CRL leverages the collective resources, knowledge, and expertise of a community of over 200 libraries to identify, acquire, and provide access to critical evidence and documentation for advanced research and teaching. Students, faculty, and researchers at voting member institutions benefit from CRL collections and services, including:

Convenient access to a wealth of scholarly resources

• Collections  Over five million items rich in primary sources, including the largest circulating collection of newspapers in North America, more than 38,000 journals and 800,000 international dissertations, and major microfilm and paper collections from Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Europe, South Asia, and Southeast Asia; generous loan periods
• Electronic resources  A rapidly growing collection of curated digital resources, currently more than 20 million pages
• Digitization services On-demand digitization fulfilling requests from researchers and scholars
• Document delivery  Unlimited delivery of articles from over 100,000 serials and newspapers in CRL's collection and from over 50,000 STE journals from the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering and Technology
• Demand purchases  Three types of materials acquired on request for researchers: foreign dissertations, newspapers, and copies of archival records
• Expanded content, especially digital, through CRL partnerships in news, and science
• Discoverability  Promoted through local record loading options including record sets in the major web-scale services
• Individualized consultations Providing lists of topic-specific resources for faculty, staff, or students

Cost-effective cooperative collection building

• Significant local savings through the Purchase Proposal and Shared Purchase programs

Support for informed local investment in eResources

• Favorable terms for database subscription and purchase Leveraging the collective purchasing power of over 200 libraries in licensing negotiations
• eDesiderata  CRL's online platform for analysis and member input on databases and licensing terms

Leadership in preservation initiatives

• Extensive data analysis and assessment in support of digital and print preservation
• Shared print  Support for collaborative efforts

Leveraged community expertise

• Communities of interest  Working under the CRL umbrella to preserve and make accessible endangered documentation from all world regions
•  Webinars and Forums Exploring today's critical challenges to collection-building and investment in digital resources

The above benefits apply to all voting member institutions; only certain benefits apply to Global Affiliates.