The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has announced a new briefing paper for research library directors.
The paper ‘21st-Century Collections: Calibration of Investment and Collaborative Action’ is the work of the ARL 21st-Century Research Library Collections Task Force. The task force is co-chaired by Deborah Jakubs, Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian and Vice Provost for Library Affairs at Duke University, and Thomas Leonard, Kenneth and Dorothy Hill University Librarian at the University of California Berkeley.
ARL staff support to the task force included Visiting Program Officer Christine Avery, Head of the University College Libraries and Collection Development Coordinator for Commonwealth Campus Libraries at Penn State University.
At a panel discussion at the 160th ARL Membership Meeting held in Chicago on May 2–4, ARL Vice President/President-Elect Wendy Pradt Lougee, University of Minnesota, a member of the task force, emphasised that for research libraries in the 21st century, collections are still a core asset and the provisioning of content is still a core role, but ‘the context and strategies for decisions and investments are changing.’
According to the issue brief, in the new, fully networked context, libraries will need to collaborate on a greater scale in order to maintain the caliber of collections they once built for a primarily local constituency.
Carton Rogers, Vice Provost and Director of Libraries at the University of Pennsylvania, chairs the ARL Transforming Research Libraries Steering Committee, which originally requested the issue brief.
