• Copyright and legal matters: influencing copyright and legal matters at the policy level and providing advice and guidance for researchers.

• Text and data mining: developing library capacity and services to support the uptake of text and datamining.

• Positioning the libraries as a hub for digital humanities and digital cultural heritage: strengthening and developing library services in this area.

• Information ethics: in the digital environment, the norms and standards regarding ethical behaviour are changing and adapting to technological possibilities. Libraries need to engage in and advocate for developing information ethics in the interest of the research community.

Libraries partnering in research infrastructure

This strategic direction has a more technical nature: how can research libraries create and develop interoperable and scalable infrastructures and services that support sustainable knowledge and that are seamlessly linked with services at the institutional level. Below a list of possible themes:

• Shared services & cloud services: libraries are moving to shared services that need a solid foundation regarding funding, governance, trust and an evolving technical and social infrastructure. An important example is the Open Science Cloud (OSC). Another example is shared services with regard to long-term preservation.

• Semantic interoperability; open (linked) data and big data: research libraries are experts in metadata and ontologies and need to take a leadership role and to engage with other stakeholders to ensure interoperability and accessibility of content.

• Data stewardship: the development of criteria and guidelines regarding data stewardship and data curation, which are increasingly important for research libraries.

• Disciplinary partnership: the different requirements of diverse scientific disciplines need to be translated into scalable infrastructure. This infrastructure should ultimately enable cross-disciplinary collaboration.