In April 2008, with financial support from the American School and the Mellon Foundation, Maria Tourna, Assistant Librarian of the Blegen Library, spent a week at the Department of Information Studies at the University of Aberystwyth (Wales), where she has been enrolled in the Postgraduate Distance Learning Program in Information and Library Studies (M.Sc. Econ./Diploma) since 2007. The purpose of her trip was to attend a five-day compulsory study school with presentations and lectures, and general advice regarding the core modules of her program and future assignments.

In addition, Ms Tourna attended the UKSG Conference in Torquay at Devon, from April 7 to April 9, 2008.  UKSG stands for the UK Serials Group, “the international body for professionals involved in providing and managing electronic and hard copy academic and research literature, which offers librarians the opportunity to be part of the scholarly publishing process and influence decisions made by publishers, vendors and others in the supply chain. It brings together journals producers, intermediaries, librarians and end users to stimulate research, discussion and inter-community collaboration” (http://www.uksg.org ).  The conference included several interesting sessions with cutting edge topics covering the deficiency of the peer review, the information-seeking behavior of the virtual scholar, the Mesur Project, large-scale digitization projects and the role of libraries,  as well as and mass digitization of historical records for access and preservation.