Programme (current status, 2024-09-18)

| Wednesday, Sep 25th | Thursday, Sep 26th | Friday, Sep 27th |

Wednesday, Sep 25th

9:00 h-9:30 h Reception and accreditations at the entrance to the Aula Magna

09:30 h-10:00 h Welcome

Official opening

• Welcome adress from Universitat de Barcelona, Joan Guàrdia Olmos, Rector.
• Pentti Vattulainen. A history of Kuopio conference.
• Welcome adress from Consortium of Academic Services of Catalonia, Olga Lanau Rami, General Director.
• Dani Tschirren, Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern, Chair of EPICo.

10:00 h-11:00 h Keynote 1. In the Middle East, practice trumps paper versus digital.

Stéphane Ipert. Director of heritage and documentary projects at Caravane-Earth foundation. Adjunct Professor at American University of Afghanistan. Previously director of Heritage Library in Qatar National Library (2017-2023). 

11:00 h-11:30 h Coffee break sponsored by IEEE

11:30 h-13:00 h Session 1. Library Architecture: New Innovations. 

Chair: Andy Appleyard, British Library, UK. 

As print collections continue to expand, so must library storage. Increasingly, new innovations are influencing how libraries can preserve print collections reflecting - budget, space, access frequency, environmental conditions and how to be more ‘green’. This session will showcase three examples from very different perspectives. 

• Johanna Vesterinen, National Repository Library of Finland. Building a library as a turnkey project.
• Patrice Ract, Bibliothèque nationale de France. French national Library's project for conservation centre in Amiens: where do things stand?
• Mike Märki, Cooperative Storage Library Switzerland. Facing obstacles: challenges in construction projects and innovations.

13:00 h-14:00 h Lunch break sponsored by Brill

14:00 h-15:30 h Session 2. Planning for sustainability. 

Chair: Dani Tschirren, Zentral und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern, Switzerland. 

This session considers how collaborative projects can be designed for sustainability. When planning this type of work it is always necessary to think long term, and how workload, financial costs, and environmental factors can be distributed and maintained long into the future. These presentations will showcase how some projects have addressed these challenges, reflecting the specific contexts they work in. 

• Sandra Bracegirdle, University of Manchester, and Hannah Mateer, University of Edinburgh. Working together to develop a national collection: the UK Print Book Collection.
• Birgit Vinther Hansen, Royal Danish Library. New low energy storage in Vinge - aspects of sustainability.
• Johannes Neuer, German National Library in Leipzig. Automation and Sustainability: Key Considerations for Building DNB's Fifth Extension in Leipzig.

15:30 h-16:00 h Coffee break sponsored by Nubilum

16:00 h-17:30 h Session 3. Safety plans: how do we prepare our teams in the event of disasters? 

Chair: Frédéric Brodkom, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium. 

Faced with the risk of fire, flooding or even biological hazards, most libraries have set up emergency plans that include prevention, preparation of materials and staff training. This session will provide an opportunity to hear about some good practice in this area, which is crucial to the preservation of collections. 

• Tanja Vogel, CSLS Cooperative Storage Library Switzerland. From Zero to Hero? Evolution of in-house Integrated Pest Management (IPM) competences.
• Hendrik Defoort, Ghent University, Belgium. Never waste a good crisis or how a calamity evolved into a gateway to new services and collection mobility at Ghent University Library (2007-2024)
• Alessandro Sidoti, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Italy. Developing effective safety plans: preparing teams in libraries and cultural heritage institutions for disaster response and recovery.

17:30 h-19:30 h Welcome reception sponsored by Ara Doc

17:30 h Visit to the Clock Tower sponsored by OCLC/Clarivate

17:30 h Visit to the Rare Book and Manuscript CRAI Library (Group 1) sponsored by OCLC/Clarivate

18:00 h Visit to the Rare Book and Manuscript CRAI Library (Group 2) sponsored by OCLC/Clarivate

Thursday, Sep 26th

10:00 h-11:00 h Keynote 2. CAVAL, Australian shared print collaboration (Australia). 

Jamie McCowan, CEO CAVAL, Australia. 

11:00 h-11:30 h Coffee break sponsored by MDPI

11:30 h-13:00 h Session 4. Access to Print in an age of mass digitisation. 

Chair: Eoin McCarney, National Library of Ireland. 

This session will examine various approaches to maintaining availability of print materials in the digital age. It will debate the continued importance of print and the challenges inherent maintaining access at scale (preservation, storage, circulation models). The presentations will outline innovative approaches to these challenges. 

• Helen Sakrihei and Jonny Edvardsen, National Library of Norway. The importance of print copies in a digital library - experiences from the National Library of Norway.
• Liz Hayden, University of Ottawa Library. Communication and change management in shared print programs: an investigation into integration practices and stakeholder perception.
• Karin Byström, Uppsala University Library, Sweden, and Sandra Bracegirdle, The University of Manchester Library, UK. Research on optimal numbers of copies and consequences for shared print programs and EPICo.

13:00 h-14:00 h Lunch break sponsored by IOP Publishing

14:00 h-15:30 h Session 5. Future of print from a publisher’s perspective. 

Chair: Brigitte Kromp, University of Vienna, Austria. 

Various publishers will provide insights into their views on and strategies regarding the future of print publications in academia. 

• Maurits van den Boogert, De Gruyter Brill. The end of print as a false prophesy: an historical perspective.
• Niels Peter Thomas, Springer Nature. The Past and the Future of Print Books: between readers' preference and AI.
• Marten Stavenga, John Benjamins Publishing. Will print survive: experiences of a specialized smaller publishing company.
• László Simon-Nanko, Mohr Siebeck. "I love the smell of book ink in the morning" (Umberto Eco): on the materiality of the academic and the niches of small publishers.

15:30 h-16:00 h Coffee break sponsored by Taylor & Francis 

16:00 h-17:30 h Session 6. Collaborations: lessons learned.

Chair: Amparo Llorente, CSIC, Spain. 

EPICo is a collaborative network, and with that in mind, EPICo’s partners will present in this session short updates about their projects. We will learn about their advances, difficulties, new initiatives and collaborations. Some of this project updates will also be available through posters. 

• Andy Appleyard, British Library, UK. The British Library: update on our new sustainable, high density, automated storage building.
• Stéphanie Groudiev, "Humathèque", and Guillaume Niziers, Centre technique du livre de l'enseignement supérieur, France. Planning a new research library in France: l'Humathèque.
• Zoitsa Gkinni, National Library of Greece. Aligning Initiatives with SDGs at the National Library of Greece.
• Frédéric Brodkom, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium. The collaborative printed journals preservation project of French-speaking universities of Belgium: a 20-year retrospective.
• Olaf Eigenbrodt, Hamburg State and University Library, Germany. Update from Speicherverbund Nord - From shared archiving to cooperative storage? A needs assessment project of the Northern German Shared Archiving Cooperation.
• Wolfgang Undorf, National Library of Sweden. How to do what we know we should do: ways towards a Swedish shared print initiative.

20:00 h Dinner (Finca Pedro Pons) sponsored by EBSCO 

Friday, Sep 27th

10:00 h-11:00 h Keynote 3. Importance of Metadata for Shared Print and Global Cooperations. 

Heather Weltin, Content & data Management Lead and Shared Print Program Officer at HathiTrust Digital Library and co-chair of the Partnership for Shared Book Collection's and Rosemont's Shared Print Alliance Shared Print Metadata Group, USA.

Anna Striker, Systemwide Library Planning Senior Analyst at California Digital Library and co-chair of the Partnership for Shared Book Collection's and Rosemont's Shared Print Alliance Shared Print Metadata Group, USA.

11:00 h-11:30 h Coffee break sponsored by Springer Nature

11:30 h-13:00 h Panel discussion.

Chair: Wolfgang Mayer, University of Vienna, Austria.

• Lluís M. Anglada i de Ferrer, CSUC.
• Lucia Campanella, UOC.
• Marten Stavenga, John Benjamins Publishing Company.
• Jaume Subirana, UPF.

13:00 h-14:00 h Lunch break sponsored by OBV SG 

14:00 h-14:30 h Farewell; next Kuopio Host 2026.

• Assumpta Pujol Vallcorba. CRAI Universitat de Barcelona. Collection Management Unit.
• Ramon Ros Gorné. Consortium of Academic Services of Catalonia. CSUC.
• Santi Balague i Linares, Consortium of Academic Services of Catalonia (CSUC), Deputy Chair of EPICo.

Sagrada Família visit sponsored by Ara Doc