THE FUTURE ROLE OF CENL

1. THE FUTURE ROLE OF CENL Roly Keating, Chief Executive, The British Library

2. The key questions • How we can engender still more mutual support and learning, ensuring that our meetings keep us fully engaged with a constantly changing digital world? • What should be our future strategic focus looking forward to the Year 2020?

3. Our purposes as a group…? 1. An important source of mutual support and fraternity for the Directors of the National Libraries of Europe. 2. To promote and stimulate innovation, to mentor development, and to ensure that best practice is shared in the interest of collective capacity building. 3.To undertake shared collaborative enterprises in support of our mission. 4. To promote the development of common technical standards and tools as the basis for these cooperative ventures.

4. Our purposes as a group…? 5. Collectively to extend the reach of our institutions beyond our respective national borders to Europe and the wider world, and to bring Europe and the world to our user constituencies. 6. To advocate at pan-European level for the importance of continued investment in national libraries and for appropriate systems of regulatory and financial support. 7. To strengthen our strategic collaboration with other cultural heritage and related institutions in the digital world.

5. Future challenges • The changing nature of our users and audiences and how their needs and expectations are changing - not just research and academic communities but also the wider audience of engaged learners and the general public.

6. Future challenges • The challenge of fostering a culture of creativity, innovation and openness in our organisations, and of growing new sources of revenue, sharing experiences (positive and negative) wherever possible.

7. Future challenges • The ‘globalising’ nature of digital media, and ensuring that as a family of European organisations we stay closely in touch with developments beyond Europe in a rapidly changing digital landscape.

8. Thank you