The Libraries of Universidade do Porto hosted the 41st IATUL Annual Conference from 13 July to 15 July 2021 as an online conference with the theme "Bridging Universities and Society: Libraries as Connectors". The emergence of movements such as Open Science, Open Innovation, and Citizen Science highlights how society benefits when higher education institutions expand access to research and teaching. Ongoing engagement and collaboration between universities and communities are essential components of these open initiatives. The recent developments in research to fight COVID-19 emphasize the advantages of open collaboration. Academic libraries worldwide are playing vital roles in facilitating these initiatives by developing new and innovative services and infrastructure. The overall themes for the conference are: - Expanding information and digital literacies Library spaces and services advancing innovation and engagement - Partnerships with communities, local and global - Library strategies and actions supporting open science and collaboration - Open Science: communicating and measuring impact beyond the university - Workforce development in open science practices (repositories, presses, RDM and more) - Innovative library responses to the pandemic situations. If you missed to attend the sessions, you can now watch the recorded sessions from https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYChCU_pZS_ExorctqDDMj8SQtoa2bku2 ---------- Dr. J. K. VIJAYAKUMAR, King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST), https://www.linkedin.com/in/vijayakumarjk/