8th Special and University Libraries Conference is an annual conference organized by Croatian Library Association, Division for Special and University Libraries, National and University Library Zagreb and Library Association Rijeka. Venue is our beautiful Opatija, hotel Opatija. Each year there are about 120 participants from special and university/faculty libraries around Croatia and we like to invite international speakers to hear international experiences regarding the topic. This year's topic will be "New strategies in special and university libraries: advocacy and fundraising". We have invited two colleagues from US, Susan Fifer Canby, Vice President of Libraries and Information Services at the National Geographic Society, Susan will step through strategies she and some of her American colleagues use to provide a competitive edge to their organizations. She will illustrate ways to contribute to the bottom line, ways to save money, to improve information discovery and knowledge sharing, to communicate effectively with management, and to provide leadership; and Alberta Arthus, she has a private owned company that helps US universities in fund raising. A colleague from Finland, Kristiina Hormia Poutanen is going to present us Finnish experiences with advocacy and fund raising. Kristiina is the head of the National Electronic Library Services department at National Library of Finland. The department is responsible for the coordination of the National Library Network Services for the libraries network and the coordination and management of the National Electronic Library programme, FinELib. Coordination of the National Library Network Services for the libraries network is a new task for the library. Other presentations will be from our Croatian colleagues presenting their projects that are going on or other experiences regarding fund raising and advocacy. Also a project "A model of the University of Zagreb library system" will be presented. It is a project funded by EU, Tempus SCM (C015B04).

Two workshops will be organized:
Edita Bačić, Davorka Pšenica: Advocacy for special and university libraries
Sonja Avalon, Vesna Golubović: Acquisition and interlibrary loan – new business strategy

Bus transfer from Zagreb to Opatija will be organized. It will leave from City Hall on 26th April at 16.00. and return from Opatija after the excursion on 29th April in the afternoon hours.

We have reserved rooms in hotel Opatija for conference participants. Please contact hotel directly: reservation@hotel-opatija.hr or +385/51/271-388