SumDU  has joined the project "Unity Initiative", which provides for the possibility of cooperation between Ukrainian Higher Education Institutions and universities in the EU or Britain. The University of Liverpool has been chosen for us.

On April 28, the first online meeting between Olga Krytska, Director of SumDU Library, Kostiantyn Kyrychenko, Head of the International Relations Department, and Phil Sykes, Director of Liverpool University Library, took place to identify key points and potential areas of cooperation.

The following issues were discussed at the meeting:

1. Access to resources and e-publications for students and the academic community of the university.
2. Work with statistical databases to support research.
3. Strategic directions of library development.
4. Seminars and training for students, academic community and librarians.

We have succeeded in further areas of cooperation:

1. Regarding access to Research4Life – if our academic community needs any closed access resources from the Research4Life platform, the Director of Liverpool University Library will do its utmost to help make them open.
2. Collaboration through the RapidILL interlibrary loan, created by Ex Libris, which is actively used by foreign colleagues. RapidILL will allow researchers, librarians and students to have fast and easy access to the collections of a global community numbering more than 500 libraries.
3. A number of online meetings between library management are planned to discuss strategic directions of library development for the next 5 years.
4. A series of KnowHow seminars, developed by Liverpool University Library staff, is planned for students, and scientists of SumDU on issues: open science, academic writing, data processing, copyright, etc.
5. Seminars for librarians to improve skills and share experiences.

Communication was useful and dynamic. We are confident that such meetings will be a good platform for sharing experiences between libraries.

We hope that further cooperation and joint projects with foreign colleagues-librarians will be important for the academic community of Sumy State University.