Professor Elmar Mittler has been a leading figure in the scholarly communication and open access (OA) developments in Germany as well as in Europe. He was a member of the Board of SPARC Europe (The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition).  He served as the director of the University of Göttingen Library from 1990 to 2006 and ran several German, European and international projects in the field of the digital library development (metadata, digitisation of journals, subject gateways for internet resources etc.).  He has also been active in DINI (German Initative for Networked Information) and served as president of LIBER (Association of European Research Libraries). Professor Mittler received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Freiburg.  He has been bestowed honorary doctorate degrees by Mainz, Göttingen and Sorbonne (Paris) Universities. He has published extensively on various topics including digital libraries, scholarly communications and open access. 

Libraries as Infrastructure for Open Access

"Science back to scientists" is one of the demands of the open access development.  Libraries

• are the natural partners of these activities. 
• are accustomed to use global standards on local level.
• Are able to build local repositories for original publications as well as for postprints
• have the organisational power to offer  open access material in regional as well as in global networks

The paper gives an overview of the development of open access activities of libraries in Germany, Europe and worldwide.