On April 26-27, 2023, CRL held its 74th Annual Council of Voting Members Meeting. The meeting was CRL’s second hybrid gathering, with a welcome return of (limited) in-person attendance alongside virtual attendees. 

Remarks from the Board Chair 

Adriene Lim, Dean of Libraries at the University of Maryland and chair of the CRL Board of Directors, welcomed all to the meeting. Lim reflected on sustainability, the theme of the CRL annual report, noting that the Board, CRL leadership, and staff have been focusing on sustainability for the organization. Lim proudly remarked on the progress made in recent years by the Board and staff to improve CRL’s facilities and change organizational culture. Looking to the year ahead, she shared that CRL is set to embark on major efforts to modernize CRL governance structures and strengthen support for global collections, long at the heart of CRL’s mission. Lim encouraged all member libraries to join in this drive toward sustainability in the hopes of leveraging CRL as a reliable platform for many years to come. 

State of the Consortium 

In his report on the state of the consortium, CRL President Greg Eow identified CRL as “a place, a collective collection, and a community” and “a vital part of the academy-owned, academy-governed infrastructure.” Eow noted that he came to CRL in 2019 because of the unique position CRL holds in the community, and that the major leadership opportunity when he arrived was to fashion the wide and seemingly disparate array of CRL programs, initiatives, and partnerships into a holistic vision situated on a strong administrative foundation. As a result, since his arrival CRL has completed a suite of organizational changes to improve CRL’s facility and infrastructure and modernize back-of-office capacity. The next phase of this multiyear repositioning of CRL will focus on optimizing CRL’s governance structure and ability to provide robust administrative support for CRL’s hosted programs, particularly CRL’s global collections programs. Eow stated that the goal is to have completed transformative changes by the 2024 CRL Annual Meeting, which will be the five-year mark of Eow’s tenure and CRL’s 75th anniversary.  

View the recording of the President's report here.

Collections and Services Policy Committee (CSPC) + International Collections and Content Group (ICCG) 

Denise Pan, chair of the Collections and Services Policy Committee (CSPC) and Lisa Carter, vice chair of CPSC, were joined by Brian Vivier, chair of the International Collections and Content Group (ICCG) and Amy Wood, CRL director of discovery and technology, to discuss recent projects and upcoming initiatives. They reiterated the various steps taken in recent years to determine how to better leverage CRL member engagement, from the CPSC Member Survey in 2020 to the ICCG Call to Action issued in 2021 to the Sustainable Stewardship and Access Working Group convened in 2022. These efforts led to upcoming community work to reassess and strengthen CRL’s suite of global collections programs with the support of the Educopia Institute. This multi-month effort that will be a CRL priority in 2023, as we convent as a community to strengthen CRL global collections program, which are at the core of CRL’s mission 

Keynote Address 

On Friday, CRL President Greg Eow gave a keynote address, “CRL and the Postcolonial Knowledge Commons: From Call to Action to Community Practice.” Eow discussed CRL’s commitment to global collections and services in the context of the CSPC survey and the ICCG call to action. Eow reviewed the evolution of CRL’s global collections programs in the context of larger institutional shifts in knowledge production and highlighted the opportunities and challenges these programs face in the emerging scholarly communications landscape. Finally, Eow outlined the process that the CRL community will undertake in 2023 to bring together stakeholders – including library deans, area studies librarians, and CRL staff – into a robust dialogue, the outcome of which will be a community driven recalibration of CRL’s global collections programs so that they can meet the challenges, and leverage the considerable opportunities, the present moment provides.  

View the recording of the keynote here. 

Governance 

In the governance portion of the CRL meeting, the 2022 Council of Voting Members Meeting minutes as well as the fiscal year 2024 budget were approved. The following candidates were elected to three-year terms for the Board of Directors:  

First term:  

• Janet Bishop, A. J. McFadden Dean of the Library, The Claremont Colleges Library 
• Paula Krebs, Executive Director, Modern Language Association  
• Devin Savage, Dean of Libraries, Illinois Institute of Technology  

Second term: 

• Diane Bruxvoort, Dean of Libraries, University of North Texas  
• Roger Schonfeld, VP of Organizational Strategy, Ithaka S+R 

Finally, the 2023-2024 officers elected by the Board of Directors were announced:  

• Chair Denise Stephens, University of Oklahoma 
• Vice Chair Larry Alford, University of Toronto Libraries 
• Treasurer Roger Schonfeld, Ithaka S+R  
• Secretary Lorelei Tanji, University of California at Irvine  
• Immediate Past Chair Adriene Lim, University of Maryland 

 

CRL thanks everyone who attended and participated in this year’s annual meeting. Materials from the 2023 Annual Council of Voting Members Meeting can be found here.