​The Library at the heart of (international!) teaching, learning, and research

by Laura Ennis

I was invited by Ex Libris to their solution day in Padova, Italy on 8th June to speak about our work implementing Leganto as our Reading List Management System. The notion of an electronic system for managing reading lists is still quite novel in Italy, where Library collections still mostly rely on print media. The event took place in the beautiful Archivio Antico, at the Palazzo Bo, which is owned by the University of Padua. I was joined by Antonio Scolari, who is the Director of Library Services as the University of Genova. Antonio spoke about the University’s decision to move from Aleph to Alma as their Library Management System in 2018, one that we made here at Edinburgh Napier back in 2014.

We were also treated to a sneak-peak of the newly revamped Alma user-interface which will be coming to Edinburgh Napier later this year. There were over 65 librarians in attendance, from universities across Italy. It was enlightening to hear from them about the challenges in the information world that are unique to Italy; the paucity of electronically published academic literature in Italian, the state of scholarly communications, and the need for an open national union catalogue, for example.

I’m grateful to Ex Libris for organising this opportunity.