Adopted by the GRN Advisory Committee, March 2003, and approved by the ARL Board of Directors, July 2003; updated July 2005.
Globalizing societies and internationalizing universities are hallmarks of the age. Information from all parts of the globe has never been more crucial, yet we are less and less able to meet the needs of the scholars we serve. Budget constraints, escalating costs, burgeoning output, and ever-broader demand present challenges which have overwhelmed our traditional models for collections and access. These conditions signaled a need for a new response. The Global Resources Network was initiated to envision strategies to meet this need.
The Association of American Universities (AAU), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), and the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) share the goal of ensuring seamless access to information resources from all parts of the world. The Global Resources Network (GRN) is a voluntary and collaborative initiative that pursues two complementary approaches in developing a new and more robust model for access to international information. A series of discrete projects focus on significantly expanding the depth, breadth, quantity, range of formats, and variety of international information resources available to students and scholars. A second thrust provides the framework for leadership and development of coordinated acquisitions strategies that minimizes unnecessary duplication and supports enhanced access to existing collections.
In short, the Global Resources Network is an umbrella under which scholars, librarians, and other university administrators can work together through specific, voluntary cooperative collections and archives projects - and a framework that supports enhanced bibliographic access and finding aids; rapid delivery systems; the development of electronic and digital resources; and the establishment of international partnerships, to achieve the goals of the network.
GRN links North American research libraries with one another, and also with collections throughout the world. The program emphasizes voluntary, coordinated efforts to build, share, and provide access to global resources. Stronger aggregate holdings will thus be made available without compromising local needs or well-established collection strengths.
The Global Resources Network seeks to accomplish the following goals:
- Enable students, faculty, and scholars to discover, retrieve, and use international resources within and across both world areas and academic disciplines (both traditional and emerging);
- Exploit technologically-informed, cost-effective systems to aggregate, integrate, and deliver international information;
- Develop means to identify and address ongoing user needs, and to shape and monitor specific projects;
- Support and sustain flexible arrangements for participants to define criteria for user access, collection development, resource management, and programmatic investments in light of local priorities and needs;
- Support bibliographic access to international information resources;
- Preserve scarce or endangered information resources.
Participating research libraries, drawing heavily upon clusters of specialist librarians, voluntarily engage in specific activities. The Center for Research Libraries provides leadership, coordination, and central services. An advisory committee provides intellectual leadership, direction, and vitality.
