Today has been the first day of library group activities at the University of Bergen (UiB) and it has been great to learn about the University Library and get a taste of the student experience here. We started the day by meeting at the Arts and Humanities Library (http://www.uib.no/ub/svh/en) where the Library Director Randi Elisabeth Taxt gave a very informative talk on the library, giving an overview of the staff structure, library projects, and the challenges faced by the library, some of which arise when striving to meet the library’s goals. We were told by Randi that the overall goal was to be a ‘state of the art research library’ and to do this, they aim to have excellent collections, serve the research communities by providing relevant library services, to be an attractive place for students, and to contribute to information and education. One of the challenges faced, which refers to the objective to have excellent collections, is that of the rising cost of electronic subscriptions, especially as there is a greater trend for purchasing e-resources than printed items in libraries today. This led to a discussion on e-books and how these are used by UiB students, a talk which I am hoping to continue when we meet again on Thursday. Randi also spoke about the library’s repository and the challenges involved in ensuring as much research is made public as possible. We will be finding out about the repository in more detail on Friday morning.

After the talk, we were given a tour of the library by Ane Landøy, the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Librarian. It was really interesting to see how the library was arranged; it was very open and light and seemed to be popular with the students (the first and second photos above show the library's exterior and interior). I was very excited to see the automatic check-in system that I heard about from my colleague who attended the Staff Mobility Week last year! Very impressive!

After lunch, we visited the Department of Special Collections (http://www.uib.no/ub/spesial/en), where Rune Kyrkjebø, a Senior Academic Librarian, gave a very interesting presentation on the collections (see third photo above for the department's interior). The collections are divided into three areas: manuscripts and rare books; picture collections (including photographs) and a closed access books depot. Most of the items are about local or national Norwegian history, or classical Norse philology. The oldest item in the collection is a parchment dating back to 1293. The books are all on the library OPAC, but the manuscripts and archives have a separate catalogue, a searchable PDF list available here (in Norwegian) http://www.uib.no/ub/spesial/ressurser/manuskript-og-arkivkataloger. There have been several digitisation projects to make the image collections available online, as well as the digitisation of the library’s large photograph collection, which has its own website http://www.ub.uib.no/avdeling/billed/. The photographs, which date from the 1830s, were published to the internet using the library’s ‘home-made’ database.

It has been an information-packed day and I look forward to talking about what I have learnt in more detail with colleagues when I return home. The rain has stopped and it is looking brighter outside, which is perfect timing for our guided tour of the city this evening, and I’m really looking forward to discovering more about Bergen and its history.