A meeting of the General Assembly of the International Consortium Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL) was opened at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (TSU) on September 21. Rector of TSU, Giorgi Sharvashidze; Director of the National Scientific Library, Irakli Garibashvili, heads of scientific libraries from various countries, invited experts and representatives of the world’s leading scientific publishers attended the meeting.
During the three-day event, the invited guests will share their knowledge and experience with each other; presentations, lectures and discussions will be held to discuss a wide range of issues, among them use of databases, free access to academic publications and releasing scientific papers, intellectual property issues, software for libraries, management and development of library consortia, etc.
“We are intensively collaborating with EIFL. We managed to offer several databases to our students, scientists and researchers. Among them is the web of science, which will already be available during this academic year. We have the richest collections at the Tbilisi State University; one of two libraries contains 4.5 million books. The other also contains approximately the same amount. It is the richest university collection in the post-Soviet space. We take the 2nd place by number of books, but we do not talk about the number, but we talk about access,” Rector Giorgi Sharvashidze said.
The General Assembly is EIFL’s annual knowledge sharing and networking event for library professionals in developing and transition countries. Each year EIFL brings together national coordinators from over 40 countries to debate the latest developments in electronic content delivery, to discover emerging issues of significance to libraries, and to share achievements from library consortia over the last year.
The three-day event has been organized by Georgian Integrated Library Information System Consortium (GILISC) and the National Scientific Library. Director of the National Scientific Library, Irakli Garibashvili said that similar meetings will promote the development of education and science in the country. “This is the first time that Georgia hosts such an important event. Librarians and experts from over 40 countries have arrived. Meetings will be held with the representatives of most famous academic publishers. The main purpose is to help Georgian scientists and students receive a lot of information free of charge. Moreover, these meetings will promote publication of papers prepared by Georgians in foreign editions; they will also promote more open and scientific communication as well as development of education and science in Georgia,” Irakli Garibashvili said.
EIFL (www.eifl.net) supports access to electronic information in developing and transition countries. Director of EIFL, Rima Kupryte also attended the meeting. She said that academic activities require access to latest information, research and papers, but this information, scientific journals and books are often very expensive. “Therefore, we try to negotiate an acceptable price. During the today’s meeting we also discussed our future collaboration with the Tbilisi State University,” she added.
The EIFL network unites about 4 000 leading libraries and millions of their users from 40 European, Asian and African countries. Georgia joined the consortium upon its foundation in 2001.
