From: Tomaž Seljak
Date: 14. sep. 2025
Subject: Expansion of the COBISS.Net network without perspective
Dear Dr. Bhanu Neupane,
Senior Programme Officer of UNESCO and until recently a member of the COBISS.Net Council
The original version of this letter in Slovenian is attached.
It has been 15 years since Ms. Iulia Nechifor invited the then Director of the Slovenian Research Agency, Dr. Franci Demšar, and me to present the “COBISS.Net Regional Network for Supporting Knowledge and Evaluating Research Performance” at the SEE Expert Meeting and Ministerial Round Table in Tirana in May 2010, and proposed that IZUM obtain the status of a regional UNESCO center. At that time, the strategic goal of IZUM in Maribor was to connect all higher education and research organizations and academic, special and general libraries in the target countries (Albania, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia) within 5-10 years by implementing the organizational model of the COBISS system into the COBISS.Net network, and to establish compatible systems for the evaluation of research activity in the aforementioned countries. We also planned to increase the number of IT specialists, librarians and employees with other educational profiles from 115 to 150, and we also obtained EUR 7.2 million in European funds to increase spatial and technological capacities.
The implementation of the COBISS organizational model means that national library information systems with shared cataloguing of library material and unified management of catalogs and bibliographies (COBISS.XX) and national information systems on research activities with records of research organizations, researchers and projects (E-CRIS.XX) are established in the target countries. The management of national COBISS.XX systems falls within the domain of national libraries, while the management of national E-CRIS.XX systems falls within the domain of competent ministries or state agencies.
To achieve the above goals, it would be necessary to establish interdepartmental and international political coordination, change the IZUM management model and increase the scope of international development assistance to libraries in the COBISS.Net network. Unfortunately, our then Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology was not prepared to provide the above conditions for the planned further successful development of IZUM and the COBISS.Net network. As you know, I therefore resigned from my position as director of IZUM in protest in the spring of 2011 and formally took early retirement, but remained an external collaborator of IZUM as coordinator of the COBISS.Net project until 2016.
According to the agreement between UNESCO and the Republic of Slovenia (from 2012) on the transformation of IZUM into a regional center for library information systems and current research information systems (UNESCO center of the 2nd category), the Government of the Republic of Slovenia should have changed the composition of the IZUM Management Board, but has not done so to date. Therefore, UNESCO and the COBISS.Net Council have no influence on the activities of IZUM, and IZUM does not benefit from UNESCO’s patronage.
It has been 9 years since we were together in Brussels in June 2016, where we received clear instructions from the European Commission (DG EAC and DG NEAR) regarding the procedure for obtaining 10 million EUR of European funds for the COBISS.Net project: Supporting the development of national library information systems in the countries of the Western Balkans and their integration in a common educational, research and cultural area of the EU (2016-2018) – within the framework of the IPA program based on a political agreement at one of the EU-WB ministerial meetings. You know that the competent ministers of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia were not prepared to propose this, and the initiative sent by UNESCO to the organizer of the ministerial meeting in Sarajevo was also unsuccessful. The interest of the directors of national libraries and representatives of some other institutions from the Western Balkan countries was demonstrated by signing a letter of support at the 1st meeting of the COBISS.Net Council on 8 July 2016.
This was followed by three decisions by the then Ministry of Education, Science and Sport and the manipulated Management Board of IZUM that were fatal to the development of IZUM and the COBISS.Net network:
(1) the most competent candidate, Dr. Franci Demšar, was not selected as the new director of IZUM,
(2) opposition to my cooperation with IZUM in the role of coordinator of the COBISS.Net project (due to my criticism of the government’s attitude towards IZUM and the COBISS.Net project), and
(3) Dr. Aleš Bošnjak was selected as the new director of IZUM, who does not have the necessary competencies for this.
Since IZUM and the COBISS.Net Council have not done anything since 2016 (eight years!) to obtain European funds to achieve the goals of the COBISS.Net project, and the symbolic (comfort) annual contribution from the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Innovation (MVZI) and the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs (MZEZ) for this purpose ranges from EUR 20,000 to EUR 45,000, Dr. Franci Demšar (now Director of the Slovenian Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education), and I, taking into account the suggestions of Dr. Primož Južnič, who organized the library studies within the framework of the COBISS.Net project in 2009/2010, prepared an updated COBISS.Net project – Phase III: Supporting the development of national library information systems in the countries of the Western Balkans and their integration in a common educational, research and cultural area of the EU (2025–2029) with a financial framework of EUR 15 million.
As suggested by Peter Polajnar (DG NEAR), whom you had the opportunity to meet in 2016 at a meeting in Brussels, the initiative to present the aforementioned project at the Ministerial meeting of the Western Balkans Steering Platforms on Culture, Research and Innovation, Education and Training in Skopje (29 September – 1 October 2024 ) was sent by our Minister of Higher Education, Science and Innovation, Dr. Igor Papič, to Holger Schroeder (DG NEAR.D.5), and the Director of IZUM and the National Coordinator for the IPA Program at the MZEZ were also informed of this (Letter). At the same time, the Head of the Department for European Affairs and International Cooperation at the MVZI, in communication with the organizers of the ministerial meeting in Skopje (ZSI, Austria), determined that the presentation could no longer be included in the agenda of the meeting in Skopje, and support for the project could not be included in the conclusions of the meeting. The matter was therefore postponed to the next ministerial meeting in 2025. This was followed by a recommendation from Peter Polajnar that our national IPA coordinator (Maja Dimkovski Engelman) arrange a meeting between Dr. Franci Demšar and Holger Schroeder, but she (after agreement with Edvin Skrt, Director General of the Directorate for International Development Cooperation at the MZEZ) refused! Mr. Schroeder was even in Slovenia on 29 November 2024 for the presentation of the Western Balkans Investment Framework (WBIF).
On 16 October 2024, I informed the directors of national libraries and heads of national COBISS centers in the Western Balkan countries about the COBISS.Net project – Phase III, but the director of IZUM and the then president of the COBISS.Net Council did not consider it relevant to discuss the project at the meeting on 22 October 2024, in which you also participated. The project obviously exceeds the organizational capacities and interests of IZUM, and opportunism is increasingly evident on the part of the directors of national libraries, which the director of IZUM encourages with annual donations (2024: EUR 45,000 + ? EUR), which have no impact on the expansion of the COBISS.Net network. I don’t know if you followed the COBISS 2024 conference over the next two days (23-24 October 2024). In his welcoming speech, the representative of the MVZI (Dr. Tomaž Boh) expressed his enthusiasm for the number of conference participants from other countries, but it should be noted that IZUM covered everyone’s travel expenses, no representative of any ministry from the Western Balkan countries participated in the conference, and the heads of national COBISS centers did not present annual reports on the work of the centers, as was the practice at previous conferences. The problems of the COBISS.Net project were overshadowed by the enthusiasm for the presentations of artificial intelligence.
In the Western Balkan countries and Bulgaria, 563 libraries (4 fewer today = 559) were included in the COBISS.Net network as of 31 December 2024, while there are over 800 national, general, higher education and special libraries and several thousand school libraries outside the network. IZUM employs 125 IT specialists, librarians and colleagues with other educational profiles, but 7 of them are involved in maintaining the Vega supercomputer, which has nothing to do with the COBISS and SICRIS/E-CRIS systems, but brings media popularity and political support to the IZUM director. We are clearly very far from the strategic goal from 2010, as is also evidenced by the following anomalies:
– In Bulgaria, COBISS is implemented in only three libraries and therefore COBISS.BG is not a national library information system, and E-CRIS.BG has not been established.
– The National Library of Albania is not included in COBISS.AL, which therefore operates under the auspices of the Academy of Sciences of Albania, and COBISS.AL is therefore not a national library information system.
– The National Library of Kosovo is not included in COBISS.KS, which was organized and maintained by IZUM informally and therefore COBISS.KS is not a national library information system, and its fate is uncertain.
– Only in the Republic Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina is the E-CRIS.RS system managed by the competent ministry, everywhere else the E-CRIS systems are at a dead because they are not managed by the competent ministries or agencies, which are developing alternative systems due to the inadequate offer of IZUM (examples: in Serbia, Kosovo, Albania).
– In the documentary film about IZUM, the pompously announced inclusion of some Croatian libraries in COBISS.Net in 2022 with the national COBISS canter in the library in Koprivnica failed as expected.
– The Management Board of IZUM, whose composition is in conflict with three laws of the Republic of Slovenia, blindly supports the proposals and explanations of the IZUM director, but does not deal with the issues and problems of expanding the COBISS.Net network. There is also no one in the current 9-member Management Board of IZUM who is an expert in the development of information systems, and most of the members are also in a conflict of interest.
– The composition of the COBISS.Net Council is different at each session, depending on the interests of the IZUM director and the invitees. With the appointment last year of the assistant director of the National Library of Serbia as president, contrary to the founding act from 2016, which stipulates that the president is the director of the national library with the longest tenure, the status of the COBISS.Net Council has also been degraded. This is probably why only one of the directors of the national libraries attended the session on 26 May 2025, and no one attended the coordination meeting on 16 June.
In January 2025, I informed you of an open letter to the ruling political structures and Slovenian libraries (original, +portal) and a letter to IZUM employees, and on May 25th, I informed you of my letter to the directors of national libraries and heads of national COBISS centers in the Western Balkan countries. If you have translated and read the aforementioned letters, you can understand that the situation is hopeless. The director of IZUM, Dr. Aleš Bošnjak, maintains his position by censoring information to employees, using a reign of terror and political support and is enforcing misguided policies for COBISS.Net, while his colleagues are only silently watching the disintegration of the development potential of IZUM and the COBISS.Net project. They even accepted that the director, with the consent of the manipulated board of directors, pays himself annual bonuses for his “success in marketing activities”, and that the amount of IZUM’s marketing revenues is mainly the result of licenses sold in the COBISS.Net network in previous years and not the merit of the IZUM director. For the said success, Dr. Aleš Bošnjak received EUR 7,875.00 in 2024, while the other employees received an equalization bonus – EUR 350 each.
In the Annual Work Programme and Financial Plan of IZUM for 2025, we can read that its strategic goal is still the same as in 2010 (only Croatia is no longer among the target countries), and under the heading International development cooperation in COBISS.net countries (R11) we can read: “Within the framework of this task, we will follow the action plan entitled COBISS.net: Support for the development of national library systems in the countries of South-Eastern Europe and their integration into a common educational, research and cultural space (2024–2027). The action plan defines in more detail the activities of IZUM as a UNESCO II category regional center in the COBISS.net target countries in the specified time period.”
So far, none of the COBISS.Net Council members and former IZUM colleagues I interviewed have been able to confirm that they are aware of the aforementioned action plan. Upon my request under the Act on Access to Public Information, I received the following official explanation from the director of IZUM: “The requested document does not originate from IZUM’s field of work and is not subject to the provisions of the ZDIJZ. … Namely, it is a service that is of commercial interest and that, in principle, can be performed on the market by anyone who is qualified for it. … Since the case in question concerns an IZUM service that is not related to its public law operations, but rather relates to the private law part of the activity, the requested information is not information of a public nature …”. How is it possible that the program implemented by IZUM under the auspices of UNESCO is not of a public nature, but a business secret? It is also relevant question why IZUM no longer shows in its annual reports, in terms of content, separately its commercial activities in the COBISS.Net network (with revenues from licenses and services in the amount of over EUR 500,000) and international development aid activities (designated funds from the MZEZ and the MVZI + its own funds in an unknown amount)? Non-transparent and misleading presentation of business operations the director of IZUM justifies it with business confidentiality.
Regarding efforts to obtain European funds, the situation is as follows:
On February 12, 2025, the MVZI (with the consent or instruction of Dr. Tomaž Boh, Director General of the Directorate for Science and Innovation) allowed the Director of IZUM, Dr. Aleš Bošnjak, to present his version of the EU development assistance program for the expansion of the COBISS.Net network within the financial framework of 8.5 – 9 MEUR (attachment) at the zoom Meeting of the Western Balkans Platform on Research and Innovation, instead of jointly presenting the COBISS.Net project – Phase III with Dr. Franci Demšar in order to obtain political consent for financing the project within the framework of the IPA program (DG NEAR/ENEST).
On 13-15 May 2025, the meeting in Podgorica (Agenda, POLICY ANSWERS Review of the Steering Platform meeting on Research and Innovation in Podgorica, Montenegro) was attended by the Director of IZUM and a representative of the MVZI. The Director of IZUM explained to the participants of the COBISS.Net Council meeting on 26 May 2025 (minutes) that the second presentation of the project (live) was also very successful, and that he also received support from the Slovenian ministry and confirmation that the project was suitable for application to the call HORIZON-INFRA-2025-01-DEV-03.
On June 10, the members of the COBISS.Net Council received from IZUM an “Invitation to the cooperation in the Horizon Europe project COBISS.net” with a project proposal for the call HORIZON-INFRA-2025-01-DEV-03 (two attachments). The title and content of the proposed project with a financial framework of 3 – 4 million EUR are adapted to the aforementioned call and do not address the key conditions and necessary activities for the establishment of the national COBISS and E-CRIS systems. Some national libraries did not respond to the invitation, and none of the directors of national libraries attended the coordination meeting on June 16.
On July 16, some members of the COBISS.Net Council received the following notification from IZUM: “We would like to inform you that we have received guidance regarding our Horizon application from both our home ministry and the European Commission. Unfortunately, we are currently unable to fully act on this guidance, as we do not yet meet all the necessary eligibility criteria at this stage of the process. Nevertheless, we remain committed to finding appropriate funding opportunities for joint activities within the COBISS.net network, as we are all aware that this type of support is crucial. …. …”.
The expected embarrassment is that there is no one at the MVZI, the MZEZ and the IZUM who would have the necessary knowledge and experience for the political implementation and organization of the national COBISS and E-CRIS systems outside Slovenia with international development assistance and interdepartmental coordination, and the proposals of those who have the necessary knowledge for this are rejected by the mentioned ministries. At the same time, they clearly do not understand that COBISS.Net goes far beyond the framework of the “WB Steering Platform on Research and Innovation”, because it also concerns the “WB Steering Platform on Education and Training” and the “WB Steering Platform on Culture” (WB Steering Platforms). Without political coordination, increasing the human resources capacity of national COBISS centers and libraries, and raising the level of education of librarians in some countries by organizing library studies (according to the COBISS.Net project program – Phase III), the goals of expanding COBISS.Net network cannot be achieved.
Given all of the above, I renew the conclusion from the letter to the ruling political structures dated 15. 1. 2025: Since high-ranking state officials Tomaž Boh (Director General of the Directorate for Science and Innovation at the MVZI) and Edvin Skrt (Director General of the Directorate for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Aid at the MZEZ) blindly support the policies of IZUM Director Aleš Bošnjak and the Government of the Republic of Slovenia does not change the IZUM management model and does not establish interdepartmental and international political coordination of the COBISS.Net project, the expansion of the COBISS.Net network has no perspective! This is how it is when the political power of state bureaucrats and negative personnel selection combine – we have a disaster. IZUM is of course not threatened, because it has a monopoly in Slovenia, and its employees responsibly take care of the maintenance and updating of the COBISS software. Due to the departure from the original organizational model of the national library information system COBISS, IZUM no longer has an absolute advantage outside the borders of Slovenia over other providers of (only) software for library applications. More information about the failed efforts to resolve the project is available at www.zacobiss.net.
In June, I asked the Director of the UNESCO Office at the MVZI, Gašper Hrastelj, among other things, why Mr. Neupane was not invited to the last COBISS.Net Council meeting on 26 May 2025. He explained to me that you are no longer in charge of the operation of IZUM. I assume that you have given up because all your recommendations at the COBISS.Net Council meetings (as evident from the meeting minutes) have been ignored and the COBISS.Net network is not expanding in line with the set goals and possibilities. In the meeting minutes from 13 June 2023, for example, we can read: “Bhanu Neupane made some suggestions on how to strengthen cooperation with UNESCO and better implement their mission. National libraries should be involved and become models for other libraries. It is not only important to have regional cooperation, but also cooperation at national level. IZUM, as a UNESCO centre, should act as a model for the democratisation of knowledge in other regions of the world, which is not yet the case. A way must be found to implement COBISS on a global level, e.g. also in Africa. The network should also be expanded in the region and EU funding should be obtained for this purpose.” However, IZUM does not have the necessary capabilities for the above mentioned and is clearly not interested!
The members of the COBISS.Net Council were informed in early September that UNESCO had “appointed Dr Xianhong HU as the new representative of the Director General in a governing board of the IZUM”. This is in accordance with the agreement between UNESCO and the Republic of Slovenia, according to which UNESCO should have its representative on the IZUM Management Board, but the MVZI and the Director of IZUM do not want this and you were already there, and now Ms. Xianhong HU is only a member of the COBISS.Net Council, who has no influence on the activities of IZUM! Therefore, I do not understand how UNESCO can still be the patron of IZUM, which does not achieve the goals of the COBISS.Net project.
Best regards,
Mag. Tomaž Seljak, leading author of the COBISS and E-CRIS systems,
initiator of the establishment and long-time director of IZUM in Maribor
and long-time coordinator of the COBISS.Net project