a new type of library mode that is aimed at a digital user;
- expansion of the use of electronic resources;
- sharing of resources and interlibrary loan among libraries;
- role of libraries in research;
- role of libraries in developing digital scientific infrastructure (digital libraries, publishing houses, journals, archives, institutional repositories);
- libraries and scientometric ranking systems;
- international standards for librarianship, etc.
We believe that the key goal of the conference - exchange of experience and innovations in the field of librarianship - was achieved, and the conference provided useful insights for all participants."