Cooperations of libraries of public universities in Austria in the context of the higher education area structural funding projects

Abstract

For a long time, the funding of innovative cooperation projects of university libraries at public universities with central funds was a desideratum. Start-up financing for university cooperation projects, including administrative projects, was provided by the calls for proposals for the Higher Education Area Structural Funding projects in 2013 and 2017, respectively, by the Federal Ministry responsible for science. Among the projects that were selected by the Federal Ministry were also five designed on the initiative of the Forum Universitätsbibliotheken Österreichs. The topics range from repositories and research data to Open Access and Open Educational Resources to procurement law for scholarly literature. The results already presented and the projects still to be implemented make an important contribution to ensuring that the information infrastructure in Austria can be developed competitively and future-proof for research and teaching in a European and international context.