Serbia’s KoBSON celebrates 10 years

Published:

14 Nov 2011

Ten years of EIFL's partner consortium, KoBSON (Serbian Library Consortium for Coordinated Acquisition) was celebrated on October, 18th, 2011. The event was attended by researchers and librarians and ministers (current and past) who have supported KoBSON over the years.

The event was broadcast over live-streaming.

The keynote address was given by Biljana Kosanovic, EIFL country coordinator and Head of the Department of Scientific Information at the National Library of Serbia. Biljana presented KoBSON’s work from the past 10 years, with a special emphasis on those who have specifically supported their work (EIFL, Ministry of Sciences, and the National Library of Serbia). Biljana also discussed the upcoming challenges, primarily financial.

KoBSON achievements

Over 1,100 researchers responded to an online, satisfaction survey regarding KoBSON services, which was conducted in September, 2011. All the responses were extremely positive, below are a few comments that reflected the sentiments of the respondents:

“The day when we started to use it, as if someone turned on the light.”

“KoBSON is a ticket to the Science Building”

KoBSON also awarded their famous umbrellas to the most humorous answers to the question "What does KoBSON mean in your daily work". Among the response was:

Without KoBSON like without shoes - you can't go anywhere!

In addition to licensing e-resources for their member libraries, KoBSON can proudly say that they contributed towards the increased visibility of Serbian science, both nationally and internationally. “Our single biggest achievement is that twenty Serbian journals are newly indexed by Thomson Reuters Web of Science, the leading citation reference index, connecting Serbian research to global scientific publishing”, says Biljana Kosanovic.

This happened because KoBSON took the initiative to create Digital Object Identifiers – an international standard for identifying content in the digital environment – for locally published journals (Learn more). KoBSON resources are also fully integrated with Google Scholar, boosting the worldwide visibility of Serbian research and encouraging usage of international literature in Serbia. As a result, researchers recognise that libraries are an important part of the modern information infrastructure, and can provide many value-added services to help promote their work.

Publishers presentations

Publishing partners from Elsevier and Thomson Reuters were also invited to talk about their new tools for evaluation. For visitors it was a unique opportunity to see the new developments of two, competing products. For exhibitors it was also the first such experience. Both publishers awarded the most active young researchers.

Mobile service launched

Additionally, KoBSON launched a new mobile platform from which KoBSON end-user to search for individual journals and with just one click they are redirected to publisher sites.

Celebrations!

The two-hour event ended with a glass of wine and traditional Serbian cake 'orasnice' which goes well with wine.