For many years, IZUM has been organising traditional international COBISS conferences, where librarians and IT experts in the region can meet and exchange knowledge, opinions and experiences. The COBISS 2022 Conference was the 23rd in succession.

Under the slogan Working together to build confidence in science and development. the conference was held live from 19 to 20 October 2022 at IZUM in Maribor as well as online.

It offered multiple interesting topics from different areas of science and librarianship. We hosted 25 presenters from Slovenia and abroad.

The main topic were the presentations of the new features of the COBISS system, during which we took a peek at the open access to data and IZUM’s support for open science. We touched upon the topic of open access to digital databases in the National Library of Scotland. We highlighted the IFLA standards, which are a criteria for excellence in the library and information science. We focused on the authority and research data and highlighted the needs for a responsible management of research data. We also discovered the tasks of the Central Specialised Information Centres (CSICs) as well as new features in SICRIS and COBISS applications – in COBISS3, COBISS4, mCOBISS, COBISS+ and dCOBISS. We presented the activities directed towards development and expansion of the COBISS system products. Our colleagues from the COBISS.net network presented the roles of the National COBISS Centres; we also touched upon the topic of training Croatian students in the field of COBISS3/Cataloguing.

We took a peek into the history of the IZUM building, since we took the opportunity to commemorate the 30th anniversary of IZUM as an independent public institution. We gave out gratitude awards to formally thank our colleagues that have been contributing to IZUM’s story for more than 30 years.

In two days, there were 24 presentations attended by more than 600 participants from 12 countries in person at IZUM as well as online via Zoom.

Thank you to everyone who paid us a visit and who followed the conference. See you soon.

Yours faithfully,

Dr. Aleš Bošnjak, Director of IZUM