University of Groningen Library, The Netherlands

The University of Groningen Library is located in The University of Groningen (UG), a public research institution in the city of Groningen in the northern Netherlands. The university, founded in the early 1600s, is the second-oldest university in the Netherlands.

The Thammasat University Library collection includes a number of books published by UG.

These include Transport and communications output and productivity in Brazil and the USA, 1950-90 by Nanno Mulder; Rural development in Northern Thailand; an interpretation and analysis by Cornelis Lodswijk Johannes Van der Meer; Is debt neutral in Keynesian models? by Bas B. Bakker; China’s manufacturing performance in comparative perspective, 1980-1992 by Adam Szirmai and Ren Ruoen; and Postwar economic growth and structural change in Thailand by Nicolaas Vanderveen, among others.

According to its website, the UG Library has the following mission and organization:

The University Library (UL), which consists of the UL City Centre, UL Zernike and the Central Medical Library (CMB), is responsible for the academic information provision for the University of Groningen.

“Your research and study partner”

The University of Groningen Library is an innovative, professional and service-driven centre of academic knowledge. It is the central information and study centre in the North. It cherishes its responsibility towards all students, academic and support staff of the University, as well as members of the public, enabling them to access the information they need in the most reliable, efficient and convenient manner possible, utilize the latest technologies to improve the availability of information, promote the University’s research output through the research repository and databases, and preserve research data, academic scholarship and human knowledge for future generations.

Among library events has been a lecture series on Treasures from the University Library:

The Special Collections department of the University of Groningen Library hosts thousands of old and often rare works, among which manuscripts, incunables, historical atlases and maps. Many researchers from within and without the University of Groningen use works from this collection for their research.

In the lecture series Treasures from the University Library, researchers using material from our Special Collections talk about their research, while the objects in question are also present.

Another public event was devoted to promoting the possibility of publishing free open access research in more than 9,000 journals. Ms. Giulia Trentacosti, Open Access and Scholarly Communication Specialist, gave the following presentation:

“There are new developments in scholarly communication almost every day, some of which, for example Plan S, have an enormous impact on the scientific community. We are here to help researchers find their way in this ever-changing and complex area with information and advice.”

Since April 2018, the University of Groningen Library (UB) employs an expert specialized in scholarly communication and open access in particular: Giulia Trentacosti. Giulia holds a Master’s degree and PhD in Publishing Studies from Edinburgh Napier University.

What is your role as Open Access Specialist?

The main part of my job is to provide practical information and tools for researchers as well as advice for policy officers and research support staff on everything that concerns open access and more broadly open science.

Together with the UB open access team I inform staff about developments in open access – from publication outlets to funding options. My counterpart at the UMCG is Peter Braun with whom I closely collaborate. Besides, I am the project manager of ‘Open Access Services’. This is a two-year project to further improve our open access support services university-wide.

What can researchers expect from you and the open access team?

There are new developments in scholarly communication almost every day, some of which, for example Plan S, have an enormous impact on the scientific community. We are here to help researchers find their way in this ever-changing and complex area with information and advice. We are constantly developing more user-friendly ways for UG staff to approach us and quickly find the information they need.

Tailor-made advice

If you have questions about where to publish open access (free of charge) or which licenses you should opt for when submitting your article we can help with that. If you are applying for a grant and you don’t know what the open access policy of the funder entails, turn to us. We provide tailor-made advice for researchers. Besides, we regularly issue updates on deals with publishers, funding news and guidelines through our website and the Open Science Newsletter. We organize workshops, instructions and give presentations on pressing open access issues. We also invite researchers to contribute to the Open Science Blog and our symposium on open science research practices on 22 October.

Which development in open access currently affects researchers the most? How can you help?

That is definitely Plan S. Plan S requires that, from 2021, scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants must be published in compliant open access journals or platforms. We will accompany the UG scientific community through this major transition and provide them with clear information and advice.

Other library events have included a virtual exhibition of manuscripts in the Groningen collection.

Among many distinguished alumni of UG are the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga, one of the founders of modern cultural history.

The TU Library owns a number of books by and about Johan Huizinga.

Huizinga had an aesthetic approach to history, where art and spectacle played an important part. His most famous work is The Autumn of the Middle Ages, also translated from the Dutch as The Waning of the Middle Ages and Autumntide of the Middle Ages.

Here are some quotes from the writings of Professor Huizinga:

• Play is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes human society, and animals have not waited for man to teach them their playing.
• The spirit of playful competition is, as a social impulse, older than culture itself and pervades all life like a veritable ferment. Ritual grew up in sacred play; poetry was born in play and nourished on play; music and dancing were pure play….We have to conclude, therefore, that civilization is, in its earliest phases, played. It does not come from play…it arises in and as play, and never leaves it.
• If we are to preserve culture we must continue to create it.
• You can deny, if you like, nearly all abstractions: justice, beauty, truth, goodness, mind, God. You can deny seriousness, but not play.
• History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us.
• You only live a short time… and you are dead a long time.
• The things which can make life enjoyable remain the same. They are, now as before, reading, music, fine arts, travel, the enjoyment of nature, sports, fashion, social vanity (knightly orders, honorary offices, gatherings) and the intoxication of the senses.
• History can predict nothing except that great changes in human relationships will never come about in the form in which they have been anticipated.
• Quite apart from any conscious program, the great cultural historians have always been historical morphologists: seekers after the forms of life, thought, custom, knowledge, art.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)