From 15th – 17th October, Library & University Collections played host to FORCE2019 – a leading international conference bringing together an interdisciplinary group of professionals interested in scholarly communications, research data management and open science. This is the annual conference of FORCE11 (Future of Research Communications and e-Scholarship).
We hosted a day of workshops at the Edinburgh Grosvenor Hotel followed by the main conference at Murrayfield and an evening reception at Ghillie Dhu. A small group of delegates also visited the library on Friday 18th and were impressed by the digital wall, the makers space and our Nathan Coley artwork.
More than 300 delegates from 23 countries attended the event and initial feedback has been excellent in terms of the content, the venue and the organisation. Two comment which spring to mind were that this was “a real A-List conference” and “a splendid event and a galaxy of gathering”.
The local organising team, chaired by Fiona Wright have every reason to be incredibly proud of doing such a fantastic job to bring this conference to Scotland, and to the University of Edinburgh.
The programme was jam-packed with superb speakers, including Professor Lesley McAra as our opening keynote. I don’t have time for a fuller write-up right now but you can see lots of great ideas on Twitter via the hashtag #FORCE2019.
-Dominic Tate, Head of Library Research Support
