To support sector development and the sharing of best practices, EPICo hosts two Special Interest Groups that bring together professionals from across Europe.
These groups not only address key topics at a strategic level, but also provide a space to explore issues in greater depth—enabling meaningful change and the evolution of practical approaches. You can find further information about these groups below.
Print Storage Solutions SIG
The Print Storage Solutions Special Interest Group (SIG) was formed in July 2025 following its popularity at the Barcelona Epico conference last year.
Already there are c25 members on the group not wholly confined to Europe; we plan to meet every two months and so far, have received presentations from the British Library and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF) based on their new high-density storage projects currently underway.
The aim of the group is to promote best practice in all print storage applications, both large automated and smaller conventional, therefore the SIG scope is to …
• Provide a forum for collaboration, networking and information sharing promoting ‘best practice’.
• Focus discussions on print storage together with other non-digital library collections.
• Be relevant to all organisations – large or small.
The following priorities for review and future discussion were - high-density / conventional storage applications, cooperative models, preservation and cleaning, emergency planning / business continuity and sustainability / green storage.
Anyone wishing to join the SIG are very welcome, please contact –
Metadata SIG
The focus for the Metadata SIG for 2025-26 is to investigate opportunities for sharing retention information among EPICo members in order to be able to share and compare Shared Print holdings across Europe.
The objective is to create guidelines for the use of the 583 MARC field and the Shared Print Actions terminology (SPA), with specific focus on the “Committed to retain” subfield. The guidelines will help EPICO members to add retention information in a standardized way to facilitate future sharing and comparing of the data.
The Metadata SIG also collaborates with the North American Shared Print Metadata Group on implementation practices and updates to the SPA terminology.
The SIG has members from Norway, UK, Denmark, Spain, Germany, France, Greece, Sweden and Austria, and consist of Program managers and metadata experts. We would very much welcome additional members from other EPICo programs, please contact SIG convenor Karin Byström ()
