Following  the endorsement of IFLA's Statement on Open Access by the Governing Board, April 18th 2011—and the subsequent approval  from the Governing Board during the WLIC in Puerto Rico August 2011 of a number  of key initiatives—IFLA's Open Access Taskforce has been established.

The  taskforce will work on the following issues:

1. Advocate  for the adoption and promotion of open access policies as set out in IFLA's  Statement on Open Access within the framework of the United Nations  institutions (UN, UNESCO, WHO, FAO);
2.   Build  Capacity within the IFLA Membership to advocate for the adoption of open  access policies at the national level, through the development of case studies  and best practices for open access promotion;
3. Furthermore  the taskforce will connect to the various organizations working for Open Access  – as indicated in the statement -such as SPARC (US/Europe/Japan), COAR,  OASPA,EIFL, Bioline International & DOAJ, among others.

First  things to be done is to produce a road map for the work to presented for the  IFLA Governing Board in December and as well to begin collecting case studies  and best practice related to how national library associations can promote  national policies and programs to further foster the progress of Open Access.  Please inform me if you have good examples in relation to this.

In  cooperation with the IFLA Headquarters dedicated web pages will be created in  order for the community to be able to follow and contribute to the work.

The taskforce has the following members:

• Lars  Bjørnshauge (CHAIR), 1st Vice-President, Swedish Library Association
• Leslie  Chan, Associate Director, Bioline International, University of Toronto at  Scarborough
• Jan  Hagerlid,  Programme Co-ordinator of OpenAccess.se, National Library of  Sweden
• Iryna  Kuchma, EIFL.Net Open Access Manager, EIFL, Rome, Italy
• Rick  Luce, Vice Provost and Director of Libraries, Emory University, USA
• Felipe  Martinez, Director, University Center for Library Science Research, National  Autonomous University of Mexico
• Bas  Savenijie, Director, National Library of the Netherlands
• Xuemao  Wang, Associate Vice-Provost, Emory University Libraries, Emory University, USA
• Qiang  Zhu, Director, Peking University Library, Beijing, China
• Ann  Okerson,  Special Advisor on Electronic Strategies, Center for Research  Libraries New  Haven, CT, United States
• Derek  Law, Professor, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, United Kingdom
• Christoph Bruch, Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL), Berlin, Germany
• Dr Reggie Raju,  Director: IT Services &Communication,US Library & Information Service,Stellenbosch University, South Africa

 

Lars Bjørnshauge