The first joint meeting of five of the world’s most prominent academic and research library organisations took place at the British Library in London on March 8, 2016, ahead of the Research Libraries UK Conference. The meeting gathered together the elected leaders and executive directors of the Association of Research Libraries (US and Canada), the Canadian Association of Research Libraries/Association des Bibliothèques de Recherche du Canada, the Council of Australian University Librarians, Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche/Association of European Research Libraries and Research Libraries UK.
Lively discussion centered on the potential for strategic, collaborative approaches to the rapidly changing landscape of research libraries and that of the publishing and scholarly communications environment.
Key issues emerging included how to ensure that research libraries meet the diverse disciplinary needs of their faculty and research users; the importance of research data and curation; preservation of the scholarly record, and the challenge of digital obsolescence; reforms to intellectual property and licensing regimes; the open access agenda—how to make scholarly publishing work more effectively and sustainably; transparency and accountability in agreements with publishers of scholarly journals; and the challenge of conveying the value and expertise of research libraries in the increasingly virtual realm.
While the group was initially established as an informal forum, participants were stimulated by the concordant themes raised and were unanimous in their commitment to seeding an international alliance. The group will seek to identify priorities for joint attention and action over the next few months. Follow-up meetings are already being planned, and the group will seek to take concrete proposals to the respective boards of the five organizations in due course.
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