Antilope
A Belgian national collective catalogue for research and specialist university library periodicals. Initiated and maintained by the University of Antwerp's Library since 1973, Antilope lists more than 300,000 periodical notices from approximately 200 libraries. ULiège Library has been an Antilope catalogue partner since 1981.
Contact: François Renaville
BASE
BASE (‘Biotechnologie, Agronomie, Société et Environnement’, or 'Biotechnology, Agricultural Science, Society and the Environment') is a multidisciplinary periodical that publishes original articles in the fields of agricultural science, forestry, nature and landscapes, environmental science and technology, chemistry and bio-industries. Published by the Presses agronomiques de Gembloux, it falls under the scientific authority of Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech (GxABT) and the Centre Wallon de Recherches Agronomiques (CRA-W).
Contact: Bernard Pochet
BICfB
The Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire de la Communauté française de Belgique (BICfB – French community of Belgium inter-university library) is a not-for-profit organisation that was founded in 2000, under the auspices of the Conseil des Recteurs des universités francophones de Belgique (CRef – Council of Belgian French-speaking university chancellors). Its goal is the ‘promotion, coordination and development of a joint policy between university libraries, in relation to scientific documentation’. Between May 2010 and May 2016, the chairman of BICfB was Paul Thirion (ULiège Library), the vice-chairwoman was Nicole Petit (USL-B) and the secretary and treasurer was Catherine Masselus (UMONS).
Contact: Paul Thirion
TF CPP
The inter-university 'Conservation Partagée des Périodiques' (shared conservation of periodicals) (GT-CPP) work group was founded in 2003, at the initiative of the CIUF's (Conseil Interuniversitaire de la Communauté française de Belgique – French community of Belgium inter-university council) ‘Commission Bibliothèques’ (libraries commission). It is responsible for structuring collaborations between university libraries in the French Community of Belgium, in terms of the shared conservation of printed periodicals, as part of a consistent acquisitions policy.
DONum
DONum (Dépôt d’Objets Numérisés) is a portal that hosts collections of digitised items from the collections of the various University of Liège departments. These items, which vary widely in nature (manuscripts, scientific tools or instruments, works of art, etc.), are both testaments to centuries of study and research and sources for our current researchers and students. Making these ‘items’ accessible online also enables us to establish the best possible conditions for conserving the originals.
Contact: Renaud Adam
The electronic duxionary (Casanova's papers and manuscripts)
Marco Leeflang (1933-2022), a renowned Dutch Casanova scholar, has donated to the ULiège Library a collection of documents relating to the Casanova archives, mainly from Dux (Duchkov, now in the Czech Republic), currently held in the Prague Archives (Státní oblastní archiv v Praze).
The Electronic Duxionary is a fusion of two digital "toolboxes" developed by Marco Leeflang and is freely and easily accessible online. It makes available to all the long-term work carried out by Marco Leeflang (1933-2022) to help researchers prepare their work on Casanova's manuscripts.
Contact for the scientific content: Françoise Tilkin
Contact for ULiège Library: Paul Thirion
e-publish
E-Publish is ULiège Library’s platform for publishing digital books.
It is a writing, co-writing and publishing tool and complies with the most recent standards for structured publishing.
With its 100% digital format, e-Publish:
- enables various enhancements (images, sounds and links);
- facilitates indexing and referencing;
- enables commenting;
- enables continuous publishing (continual updating of the same publication).
Contact: Bernard Pochet
Erasmus Staff Training Week
In partnership with the University of Liège's International Relations Department, ULiège Library regularly organises an Erasmus Staff Training Week, based on a theme that affects libraries. Since 2014, we have focused particularly on Open Access. In 2019, the topic of the week was ‘SGB as a means to modernise the library’.
Contact: Dominique Chalono, François Renaville
Famous Scholars ULiège
Organised in collaboration with ULiège teachers and researchers, the ‘Famous Scholars’ project aims to highlight their predecessors, who have had a profound impact on scientific research (from the University of Liège and the former Gembloux Faculty of Agricultural Sciences). For the university’s bicentennial in 2017, ULiège Library joined forces with the ULiège communications department to present these great figures from various perspectives: their research, their background and their scientific publications which are available on ORBi (with the full text in most cases).
Contact: orbi@uliege.be
Famous Scholars sur le site web institutionnel
TF Infolit
The InfoLit (Information Literacy) work group was established in August 2012. Information Literacy has been a concern of ULiège’s for a long time.
In 1989, the first work group on documentary training in Belgium was founded in ULiège (within the framework of the ‘Association Belge de Documentation’). Ten years later, it was taken taken over by the EduDOC Group, which has been chaired for 18 years by ULiège librarians (see the group’s former website). The various libraries developed a series of activities in parallel, which are adapted to their varied audiences. These training courses resulted in the creation of classes that are part of the different faculties’ official programmes.
GT Infolit’s primary aim is to enable everyone to discuss experiences and share tools. The duties entrusted to the work group by the ULiège Library's board of directors include:
- being an observatory for documentary training at ULiège;
- establishing communications tools for students, at the university and outside of it, via the ULiège Library website, among other things;
- drafting a resource framework regarding information literacy.
The group has already created:
- a detailed list of training courses (timetabled lessons, lessons with the participation of a librarian and training courses);
- a training programme for doctoral candidates, within the framework of ARD cross-departmental training courses (42 training sessions were organised in 2016–2017),
- the main themes for a resources framework regarding information literacy.
Contact: Bernard Pochet
Legito
The Legito catalogue lists nearly 36,000 references from a heritage collection of more than 41,000 documents:
- our incunabula and ancient documents that were printed before 1831;
- certain rare or precious documents that were printed after 1830;
- our mediaeval, modern and contemporary manuscripts;
- our archive collections.
Contact: Laurence Richelle, François Renaville, Cécile Oger
LibQUAL+
Since ULiège Library wishes to adapt its duties and policy to the information needs of the university community insofar as is possible, it has chosen to periodically carry out a general quality survey with its users. The survey is a joint initiative by the universities in the French Community of Belgium and occurs in four Federation universities simultaneously (UCL, ULB, ULiège and UNamur). The LibQUAL+ method, which was developed by the American Association of Research Libraries (ARL), is used to periodically assess the services offered by public and university libraries, thus promoting the exchange of good practices. A LibQUAL+ survey was carried out by ULiège in 2009 and in 2015.
Contact: Paul Thirion
MatheO
MatheO (Master Thesis Online) is the portal for accessing University of Liège masters' dissertations. This ULiège Library project not only aims to provide a solution to the problem of ‘paper’ archiving and sustainable conservation, but to offer much broader accessibility and visibility to these student works, many of which are of a high quality.
Contact: François Paquot
Mosa
Mosa aims to highlight Open Access research produced by scholars from Belgian and Luxembourgish institutions.
More than 10 repositories are daily harvested in Mosa.
The Mosa interface exists in French, Dutch, German and English. All Mosa open access publications are already accessible via the ULiège Library catalogue.
Contact: François Renaville
ORBi
In 2007, the University of Liège's Board of Directors decided to create ORBi (Open Repository and Bibliography) and then implement a compulsory submission policy through the adoption of an institutional mandate. ORBi, a ULiège bibliography and institutional repository, today forms part of a vast network of open archives internationally.
Contact: Paul Thirion
ORBiLu
Emerging from a partnership agreement that was signed in May 2012 between the University of Liège and the University of Luxembourg, ORBilu went live in 2013. The Uni.lu now has an interface for promoting its research, just like ORBi, enabling it to gain visibility and participate in the development of the Open-Access movement.
Contact: Paul Thirion
Projet PEP'S
The Pep’s (Plan de préservation et d'exploitation des patrimoines de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles – Plan to preserve and exploit the heritage of the French Community of Belgium), which was adopted by the government in October 2007, is a digitisation plan for the cultural and heritage collections conserved in museums, archives, libraries, audiovisual institutions, etc.
Since 2013, ULiège Library has been working with the Pep’s delegation.
Pep’s first part (french)
Pep's second part (french)
Pep's third part (french)
To be continued...
Contact: Renaud Adam
PERD
The Pool d'Expert Ressources Documentaires (PERD), or Pool of Documentary Resource Experts, is part of the university's development cooperation policy. It was implemented by the Belgian Development Cooperation Commission (ARES-CCD). As part of its new 2014–2019 Institutional Support programme, support for ‘documentary resources’ is based on a basic ‘service offering’, which is to be developed in the central libraries of institutions in the South, that is, ARES-CCD partners. A group of experts from Belgian French-speaking university libraries are offering support to institutions in the South, based on all aspects relating to the management and organisation of – and access to – libraries and documentary resources (documentary collections, primary and secondary electronic resources, documentary training, etc.).
Contact: Bernard Pochet
PoPuPS
Within the framework of its Open-Access support policy, ULiège Library developed a publication portal for scientific periodicals in 2005. It enables the managers of university periodicals to disseminate their periodicals in full text format under open access, quickly and easily. A new, more modern and enhanced interface is currently being developed.
Contact: Bernard Pochet
Presse agronomiques de Gembloux
Since 1964, the Presses agronomiques de Gembloux (PAG, or Gembloux Agricultural Press) has been publishing and disseminating scientific publications about agricultural science in the broad sense of the term, most of whose authors belong to CRA-W, DEMNA, GxABT or AIGx.
Contact: Bernard Pochet
Presses agronomiques de Gembloux
TF Saving the collections
The inter-university ‘Sauvegarde des collections’ (Saving the collections) work group aims to coordinate efforts with the universities in the French Community of Belgium, as they pertain to an emergency plan to save the collections in the event of a disaster. This includes sharing best practices, discussing policies and the progress of projects in the various institutions, and organising training courses for library staff.
Contact: Cécile Oger
Scriptorium
Serving as a complement to Scribe (link to Scribe), Scriptorium is a tool developed in 2013. It enables the simple and quick entry of documents that are not yet listed in the ULiège Library catalogue. Since 2013, quick back-cataloguing projects have incorporated nearly 90,000 references for publications from older collections into the catalogue, increasing their visibility to users.
Contact: Laurence Richelle, François Renaville
TF Statistics
The inter-university ‘Statistiques’ ('Statistics') work group, which was founded in 2003, aims to collect harmonised statistics about university libraries in the French Community of Belgium: collections, visits, staff, budgets and spending, etc. This data is sent each year to the Chancellors of the relevant universities. The work group aims to consistently improve the quality and relevance of the data that is sent.
Contact: Stéphanie Simon
Tropicultura
Tropicultura publishes original articles, research and summary notes, book summaries, theses and films and audiovisual materials concerning any field pertaining to overseas rural development: plant and animal production, veterinary science, forestry, soil and earth sciences, rural engineering, environmental science, bio-industries, agri-food, sociology and economics.
Contact: Bernard Pochet
UniCat
Officially launched in 2011, UniCat is a Belgian university library project that has been developed in collaboration with the company SemperTool. It is a collective catalogue that contains more than 16 million references from the Royal Libraries, university libraries (UNamur, USLB, KU Leuven, UCL, ULiège, ULB, UAntwerp, UGent, UHasselt and VUB), higher education institutions, heritage institutions and museum libraries.
Contact: François Renaville
URBi
URBi (University/Unified Repository of Biographies) is a draft application for managing the CVs of institutional members, based on the ORBi institutional directory model. In the same way that ORBi enables the automatic management and generation of lists of publications based on different models, URBi would offer the same features, but for biographical data. This project was entrusted to ULiège Library by the Institution.
Contact: Paul Thirion
Past projects and collaborations
ACEF
The Association des Clients d’Ex Libris France (ACEF) is a French association of French-speaking establishments who use Ex Libris software. A forum for discussion between all kinds of members, it offers them a coordination structure (general assemblies, an office, board of directors, extraordinary meetings, themed work groups) and collaborative tools (website, discussion list). ACEF is the spokesperson for its members, whose interests it relays to Ex Libris, as well as an active partner of the International Group of Ex Libris Users (IGeLU). Between June 2009 and June 2010, the vice-chairman of ACEF was François Renaville. He was later the chairman between June 2010 and June 2014.
Contact: François Renaville
BICTEL/e
An electronic thesis-management project by the Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire de la Communauté française de Belgique (BICfB). The project was approved by ULiège in 2006 and electronic submission was made compulsory for doctoral and agrégation theses starting from 1 October 2006 (15 September 2007 for Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech). BICTEL/e offered researchers a simple auto-archiving tool for an electronic version of their research work, enabling them to disseminate it internationally, and a central point of access for university theses from the French Community. Since 2013, the theses contained in BICTEL have been incorporated into ORBi, which has become the only portal for ULiège's scientific documentary output.
Contact: François Renaville
Study : Repository for the French Community of Belgium
During 2012, the Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire de la Communauté française de Belgique (BICfB) was contacted by the French Community of Belgium about conducting a feasibility study for an institutional repository for FWB's scientific output. Drawing on ORBi’s experience, this study took the specific features of the French Community of Belgium into account. The goal was twofold: (i) to have a shared storage tool for all the departments that carry out or fund research, and (ii) to improve the visibility of the FWB’s scientific output at the municipal, national and international level. Furthermore, the FWB also aims to provide the results of the studies that it carries out or funds, and thus enable the community to benefit from them.
Contact: Paul Thirion
Study : Open-Access in French-speaking Belgium
In spring of 2011, the Recteurs des universités de la Fédération Wallonie-Brusselles (Chancellors of universities in the French Community of Belgium) and the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (Scientific research fund) - FNRS (F.R.S.-FNRS) expressed a desire for a study on the development of Open Access in French-speaking Belgium. The task was entrusted to the Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire de la Communauté française de Belgique (BICfB – French Community of Belgium Inter-university Library). Conducted in spring 2012, the study reviews the development of institutional repositories (Green Path) at FWB universities and provides insight into the active involvement of our institutions’ teachers and researchers (as an editor in chief, member of the writing committee, peer-reviewer, etc.) in the life cycle of scientific periodicals that are available under Open Access (Gold Path), or at least accessible for free online.
Contact: François Renaville
Study : PEPS
The PEPS (Portail Électronique de Périodiques Scientifiques – Electronic portal for scientific periodicals) study, which began in 2004, consisted of a feasibility study carried out by the BICfB, pertaining to the creation of a platform for publishing scientific periodicals that are published in the French Community of Belgium online. This study was carried out thanks to a one-time grant from the Ministre de l’Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche Scientifique (Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research), and with the involvement of the Commissariat Général aux Relations Internationales (General Commission for International Relations). This study made it possible to review the publishing of scientific periodicals in the FWB. In reality, the study resulted in a detailed and costed proposal. The second step would have been to create the platform. Unfortunately, nothing came of the project, in particular due to the lack of political will at that time to make the necessary resources available, despite the challenges to communicating knowledge and the development of similar projects with public support in other French-speaking countries. However, this study served as a basis for the development of PoPuPS at ULiège.
Contact: Paul Thirion
Study about the permanent conservation of electronic periodicals
A study on the permanent conservation of scientific periodicals, which was commissioned by the BICfB, was finalised in April 2014 within ULiège Library. Although the shift to e-only subscriptions by publishers offers many advantages in terms of managing collections, it does not always provide sufficient guarantees for long-term access to full texts in our institutions. In this context, universities in the French Community of Belgium decided to work together to study means of access that have been proposed by publishers in depth, and to define a suitable model to propose within the framework of future negotiations, as well as to envisage a back-up solution for permanent conservation, one that is independent from publishers’ obligations/constraints, or the chance that they could go bankrupt or change owner or business model. Different ideas were examined, in particular those which proposed organisations other than publishers (LOCKSS, CLOCKSS and Portico) and recommendations were made.
Contact: Paul Thirion
Virtual Leodium
An attempt at modelling historic information relating to Liège's urban planning in a 3D spatio-temporal manner, Virtual Leodium is a project that structures research combining archaeology, history, physics and geomatics. ULiège’s artistic collections have a remarkable model that was created at the beginning of the 20th century by Gustave Ruhl-Hauzeur. It represents the city of Liège in approximately 1730. This model is kept in the Marie Delcourt room (20-Août premises), which also stores the creator’s personal archives. The purpose of the Virtual Leodium project is to produce a digital copy of this model, in order to ‘pin’ historical and archaeological information to it. In the longer term, the idea will be to incorporate further layers of geometric information and other sources of historic information relating to different eras.