BETH 2022

What will theological libraries look like in the future when scholarly communication continues to change so drastically? For the time being, theologians still primarily publish traditional articles and books with legacy publishers like Brill, De Gruyter, etc. However, there is ever-growing pressure to adapt more Open Science practices, e.g. by making publications freely available through institutional repositories, by immediately publishing in open access or by focusing on a broader range of possible research outputs. This greater diversity in research output, publishing models, and access methods fundamentally extends and alters the notion of a ‘library collection’ and challenges the basic functions of dispensing access to, organizing, and preserving information.
How will theological libraries exert these functions in an effective way in the future? Do librarians need to rethink how they spend their budget and focus their efforts – e.g. by shifting expenditure on journal subscriptions and the conservation of physical books to investing in diamond open access initiatives and to making publications published in open access easier to find?
During the BETH conference, we want to discuss these issues in a panel discussion with experts from both the academic and the publishing world. These experts will first share their vision of the future of 'scholarly communication in theology and its impact on libraries’, followed by a discussion with the audience chaired by Demmy Verbeke, Associate Professor of Open Scholarship and Head of KU Leuven Libraries Artes.