The LIBER Award for Library Innovation was instituted by LIBER with support from OCLC.
It recognises the three abstracts which best describe innovative work within the overall theme of the Annual Conference ‘The Power of Libraries in an Uncertain World’.
. The criteria (in order of importance) for the Award are:
- Level of innovation
- Impact on the wider library community
- Originality
- Quality of the abstract
The three abstracts which best fulfil these criteria are selected by the Conference Programme Committee. The Award comprises the opportunity to present the winning abstracts at the LIBER Annual Conference 2026 in Trondheim (Norway), free Conference registration, and travel expenses and accommodation.
The Conference Programme Committee for the 55th LIBER Annual Conference has decided to present the 2026 LIBER Award for Library Innovation to:
Libraries United: Sumy State University and the University of Liverpool
Matthew Greenhall, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom; Olha Krytska and Yana Fandikovia, Sumy State University, Ukraine
DSpace Reimagined: AI-Powered Search and Accessibility
Piotr Masalski, Mateusz Adamiak, Łukasz Wawer, Małgorzata Paszkowska, and Maciej Iwaniszewski, PCG Academia, Poland
Monitoring Strategic Technologies Using Open Research Information
Matthijs de Zwaan, Silvia Fattori, and Ruben Lacroix, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
We congratulate the Award winners and look forward to presenting them with their Awards at the Annual Conference in Trondheim this summer!