The seventh Libraries Without Walls conference, held as is the custom at Molivos on the Aegean island of Lesvos, demonstrated that ‘anytime, anywhere’ delivery of library services has become the norm. Only 12 years after the first Libraries Without Walls conference in 1995, when remote delivery of services was a niche interest in the profession, it is the library within its walls which is in danger of becoming the minority concern. Of course that library remains of vital importance, both for the preservation of information resources of all types and as the base from which to deliver an ever-wider range of services, but its centrality is under challenge. Speakers and delegates from many countries and from both the academic and the public library sectors came together to discuss recent developments and to try to map out future directions.

Our keynote speaker, Professor Christine L. Borgman of the University of California at Los Angeles, drew attention to the increasing need for libraries to consider their role in facilitating and supporting the use of research data, enabling scholars from disciplines as disparate as history and nuclear engineering to handle the ‘data deluge’ that increasingly characterizes leading-edge research. However, as yet only a few fields recognize the publication of data as a scholarly contribution in the same way as that of papers, books, etc. The immaturity of data curation is illustrated by a lack of coherence between the essential components of the infrastructure needed for long-term sustainability. In this developing scenario the roles of libraries, and indeed of other actors, are unclear. Many scholars would prefer to trust their precious data collections to colleagues with the necessary disciplinary knowledge rather than to generalist librarians. Librarians therefore need to promote the relevance of their existing expertise, while at the same time recognizing that they too are faced with a new set of challenges – they will need to change and adapt if they are to become significant players in the data curation field.

Bo Öhrström, of Denmark's Electronic Research Library (DEFF), has presented at previous Libraries Without Walls conferences and used this opportunity to demonstrate how national infrastructures for research information are evolving. Central to these changes has been the espousal of open access, with important international collaboration being realized in Europe through the Knowledge Exchange partnership.