All right, we're going to start now
because we see that the people are coming.
Buenos días a todas y todos.
Bienvenidos a la... Good morning everyone.
Welcome to the International Conference on
Libraries, Open Science and Open Learning.
Welcome everybody.
Now, the speaker will be the Director for Library, Isabel.
Thank you very much, Deputy Director and
Director of the National Library of Copenhagen.
Sorry, I have to say something first.
I want to choose a director because for a reason
he could not avoid last minute, he could not come.
He was ready to come today.
He was going to come to guide this meeting, but he had a commitment.
So, let's excuse him.
All right.
Well, as I was saying, thank you very much, Deputy Director
and Director of UNESCO Cathedral for accompanying us today.
I want to welcome all the people that are here today, the
speakers and the people listening that are online and here today
that are going to be with us tomorrow, Open
Libraries, Open Science, Open Learning.
Under this title, our interest is to keep on digging into the knowledge
of investigation and learning in the national and European environment.
And the role that the university libraries
have and the opportunities is to support.
In these last years, this has been
one of the worst of this environment.
It disrupted knowledge and its incidence in the study.
The artificial intelligence, pandemic, fake news
make us to rethink our present and our future.
It is not so pleasant to see from the outside. Who has not received a comment from
a librarian or a librarian about our possibility of constantly reading in our work?
Well, it is not like that. It is a world that is constantly in
evolution, in which all these changes have a very important impact.
since they deal with the core of our work, access and dissemination
of information, the right and the rights to information.
In these days, we will talk about various areas related to open science,
such as evaluation, academic edition, the retention of rights by the authors,
open access, repositories and the future of libraries in this context.
And we will also talk about the alliances with European
universities, in this case, the universities at a distance.
We will be talking about long distance universities. In this sense, I
would like to remember that this event is inside the Erasmus DEF programme,
for which we have opened the participation to researchers, library
workers and technicians from the units of research dissemination.
We will have the opportunity to get to know and talk about different
programmes and projects, and European and international projects,
and we will have complementary sessions among different libraries
from long distance universities that work together on common topics.
To end up, I would like to thank for the sponsorship of the
companies that have contributed to the creation of this meeting.
They have collaborated over the last few days, but mostly
the company that is premium sponsor, which is Authentic,
who is an advanced technological solutions company that gives access to
knowledge and is backing up this conference as part of their continuous work.
towards improving the long distance platforms and digital libraries
that are making it easier to access knowledge in a more equitable way.
Lastly, I would also like to thank the library team, because
they are the ones that could have done a great effort,
so that these days could have been organized, and I want to thank
them for their support in all the projects that we have started.
I really hope that this programme is interesting, and that
the conversation that we are coming up with from these days
will help us to develop our professional environment so
that we can start creating new ideas. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Isabel. Now we are going to give the floor
to the UNESCO PhD, director Ángeles Elvira Paniagua.
I'm going to start just a little bit in English, and then
I'm going to continue in Spanish in this presentation.
So, thank you for being with us today here. I think it's a great
pleasure and honor on behalf of the UNESCO Chair in Distance Education
to welcome all of you to this interesting
conference that our library has organized.
I'm going to continue now in Spanish.
I would like to thank everyone's presence here, both the people
who are meeting here in person and also the people online
in this conference that our library has organized.
On behalf also of the UNESCO PhD of Long Distance Learning, I
would like to thank Isabel Calzas as the head of the library,
Beatriz Tejada as the deputy head of the library, and
also all the staff for the work that they've been doing.
I would like to congratulate them and also thank them for having invited
the UNESCO PhD of Long Distance Learning and its representatives.
Thank you for having invited me to work on this project.
Several months ago you invited me because you wanted to
do an open science and open education conference, right?
And for the UNESCO, everything that has to do with making science and education
get further and get to everyone is one of UNESCO's goals, as you all know.
I would also like to thank Ángel de Juánez, he's
the head of our International School of PhD Studies.
He's also, as a member of the UNESCO, working in the organization
and also the vice-rector of internationalization and multilingualism.
and thanks to their support we have been strengthened for the organization of this event
and everyone who has worked together with us as sponsors and everything, we thank them.
So, from the UNESCO chair, everything that has to do with open
science and open knowledge, that is very interesting for us.
We were one of the first chairs that started some years ago, we started in a digital era and we have always wanted to make long distance learning
and therefore education to an inclusive and quality education for everyone, thanks to the work of Lorenzo García Arellíos, our honorable president.
Our open education, long distance education has been taken to many places, mainly to Latin America
and now we have more than 80 experts trained in long distance and open knowledge and learning.
Many of them are part of the UNED, not only academic technicians
but also from the services that the library works with.
So, working together is a very important element for all of us.
So, in our chair, we could say that there is a lot of production of educational resources that are open, creating
science and we have received awards all over our experience thanks to our willingness of making education open.
I would also like to highlight our Ibero-American journal, the RIED, it has been edited by Lorenzo
García Arellíos and has worked together with AIESAD, also with the Technical University from Loja.
It's an ensemble of people working that has made this journal a reality in this purpose, it also has a very high positioning and it is an example of a good open
journal that what it wants is to make available for everyone all the advances in such an important aspect as it is open and long distance education right now.
So, we are delighted to be able to work together, to be able to be here and to highlight as the head of the library has said, a very important role that you all have, that libraries have when it comes to the work that
any university institution has to do when it comes to achieving that goal of putting all the educational resources available and to have an experience that is a collaboration experience and an open experience. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Ángeles.
Well, I'm going to speak in English for a change
here because this is an international conference.
So, first of all, I want to say again that I'd like to excuse our rector, Dr. Ricardo
Mayra Luzon, because he had a last minute unavoidable commitment and he couldn't come.
He was the one to be here presiding this event, but so I
would have to do it or I am doing it now on his behalf.
So, as a vice rector for internationalization and bilingualism, for me it is a privilege to address
you at the inauguration of this international conference, Open Libraries, Open Science, Open Learning.
This event epitomizes our commitment to fostering global
collaboration and multilingual engagement in research and education.
So, I want to congratulate and to thank, you know, both the library, the staff, of course, the director of the library and the
director and then the whole members of the UNESCO chair of distance education of UNED, the CUED, for the organization initiative.
And I also want to thank the PhD school director who's here for his collaboration as
well, because, of course, we know that open science has a lot to do with research.
Then this event reflects our shared vision of fostering cross border collaboration
where knowledge flows freely and languages serve as Bridges, not barriers.
Open science and learning transcend national boundaries,
as we know, enhancing both access and equity.
Through open dialogue and multilingual exchange, we can create a more inclusive and
interconnected academic world, one where innovation and discovery are accessible to all.
Thus, open access transcends borders, languages and disciplines, enabling the free flow of knowledge and together we're shaping
a future where innovation is not limited by geography or language, but enriched by diverse perspectives and shared expertise.
At the Vice Rectorate for Internationalization and Bilingualism, which I
coordinate, we always value and support this kind of initiatives, of course.
And in this particular case, I think we all know that libraries are a crucial part of universities and therefore this
conference makes a lot of sense within the frame of research and learning, not only in Europe, but all over the globe.
For libraries are essential support units for
universities in both research and learning.
It is worth noticing that this conference is also part of the Erasmus
staff program managed by the Vice Rectorate for Internationalization.
And so we here welcome the participation of researchers, librarians and technicians from
the scientific dissemination departments of Spanish or European universities in general.
We will have the opportunity to learn about and to discuss European and national programs, projects and commitments, as well
as to hold complementary working sessions between libraries of distance learning universities that work on common issues.
And of course, this conference can also be framed within the European universities alliance of which the UNED
now forms part, which is the Open EU, which will be the topic of the first roundtable of this conference.
As I always say, you know, the word university comes from universe
because knowledge and research are universal in every way.
And from here, the importance of open universities, which have always fostered having open
libraries, open science and, of course, open learning, the three main topics of this conference.
So congratulations again for this initiative and thank
you for being part of this transformative journey.
And we declare the conference open.