Developing a global information learning policy at Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium

Louvain-la-Neuve is located in Belgium, 25 km South-East from Brussels. The university comprises a large international community: 21000 students and a staff of 3000 academics and scientists and more than 2000 collaborators. There are more than 200 research units.

The Catholic University of Louvain was founded in 1425 in Louvain (Leuven) in the Flemish part of Belgium. But in 1968, due to political and linguistic reasons, the university was divided into 2 separated universities: a Flemish one which remained in Leuven and a French one, which moved to the French speaking part of Belgium. A new town was then created with name “Louvain-la-Neuve” (LLN). The university of LLN is the major university of the French community in Belgium.

In 1970, the former library was shared in 2 parts. The collections were unfortunately divided according to the inscriptions numbers : the even numbers moved to the young university and the uneven numbers remained in the Flemish one.

So, in the seventies, in the new university of LLN, instead of one central library, 7 independent libraries were created, each one serving one or more faculties and being an autonomous entity.

But, with the emergence of the electronical resources, such an independent management of libraries became problematic.

So at the end of the nineties, with the development of the virtual library, the authorities of the university decided to create a “central service of the libraries”, managed by a chief librarian. For this, the UCL called upon an external audit service.