The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) is delighted to announce that Kevin Merriman, currently Director of Collection Management, Technical and Access Services, and Technology at the Marx Science and Social Science Library at Yale University, will join CRL in January 2024 as the Director of Global Collections. In this new senior leadership position, Merriman will work with the CRL Board of Directors, staff, and broad CRL community to renew and reinvigorate CRL's global collections activities. 

Merriman comes to CRL with more than twenty years of experience building and stewarding collections and developing service models in a varity of research contexts. At the Yale University Library, he attained the level of Librarian V, the highest professional rank for librarians at Yale, and served on several strategic groups including the Yale Library Collection Steering Committee, the Licensing Review Steering Committee, and the former Council on Research Support and Collections. "The CRL Board of Directors and leadership are thrilled to fill this important senior leadership role at the Center for Research Libraries," said Greg Eow, CRL President. "We are fortunate to recruit a professional with Kevin's experience, expertise, and vision, and look forward to him building a team to scale CRL's global collections and related service models for CRL members."

"I am passionate about the mission of research libraries to serve the global research enterprise, and I am inspired by CRL's vision to foster a postcolonial knowledge commons in service to more equitable research discovery and access," shared Merriman. "This opportunity aligns with my work with the Smithsonian Institution's Biodiversity Heritage Library, where I serve as a member of their executive committee. I look forward to working with the CRL community to advance global cooperation as the open science movement gains momentum and other open access initiatives become mainstream while building out currently successful programs in collections and services across all disciplines." 

Merriman's work at CRL will also be informed by his experiences working with subject specialists in developing collections and service models to support faculty and researchers across science, social science, and interdisciplinary work at Yale and by his work on the Request to Delivery Task Force, a broad investigation of library responses to researcher-initiated resource requests. "Kevin's deep experience working at the intersection of global collections and services, in a STEM and Open Science and data context, is exciting," added Eow. "His experience will be particularly welcome as CRL reinvests in structures, staffing, and programs to ensure that CRL's global collections activities align with community aspirations to foster a more equitable and diverse global knowledge commons." 

The Director of Global Collections appointment comes at the conclusion of a nearly year-long review of CRL's global collections activities, and Merriman is excited to work with stakeholders across CRL's 200+ member libraries to create a collection development model that utilizes CRL's scale to serve the needs of the research community. The Director of Global Collections will have the opportunity to build an internal team at CRL that works to make CRL's global collections and services vision a reality. 

Center for Research Libraries (CRL) 
Based in Chicago, Illinois, the Center for Research Libraries is an enduring model for cooperative collection development and community building among the research library community. From its original founding in 1949 by ten member libraries in the Midwestern United States, today CRL represents an international consortium of university, college, and independent research libraries collectively building, stewarding, and sharing a wealth of resource materials from all world regions to support inspired research and teaching.