National Cooperation Department
The particular assignment of the National Cooperation Department is to improve and render the information support for higher education and research more effective. This we achieve by working with development issues within the National Library´s field of activities, in cooperation with external parties.
Our tasks
LIBRIS National Library Systems
The National Library is responsible for the maintenance and systems development of LIBRIS national library systems - focusing the areas search services, cataloguing and interlibrary lending.
LIBRIS national library systems are built upon cooperation between the participating libraries, where the core is Swedish publicly financed libraries within higher education and research.
We actively work with making the LIBRIS services as open as possible and with promoting openness in libraries everywhere. In 2008, LIBRIS was the first library organisation to publish its bibliographic data as Linked Open Data.
LIBRIS (WebSearch) offers free access to 6.5 million titles held at 180 Swedish libraries.
SwePub provides references to academic publications registered in Swedish university publication databases.
With Sondera you can carry out a simultaneous search in the national union catalogue LIBRIS, in the database for the Swedish archives, NAD, and in the Swedish Media Database, SMDB.
The Samsök service, with about 40 participating research libraries, gives users a single point of entry to their own library’s electronic material and facilitates access and administration.
More than 1 700 libraries use the LIBRIS ILL Routine which makes it possible to order publications not accessible in their home library. LIBRIS (WebSearch) is the starting point when you want to reserve publications that are not available in your own collections. The Patron ILL Request service is part of LIBRIS ILL Routine.
Access to Electronic Information
Within the E-licensing Division we negotiate (on behalf of the BIBSAM consortium) national licence agreements for access to thousands of electronic information resources. Swedish university libraries, university college libraries and libraries of non-academic public research institutions are eligible to join the agreements.
OpenAccess.se
The programme promotes Open Access to the works produced by researchers, teachers and students. It supports the development of digital repositories as well as Open Access journals at Swedish institutions of higher education.
Supporting Library Development
The National Library works with bibliographic coordination and development, and performs studies and evaluations.
We also coordinate parts of the continuing education for librarians in Sweden, in cooperation with a number of different parties.
Furthermore, the National Library coordinates a programme of transport of inter library loans between libraries in Sweden.
In cooperation with the Swedish Arts Council, the National Library provides library statistics for about 450 Swedish publicly funded libraries of various types.
National and International Cooperation
The department supports interlibrary lending by compensating libraries for outgoing loans. We promote cooperation among research libraries, public libraries, archives, and museums in a variety of ways.
We work for the development of library activities in international projects (most recently in Central America, Viet Nam and Laos).
The Swedish Dewey project
Together with many other Swedish libraries the National Library is in the process of switching from a Swedish classification system to the Dewey Decimal Classification.
And, how do we do it?
The National Library of Sweden is tasked with furthering the development of libraries in Sweden and has a special responsibility for coordinating information support for higher education and research.
To carry out this task for national cooperation, the National Library has created an influence structure with a main advisory committee and an additional number of expert groups.
The National Library also hosts an annual meeting for all Swedish libraries and related parties where joint strategic and developmental issues are discussed.
