CRL and the North East Research Libraries Consortium (NERL), a nonprofit program operating under the auspices of Yale University, have come to an agreement to relocate NERL operations to CRL. Under this new arrangement, NERL, which licenses major online products on behalf of 28 member academic research libraries and approximately 80 affiliates, will be managed as a cooperative program under the CRL organizational umbrella. 

For the past two years, CRL has been strengthening its own capacity to support licensing and procurement of electronic resources in areas of traditional CRL collecting strength: news, historical archives, government records and publications, and statistical information. In this effort, CRL has been able to obtain favorable terms for the acquisition of a number of major databases for CRL libraries. This new working relationship will offer CRL and NERL libraries greater leverage in acquiring key electronic resources, and in shaping the terms of access to those resources.

This partnership compares in many respects with the arrangements CRL has with the Global Resources and Area Microform projects. It preserves a high degree of autonomy and self-governance for NERL, while creating synergies between NERL licensing and CRL’s own Global Resources Forum activities.

More details about this new development will be discussed at the April 19 CRL Annual Council of Voting Members meeting, which will be a web conference. To register and view the agenda for the meeting, visit the CRL meeting site.