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  MIRNA WILLER: FESTSCHRIFT, ed. by Tinka Katić and Nives Tomašević. Zadar: University of Zadar, 2020.

 Online edition: https://morepress.unizd.hr/books/press/catalog/book/62

Professor Mirna Willer, PhD retired in October 2018. In order to mark this special occasion, the Department of Information Sciences of University of Zadar, where she worked in undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate programmes (Knowledge society and information transfer), has published a Festschrift for her.

Over the past four decades, working primarily as a cataloguer, system librarian and library consultant for computerisation, developing a library information system and developing and implementing standards at the National and University Library in Zagreb (1978-2007), and later on as a Professor of Information Organisation at the Departments of Information Sciences in Zadar and in Osijek, she has expanded and deepened the field of her professional and scientific interest: history and theory of alphabetical author-title catalogue and cataloguing rules, bibliographic descriptive standards, MARC formats and heritage and publisher metadata schemes, bibliographic information organisation with special focus on old books and web information objects, conceptual models of bibliographic and authority data, digital web archive, bibliographic standards and models in semantic web and linked data, interoperability, convergence of heritage standards, models and cataloguing rules.

Internationally, she has been recognized as a top expert, as evidenced by her involvement in various professional bodies, especially IFLA’s Permanent UNIMARC Committee. In addition to IFLA, it is important to mention her chairmanship of the CERL Advisory Task Group (1999-2007) which played a hugely important role in the development of the HPB (then the Hand Press Book Database, now the Heritage of the Printed Book Database).

On her journey, she has made valuable national and international contacts and gathered numerous colleagues, collaborators, associates, interlocutors and friends, who we invited to contribute in creating above all a good book for Mirna. The response was amazing! We collected 28 works written by 39 authors, mainly from the areas that are related and coincide with her work, and created a book which we now present to Mirna as an expression of gratitude for her outstanding contribution to the development of information and communication science, the development of various professional practices, and dedicated teaching and pedagogical work.