The Stichting LIBER Foundation (Stichting LIBER) is the principal association of the majorresearch libraries of Europe (http://www.libereurope.eu). It was founded as an association in 1971 under the auspices of the Council of Europe and became a Foundation under Dutch law in 2009. Its current membership includes 425 national and research libraries of more than forty countries, mainly but not only, in Europe. Its overall aim is to assist research libraries in Europe to support a functional network across national boundaries in order to ensure the preservation of the European cultural heritage, to improve access to collections in European research libraries, and to provide more efficient information services in Europe.
LIBER actively promotes co-operation with all library-related organizations. It has strong links with SPARC Europe (http://www.sparceurope.org), the
Association of Research Libraries in the United States, the
Canadian Association of Research Libraries, the
Coalition for Networked Information, the
International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, as well as with national library associations. LIBER has been involved in several EU projects such as
Europeana,
Europeana Travel,
DART Europe, ODE (Opportunities for Data Exchange), APARSEN (Network of Excellence in Digital Preservation) and Europeana Libraries (making over 5,000,000 digital objects from research libraries visible through Europeana). Scholarly Communication and Open Access in particular are priorities in the
LIBER Strategy 2009-2012. LIBER has been working with LERU (http://www.leru.org) on a Roadmap towards Open Access. LIBER will use its established dissemination channels to promote the outcomes and networks to its target audiences. This will happen through the LIBER Annual Conferences and a pan-European Workshop to be organised by the LIBER Scholarly Communications Working Group and in collaboration with SPARCEurope.