This year the National Library of Spain in Madrid hosted the 15th Seminar of the LIBER Architecture Group from 12th to 17th of April 2010. The innovative offer of tours and speeches as well as the possibility of program exchanges attracted interested participants from every corner of Europe. Of course, subjects such as renovation and extension of existing facilities abounded. This year to enhance more subjects of the day, several talks were directed towards the development of internet services within the library. These new internet technologies present interesting challenges for libraries wishing to implement these new programs. As expected, the Spanish team had organized the meeting in an excellent manner and every aspect of the conference was well thought through.

On the one hand the interdisciplinary conference "Analogous spaces - architecture and the space of information, intellect and action" taking place 2008 in Belgium presented research activities on the history of scholarly information and communication. With it at the same time it was a journey to the origins of the early information society. Otherwise the conference connected information history with the history of culture, architecture and art by referring various analogies between analog and digital spaces. Topical starting point was the Belgian Paul Otlet as founder of documentation around the turn of the 20th century. In an excursus the German chemist and information pioneer Wilhelm Ostwald is especially mentioned as part of the intellectual network of Otlet.

Libraries are as diverse as their users. When one views a modern library and its various services, it is definitely made up of many puzzle pieces. The library today offers a great variety of services, all the way from Gutenberg’s first book in print to digital information via the internet. „The library is well organized. The books are organized into various subject matters, so that one can look both to the left and right in order perhaps, to find something else which might serve one’s search“. „You can keep up with our modern world (Online-information, z39.50)“. Both of these are quotes from library users at the Technical University Library in Hamburg-Harburg taken from a survey in the summer of 2005. This survey was designed to review the offerings of the library and their effectiveness. These quotes reflect that our libraries as well as our readers are making their way together into the future.

During the beginning of April 2008 more than 130 participants took part in a seminar held by the LIBER Architecture Group in Budapest and Debrecen in Hungary. The lecture topics included, but were not limited to ecology and architecture, the renovation and refurbishment of old library buildings and library lighting issues. Projects regarding library buildings were also discussed. The varied seminar programme was completed by the opportunity to visit local Hungarian libraries. Librarians and architects from many European countries participated in the seminar. This resulted in an international exchange concerning challenges faced in the building of a library. The National Széchényi Library of Budapest, and the University and National Library in Debrecen hosted a perfectly prepared seminar.

The willingness of the Freiburg colleagues to organize the 18th seminar of the LIBER Architecture Group enabled a colorful meeting and sightseeing program in Freiburg in April 2016 and also in the neighboring Strasbourg during the pre-seminar. It included visits to the newly built Universitätsbibliothek Freiburg, the transformed building of the Bibliothèque Nationale et Universitaire (BNU) in Strasbourg, as well as Médiathèque André Malraux also in Strasbourg.This meant that the visits in France offered a variety of different concepts for the construction and architectural realisation, even before the actual lectures and the professional exchange during the seminar. Contemporary taste and up-to-date life-style influenced more than just furnishing a library.

More than efficient retrieval and navigation strategies information literacy is the creativity to organize and shape one's own information process in a conscious and demand-oriented way. To reach diverse audiences and learning types a broad range of activities of libraries to promote information literacy is desirable - from complete curricula to single learning objects. The playful and explorative approach of the bilingual online tutorial DISCUS (Developing Information Skills & Competence for University Students) of the University Library of the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) has its counterpart in the learning target of

The „classical“ internet-offers are developing constantly, they integrate methods of film, TV and computer-games to attract attention. Also eLearning in didactical regard should orientate at behaviour of user and offering of media. The example of the online-tutorial on scholarly work shows the approach to prepare knowledge increased by methods of visualization. Content and learning space in VISION are designed in different ways. To well known methods like interactivity and simulations are added motion, time and space. Main focus is the application of emotions and dramaturgy at the so called learning theater, within the mediated knowledge is presented in different perspectives.

The 16th seminar of the LIBER Architecture Group, which took place in Prague in 2012, offered its participants a range of different topics dealing with library architecture. Special focus of the seminar was the reuse and refurbishment of existing buildings with regard to issues of sustainability. The presentations included general principles of the planning process in connection with the functions and roles of libraries within urban planning. They also informed on current developments in teaching and research at European universities. Projects were presented, which showed energy saving planning approaches as well as the reconstruction and complete reorganization of existing buildings in order to adapt them to current demands of library buildings. In addition, a crash course in acoustics was provided. Libraries as learning spaces were not only shown in the presentations during the seminar, but could be explored during the visits of the Technical National Library in Prague as well as in other Czech libraries. The program of the conference concluded with presentations, which focused in particular on the preservation of collections.

Publication repositories use a special interface for the provision of their metadata: OAI-PMH ("Protocol for Metadata Harvesting" of the Open Archive Initiative). Since this is not used by search engines such as Google Scholar, metadata is also provided in the machine-readable HTML header for a publication.