I have the great pleasure of being editor-in-chief of Danish library journal REVY. REVY is journal for Danish Research Library Association and is published four times a year in 2.100 copies per issue and open access online at www.issuu.com/revy. On board I got a great team of editors: Mikael Elbæk (Technical University of Denmark), Lotte Thing Christensen (University Library of Southern Denmark) and Anders Bonatto Fisker (The Royal Library).

We just put out issue no 2 of 2015 which among other contains my interview with new head of the library at Technical University of Denmark, Gitte Bruun Jensen, Mads Korsgaard’s article on a great qualitative survey of the researchers information seeking patterns and library service needs at The Faculty Library of Social Sciences, Copenhagen University Library, a status on the Danish work with research data from Mogens Sandfær and a great piece by library student organisation BADASS on the need for focus on data analysis and handling in education at The Royal School of Library and Information Science in Denmark.

Front cover of the new REVY issue: Gitte Bruun Jensen posing 

“The Library” is strong brand

My interview with Gitte took place back in the beginning of February. Gitte came from a position as deputy director for The Library at Technical University of Denmark  so she knows the ship she will be sailing. It was a great talk circling around leadership, library outreach to researchers, reinvention of the physical library space and the library as a brand.

Interesting note on the last subject is, at the library at Technical University has been changing name for a few times. It was original called a library but turned to the term “Knowledge Center” some years ago. This was during a process were they wanted to re-brand and re-new the function of the library and I guess it’s sometimes makes that process easier or more palpable if you change the name of what you are trying to get away from – in this case probably to get away from the book image that is connected with the library brand. I think this often turns out as a mistake. Instead of communicating and working around changes connected to the original brand (Library) you invent a whole new brand (Knowledge Center) which you need to fill with content from the beginning often conflicting with discurses connected with the old brand. Who on earth knows what a Knowledge Center is? It could be anything anywhere and as Gitte puts it: “The Library is a strong brand and people knows what it stands for – we are here to help the University educate and research”. Now they switched back to using the term “Library” again.

Read the interview here (in Danish)

Call for articles

If you have a great library story (or related to library somehow) and looking for at place to publish it please write me at cula at kb dot dk. REVY both publish articles in Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and English. All articles in the current issue is in Danish.

The editorial team of REVY: from left Anders, Lotte, Christian and Mikael