The Valencian Public Universities sign, today, Tuesday, May 11, an agreement for the constitution of a Consortium of their libraries (Consortium BUVAL), signed by Carlos Hermenegildo Caudevilla, vice-rector of the University of València, on behalf of the rector Mª Vicenta Mestre Escrivá; Virgina Vega Carrero, vice-rector of Digital Resources and Documentation representing Francisco José Mora Más, rector of the Polytechnic University of Valencia; Amparo Navarro Fauré, rector of the University of Alicante; Eva Alcón Soler, rector of the Jaume I University of Castelló and Juan José Ruiz Martínez, rector of the Miguel Hernández University of Elche, with the presence of most of the vice-rectors and directors of the five universities. On behalf of the University of Valencia, Victoria García Esteve, Director of the Library; from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Elias Chumillas Jiménez, director of the Library; on the part of the University of Alicante, Remo Blanes, director of the Library; for the Jaume I University, the Vice-Rector for Research and Transfer, Jesús Lancis Sáez and the Director of the Library, Vicent Falomir, and for the Miguel Hernández University, the Vice-Rector for Research, Domingo Luis Orozco Beltran.

Today is an important milestone that must be remembered as the beginning of a Valencian interuniversity collaboration.

The libraries of the Valencian public universities have formed a consortium to share resources, participate in national and international projects and continuously acquire documentary resources on paper and electronic.

Over the last few years, some cooperative agreements have been established sporadically, and one of the first was the one signed in 2014, a specific convention of collaboration of the Valencian Interuniversity Loan within the Habitat Campus 5U framework that allows the professor and personal researcher and the staff the loan of bibliographic material in any of the participating libraries.

In 2019, the joint provision of the implementation, support and maintenance of a library management services platform and discovery tool for librarians was put out. The result has been that the five libraries have, from now on, a common library management computer program, called Alma, and the discovery tool, Primo. It has been an important step that we have taken since we started from different realities and situations.

In addition to launching the computer program, we drafted a proposal for the Statutes and the Agreement for the constitution of the BUVAL Consortium, the Protocol signed by the public universities of the Valencian Community for the constitution of the Consortium of University Libraries (BUVAL). These two documents, Agreement and Statutes, have passed and have been approved by the Governing Councils and Social Councils of the five universities.

The implementation of BUVAL means establishing links, cooperating, sharing … and as indicated in the preamble to the BUVAL Statutes: “… participating libraries, regardless of their nature, structure or size, expand their field of action, improve their visibility and guarantee future development … ”with a clear objective: to provide excellent support  to quality in research and teaching at the five universities.

Many years for BUVAL!