Director of the National and University Library of BiH at the annual Conference of Directors of European National Libraries

On 19 October 2020, the first online meeting of CENL (Conference of European National Librarians) was held.

CENL is a network created in 1987. This network of Europe's national libraries aims to increase and strengthen the role of national libraries in Europe, in particular as regards their responsibilities in maintaining national cultural heritage and ensuring the accessibility of knowledge in this field. CENL consists of the national libraries of Europe, whose community currently includes 49 national libraries from 45 European countries.

After greetings from the CENL Chairman and the Executive Director of the British Library, Roly Keating, in the first session, the participants adopted the minutes from last year's meeting held in the city of Mo I Rana, as well as strategic and financial plans for 2019, 2020 and 2021.

The second session of the meeting was dedicated to the Covid-19 pandemic - the impact, opportunities and challenges for national libraries. Attendees were divided into groups in which they discussed the physical library after the Covid 19 pandemic, inclusive approach - digital literacy, online services after the pandemic, collecting - change and opportunities and the workforce - the National Library from Home?

In the group Labor Force - National Library from Home? also participated Dr. Ismet Ovčina, director of the National and University Library of BiH. During the discussion about working from home, Dr. Ovčina spoke about the experiences of NUBBiH, and emphasized that the Library was never completely closed.
Work and correspondence with publishers was also organized from the homes of librarians, so that the CIP Department and the ISSN, DOI, ISBN and ISMN Agencies were available during regular business hours. The Office of the Director, the Crisis Staff worked in the Library, and it was possible to leave the obligatory copies of the material that was left in quarantine according to the recommendations of the WHO and the Crisis Staff/FMZ Headquarters.

The third session contained reports and presentations from the National Library of Lithuania, the National Library of Austria, the British Library on the implementation of the Erland Kolding Nielson grant, and information on the winners of the COVID-19 Support Fund and fundraising projects and community-related resources that are underrepresented in the collections of CENL member libraries (Hidden Stories Support Fund).

CENL will allocate funds to four national libraries, including the National and University Library of BiH, to support applied projects against Covid 19.
Finally, CENL confirmed that the next annual meetings will be held at the Royal Library of Belgium (Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België) in 2021, the National Library of Turkey (Millî Kütüphaneo) in 2022 and the National Library of France (Bibliothèque nationale de France) in 2023, expressing hope that these meetings will be held in better conditions.