Thursday, December 17, 2020
12:00 – 13:00 UTC
On December 17, 2020, ASREN hosted its third LIBSENSE workshop, entitled “Next Steps.” This virtual workshop was a continuation and followed up on the LIBSENSE-III Workshop held in Tunisia in April 2019 and the ASREN - LIBSENSE Virtual Workshop held in October 2020. The event focused on supporting Open Knowledge through an initiative for harvesting data repositories in the Arab region, with a particular emphasis on Arabic content and language. Additionally, regional practices on open access and open data repositories were presented.
The workshop was held in cooperation with WACREN, UbuntuNet Alliance, COAR, and EIFL, under the support of AfricaConnect3 and EUMEDCONNECT3 projects. It featured participation highlighting initiatives planned to serve as Open Knowledge hubs at both regional and global levels.
The main contributions included insights from the Latin American network of open access repositories, LA Referencia, and the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI) project. The event targeted repository managers, advocates, and other open access and open science stakeholders, including libraries and library consortia, content and research data providers, and National Research and Education Networks (NRENs).
Agenda:
Time (UTC) | Title |
12:00 - 12:10 | "LIBSENSE Project Highlight”
- Raed Alzoubi, Library Director, JUST, Jordan |
12:10 - 12:35 | "LA Referencia: Gateway to Open Access in Latin America"
- Lautaro Matas, Executive and Technical Secretary, LA Referencia |
12:35 - 12:50 | "COKI Initiative: A Universal Open Knowledge Hub"
- Katie Wilson, Research Fellow, Curtin University, Australia |
12:50 - 13:00 | Discussion, Q&A |
About LIBSENSE:
The Libraries Support for Embedding NRENs services and e-Infrastructure (LIBSENSE) initiative was launched in 2016 to bring the research and education networks (RENs) and academic library communities together to build sustainable and relevant approaches for open access and open science in Africa. LIBSENSE creates an avenue for different stakeholder communities to work together to define priority activities, share knowledge, and develop relevant services together. It is building communities of practice and strengthening local and national services to support open science and research in Africa.
The West and Central African Research and Education Network (WACREN) leads the LIBSENSE initiative in collaboration with sister regional African RENs (ASREN and UbuntuNet Alliance). Other participating partners include several national RENs, libraries, library associations, universities, and research communities in Africa, in conjunction with COAR, EIFL, University of Sheffield, National Institute of Informatics (Japan), GEANT, and OpenAIRE. LIBSENSE activities aimed at open science have received support from the AfricaConnect3 project, co-funded by the European Union.
