18th biennial EURASLIC Meeting, Zagreb, Croatia

From 6-9 May, 2019, the 18th EURASLIC Biennial Meeting was hosted by the Ruđer Bošković Institute in Zagreb, Croatia.

The conference was entitled “River of no Return: Sail or Sink”.  It signifies the changing role of libraries in the information age and their ability to sail with the flow in order to maintain their presence in today's digital environment. 

Most of us could not wait to see each other again after 2 years and, despite the drizzling weather, joined for a walk in Maksimir Park. After the pleasant walk, we all enjoyed the tasty snack together in the 'Choco café'.

During the conference a lot of interesting and inspiring presentations were presented on various topics like GDPR, Open Science, data management, copyright issues, new and innovative library services and activities, new publishing models, and so on.  All presentations will be available online and the conference proceedings will be published in the coming months.

Maria Kalentis gave an interesting workshop about the new developments in ASFA.  This was followed by a discussion to gain ideas from the attendees and to encourage European countries to renew active participation in ASFA.  The new developments are looking very promising....

A second workshop was organized by the EURASLIC and IAMSLIC president.  This workshop presented an overview of the joint activities between EURASLIC and IAMSLIC and focused on the structure of both organizations.  The goal of this workshop was to gather suggestions for new activities and projects that are relevant to both Euraslic and Iamslic.  A lot of suggestions were collected around the following topics: “increasing EURASLIC and IAMSLIC conference participation”,”professional development”, “maintaining and increasing membership”, “participation in services/ committees at regional groups or IAMSLIC” and ‘ideas for sponsorship”.

Two very interesting scientific presentations were given. One about the mysterious 'dragon's eye',  a marine lake (Rogoznica Lake) located on the eastern Adriatic Coast (Croatia) with rare and specific features. The 2nd gave an overview of the functioning of “The Blue World Institute of Marine Research and Conservation”. Their dedication to securing the future of the Adriatic Sea is very encouraging.

The EURASLIC executive board and business meetings were held as well.  Elections for a new executive board were closed just before the conference. The old board was discharged and the new board appointed.  Sofija Konjević will be our president and Christina Schrader is re-elected as vice president.  New in the board are the members representatives Kathrin Brannemann and Olga Kopytova.

We’re happy to announce that Kathrin will be the host of the next EURASLIC conference.  This will be a joint meeting with IAMSLIC and will take place in Bremerhaven, Germany in 2021.

Katheryna Kulakova organized a post-conference workshop on Ocean Docs.  The workshop was sponsored by IODE.  It was great that many of you attended this workshop.

The hosts organized wonderful excursions and a superb conference dinner.  On Monday we had the guided tour in Zagreb.  The guide was very entertaining and showed us a few of the most interesting places in Zagreb.

On Tuesday evening the conference dinner was held in the very cosy restaurant Klub Književnika (Writers Club).  On the balcony we had a fantastic view over the main square of Zagreb.  The food was excellent and we had great music and some of us are really good dancers ;-).

On Thursday we had a superb trip to the Plitvice Lakes National Park.  Although it was raining, we had a lovely time together.  We all enjoyed the exceptional natural beauty.  We finished the day and the conference with a great lunch/dinner and a last rakija, a perfect way to say doviđenja!

Thank you Sofija and Marina and the entire conference and program committee for the most wonderful conference. Your conference has been a great success in all possible respects!

Written by Bart Goosens