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Community and Collective Action

September 5, 2019

CRL's new president Gregory Eow has posted an inaugural blog, Festina lente (make haste, slowly). In it he discusses how research libraries have enormous opportunities—defense of intellectual freedom, celebration of diversity, advocacy of responsible stewardship, promotion of social responsibility and the social good—to leverage proven models of community building and collective action to advance core professional values.

Holes in the Print Safety Net

November 25, 2018

A recent CRL analysis of three major validated JSTOR print archives found that the combined holdings of those archives are short of comprehensive.

Global Collections Initiative: Mexico City Workshop 2018

September 7, 2018

In June 2018 Latin American specialists and librarians from the U.S., U.K., and Latin America gathered in Mexico City to consider and critique findings from CRL's Global Collections Inititative. This is a report from that meeting.

Libraries and the Global Information Supply Chain

August 16, 2018

The 2018 CRL Global Collections Forum examined the evolving global “supply chain” for source materials for research. The present post summarizes the key ideas, and suggests what the new supply chain means for CRL and its community.  

CRL's Eighth Decade: A Community Perspective

June 12, 2018

At the 2018 Council of Voting Members meeting members weighed in on two broad strategic directions that emerged from Board and management planning.

A Sea Change (9): Investment in Open Access and Shared Digital Resources

March 27, 2018

Proactive investment in Open Data and shared digital resources might serve CRL libraries and researchers worldwide better than continuing to focus resources on amassing physical collections.

A Sea Change (8): Integrating CRL Print in a North American Shared Collections Network

February 13, 2018

Integrating CRL collections in a North America-wide shared collections network.

A Sea Change (7): CRL's Eighth Decade

February 8, 2018

CRL's legacy of sustained, cooperative collection-building prepares it for confronting new challenges in its eighth decade. 

Expanding the Global Resources Network

November 29, 2017

The new Global Collections Initiative is expanding the CRL network of libraries and institutions committed to building and preserving important and endangered resources for area and international studies. 

Sustaining Access to News: What We Learned from eDesiderata 2017

November 11, 2017

The conversations at the 2017 eDesiderata Forum exploded the notion that our longstanding print-based approach to preserving news still applies in the digital era, and suggested new strategies.

A Sea Change (6): On North American Cooperation

September 26, 2017

Conversations at the June 2017 Expanding the Shared Collections forum helped clarify and focus CRL planning for new shared collections partnerships. 

A Sea Change (5): More Specifics

April 25, 2017

The unprecedented turnout for the 2017 Council of Voting Members business meeting was great news, but unfortunately overwhelmed our ability to answer all of the questions about the CRL budget and collections agenda.  Here we address them one by one. 

A Sea Change (4): The Means to the End

April 4, 2017

Fulfilling CRL’s commitment to the integrity and accessibility of critical documentation and evidence requires a change in approach. The proposed CRL budget for the coming fiscal year will support that change. 

A Sea Change (3): Building a Credible Network

March 22, 2017

Creating a “CRL consensus” on goals and standards is at the heart of CRL’s shared print agenda. Essential to establishing that consensus is CRL’s Collections and Services Policy Committee (CSPC). The CSPC was instrumental in  shaping the terms of CRL partnerships with the Linda Hall Library and the Law Library Microfilm Consortium, and  will similarly be involved in shaping terms with future partners.

A Sea Change (2): The Terms of Stewardship

March 10, 2017

Historically CRL has set a high bar for the stewardship of shared print. CRL partnerships for shared print should do no less.

A Sea Change (1): Greater Scale

February 24, 2017

The scale of the challenges of responsible collections stewardship faced by CRL libraries requires CRL to evolve from a single, shared collection to a network of repositories. A reallocation of resources to be proposed at the 2017 Council of Voting Members business meeting could enable the organization to move decisively in that direction. 

CRL's Agenda for Shared Print, 2017 - 2026

December 28, 2016

The integrity of the vast print serial collections built and long maintained by North American libraries is now in jeopardy. CRL will work, over the next ten years, to shift the onus of maintaining critical print serials collections from individual libraries to the collective, and to generate significant new benefits from those collections for researchers. 

"Fake News"

November 22, 2016

As social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter facilitate the spread of misinformation, research libraries and news organizations together can ensure the integrity and survival of the public record.

Big Data: The View from Above

November 1, 2016

The world of GIS data is where the open access world and the market intersect. With geospatial data – and financial, census and public opinion data – libraries and scholars face a very different set of challenges than those encountered with more conventional scholarly materials like e-journals and e-books.

Big Data: Uncharted Territory

October 17, 2016

 Vast financial and population data sets, multi-layered geospatial data, and high-definition satellite imagery are now the raw materials of research in disciplines