Building the European Library of the Future Through Our CIVICA Alliance

Sciences Po is a founding member of CIVICA, the European university of social sciences. The CIVICA alliance benefits our students, professors, and researchers, but also our library and its librarians!

Learn more about what we are aiming to build with our 9 partner universities and about the staff mobility 4 of our librarians experienced at the London School of Economics (LSE, United Kingdom) and the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE, Sweden).

Building the “European Library of the Social Sciences”

Christopher Landes, Director of the library at the Hertie School (Germany), listed three of the main strategic goals set by the 10 university libraries that are part of CIVICA:

• Exploring the possibility of joint licensing of electronic resources, through a feasibility study conducted by Sciences Po,
• Developing the information literacy skills of CIVICA students,
• Enhancing the visibility of research publications, through a better presentation of the Open Access collections.

4 Sciences Po librarians at LSE and SSE

Delphine Lereculeur and Noémie Musnik: 5 days at SSE

Delphine and Noémie chose to share their experience at SSE Library through a photo report:

Muriel Dennefeld and Natalia La Valle:  5 days at LSE

Muriel and Natalia learned about the specificities of their host library: their documentary policy, service philosophy, departments organisation, collections, reader habits, etc. They were most impressed by their focus on Open Access, which is also one of the main challenges of Sciences Po's library. 

They were inspired by the LSE librarians activities such as supporting research, promoting the Women’s Library collection and other special collections, organising actions aimed at well-being, inclusion, and equality for students and library staff, or initiatives aimed at the general population (exhibition space open to the neighbourhood, welcoming disadvantaged schools, etc.).

The two librarians met colleagues from other partner universities – Bocconi University (Italy) and Central European University (Austria) – and visited renown libraries in London, like the Senate House Library. They also went on their own for a little tour of the Maughan library (at King's College).

Overall, the Sciences Po librarians learned a lot about LSE library, LSE as a whole, and British universities.