Nearly 400 participants from more than 30 countries gathered in September at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (known as ETH Zürich) for the 7th IGeLU Annual meeting. Besides the sessions on company’s and product development by Ex Libris, IGeLU update and two inspiring keynotes by Paul Ayris and Sally H. McCallum, business sessions of all Product and Special Interest Working Groups were part of the programme, just as well as nearly 50 sessions and workshops on user developments and experiences with Ex Libris products. During the conference, the newly founded Special Interest Working Group on Open Linked Data had the first face to face meeting with Ex Libris developers and agreed on first steps for future collaboration.
In Zurich also the first joined IGeLU Product Working Group with ELUNA was established for the next gen system Alma with early adopters of the system from all around the world.
As usual, a day before the IGeLU conference the meeting of the representatives of the National User Groups took place on Monday September 10th to discuss matters of interest with the Steering Committee and with Ex Libris.
One of the important outcomes of the INUG meeting was the commitment of Ex Libris to improve the Opac via Primo functionalities according to the user needs. Meanwhile, the list of priorities has been passed to Ex Libris for evaluation. (see the Primo/Metalib PWG report) Besides the official programme a lot of networking took place among the users and with Ex Libris staff, during coffee and lunch breaks and on many other occasions especially during the social event at the Kongresshaus Zurich on Tuesday evening where Mark Dehmlow and Lukas Koster again excited the audience with their new song “Set it free” .
The beautiful location on the Lake of Zurich, the honourable building of the ETH and the hospitability and perfect organisation by the colleagues of the ETH library made the conference a great experience for us all.
Jirka Kende, IGeLU Chair