 Welcome to our session. I am Paula Corti and I am the Open Education Community Manager at Spark Europe and I am in Italy, in Monza. Hi, I'm Gemma Santos Hermosa, a lecturer from the University of Barcelona, the Faculty of Information Science and Audiovisual Media, and I'm in Barcelona, in Spain. And we'd like to share a synthesis of the Spark Europe survey 2021 report. Gemma, since you've been analyzing the responses we collected from participants, I will ask you some questions, okay? Okay, sure. That's a good way to provide a photograph of the European academic libraries in relation also with the UNESCO year recommendation. So let's start. Okay, then. So first question. If you would give participants to this session, a bird eye view on the European scenario in relation to implementing the UNESCO year recommendation so far. Which are the key information that you would start with? Yeah, well, first of all, I think some general data as you have the idea. So for example, 233 responses we have right now. And 111 institutions were participating in this survey based on 28 countries and some curiosity is that most of them were from Spain, Poland, UK, and Finland. And the most common type of organization was the university, bigger university, and what else? Maybe I can mention that most of the respondents have been less than five years in open education. So from this data, we can observe that the European academic libraries seem to be young in the OER and open education field. And they offer like more support in open education initiatives than leadership. But we will see this. Thank you. And what about the pandemic? Did the COVID-19 impact raising awareness in open education and using OER? Yes, indeed. The pandemic seems to have impacted more in raising awareness of openness and in the use of OER than provoking changes in the open education policies development. This is due probably because policies needs more time to be mature and also to be created. So while in any case, this is a process. And given the situation to the survey described, it seemed to be even more urgent to act on open education and do our best to implement the UNESCO ERA recommendation at all levels. Are librarians aware of its existence and its contents? Or do we need to work more on raising awareness about this tool in our hands? Well, yes, I will say both. The majority of librarians are aware of the OER recommendations. So they have certain familiarity or they have even taken some actions for its implementation. But there is also further dissemination required. So I think that we should make some marketing of the UNESCO recommendation through the communication channels that are available for us to be in contact with our librarian community and also our colleagues. So I will say from the SPAR website and the ENOEL network to our internal library meetings and also workshops that we organize at an institutional level. Well, the ENOEL will do certainly something around this, I'm sure, very soon also. So maybe this is the best moment to start diving into the action areas of the recommendation itself. What do you think? Let's start with Action Area 1 then. And Action Area 1 relates to the capacity building mainly. So what are librarians doing to build capacity and what is their role in it? Are they leading? Are they advocating? Which are their main fields of action? And finally, do you see differences comparing these answers to the previous SPAR QO survey edition? Well, libraries are advocating for open education and OER in different ways. The top strategies that we can observe are related to digital communication and also training. Concretely, through the website, through presentations, social media channels and other trainings. In addition, the top areas where libraries provide open education services are. In the leadership role, it will be information literacy, including open education and also management and storage services. For example, repositories. And in a more supportive role, the answers were knowledge exchange and training. So these results match with the traditional services and experiences and expertise areas that libraries usually have. However, we can see also from this data. That also libraries are not leaving the supply of educational resources in courses because maybe it's a duty of their teachers. They are becoming supported partners. And it seems that is a new area or involvement of the libraries. And as you say, also some comparison about the previous SPAR QO survey, I think that there are some of them. First, there is a similar advocating pattern in general, except for the social media channels, the newsletters, blogs and live guides, which now have more and more antagonists in the currency survey. And this is something to say. And as for the top areas providing open educational services previously, the top one was advised on copyright. And now it's in the third position. So this is also something different. And in the previous questionnaire in 2020, knowledge exchange and training that now are in the first positions, they obtained fewer answers and they were in the fifth position in the previous one. Wow, very interesting. These changes that are happening recently are very interesting, I think, in our perspective. And given the scenario provided by your answers so far, I'm getting more and more curious about Action Area 2, which is related to developing a supportive policy. Can you please give us a picture of the European situation around the creation and the adoption of open education policies. Can you tell us if you see any progress compared to the previous edition of the survey also please. In this case, as you can see from the data, 27 institutions have a policy addressing open education in any way, and another 27 have it under development and 25 more under consideration. From these 27 institutions having policies we can see that 17 are part of a larger policy and 10 are a standalone open educational policies. And for the second question that you asked Paola, comparing the current survey with the first edition, we can see that the total number of policies are the same. 27 in each edition, but there are like some difference. First, there is more specification about the kind of policies that these institutions have. And secondly, there is an increase of library involvement in both kind of policies. For example, 10 institutions versus four as for the standalone policies and since 17 institutions versus 14 as for the global policies one. Well, things are changing right even if it's happening. Let's move to action area three of the recommendation which leads us to a more human related perspective now. This action in fact is meant to encourage effective inclusive and equitable access to quality or you are. And the librarians can definitely have a key role in relation to this action, but are they adding it already. What did they tell us through their answers. Our respondents are more involved in designing accessible or yards, probably due to the greater work that academic libraries have already done in terms of accessibility. It's something that libraries normally do. The other inclusive characteristics as you can see from the data were like more equally considered. Let me let me tell you like some examples because some libraries share more information about this, how they ensure inclusive apps aspects you know yards. So for instance, in a national overview, there is a country discussion in some countries and also institutionally, there is like a general value of the university to be followed with as an institutional matter also being applied at the library in some general specific way. There are also some libraries which report that inclusivity was a criteria for the library collection development policy. And also they have some of them mentioned that they have a pilot project that they are conducting on this and that they collaborate in the institute in institutional committees offices and also working groups. Well, finally, libraries are covering the roles that they deserve some somewhere at least okay so it seems that there is still a lot to do but something is changing and I'm very happy that the responses are providing us data in this direction. About the sustainability, which is a critical issue, I believe action area for of the recommendation of the UNESCO your recommendation talks about it and our librarians welcome to work on or to make the adoption progress and adoption adoption and adoption also okay, because I'm interested in knowing more about their working hours, but also about funding options. Okay, can you take us in between the answers to have a clear picture of the sustainability of open educational resources in 2021 at European level please. Yes, as for the staff dedicated to open education in the libraries, the health of respondents refer to have one full time librarian or even one part time person dedicated to that. Some of them explained that they have these librarians integrated into a broader roles, for instance, in the collection team and in the Lyonson librarians role, and that's why they have half part time one. The other half of their respondents is divided between those with more staff between two or five people working on this and those who don't have any personal any staff working on this. And as for funding and economical aspects, most of the respondents in form, not to have a grand program going on in that moment to encourage and assist members in the organizations to create the yards, but some of them few have some program in this respect. So, I'm not sure that I think that this can be due or probably the lack of policies. There is a lack of policies which boost incentives. And on the other hand, there is also some European Commission funding that they can apply all of us we can apply for. And this is like a positive way of calling as well. That's definitely a chance. I think we are almost at the end of the survey now we are going to talk about action area five, promoting and reinforcing international cooperation that's what we do in the annual right. Are academic librarians actively networking to which extent and that to which level from a geographical perspective, which means also a political perspective right. It seems that they are like more involved in open educational sharing networks in a local national or global level, then in open educational projects which promote international collaboration. In any case, it's likely that both are very closely connected. And even I will say that some of these networks that they are now participating also will promote and generate international projects and programs in midterm. And also, there was some respondents who share some qualitative information with us some examples, and they mentioned that a national level. There were networks as finest university network fun, or the brevium which is the Spanish universities libraries network. Some others respondents where sharing information about open educational, more specific open educational question on network, such as the police coalition for open education, or they are in their age from Germany. And finally, there were also global networks as our network is for Europe, you know, and also, you know, which is a young European university networks, and our audience, or even open that in this case is related to repositories, as you know. Yeah, which are really important for the development of sustainability around the OER also so we're going to dive into this more in the future, very soon, I think. So, to wrap up this, this interview and our explanation of the results of the survey. I would really like to ask you a final question that is in a way equal to action. What can librarians do to contribute in an even more effective way, because I'm sure they can, and I'm sure that many of them are already doing that, but what do you think are the next steps. Yes, this is an interesting question because librarians are doing a lot. But some of them are still in an initial phase. And maybe they don't know how to continue so all these kind of networks like as part of Europe, you know, and other kind of projects in the international or even national or regional will help them to improve and to do like more open educational initiatives. I would like to say also that the collaboration between different units in the institution, the collaboration with teachers with technicians with repositories administrators and pedagogues, all these kind of people who support in education and the teaching and learning will be good to start with. Librarians are well positioned and now it's time that they start to do like more things. I'm not sure if our audience have like more things to share with us maybe, but do you think Paula. It would be honestly very interesting to answer your question after the end of this video and if you are here and if you are from Europe, it would be also our pleasure to welcome you in our annual network. So please feel free to write us and to join in. But now we are ready to listen to you directly and answer your question and in the meanwhile, thank you for listening and to stay with us. Thank you. Thank you.