The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) is an international membership organization of research libraries committed to building, stewarding, and sharing a wealth of resource materials from all world regions to support research and teaching. As a cooperative venture, CRL’s mission, vision, values, and strategy are guided and governed by CRL’s Board of Directors, elected by members of the CRL Council of Voting Members.

Two weeks into his tenure as CRL President, Jacob Nadal sat down with Jen Jenkins, Head of Membership Engagement and Communications, to chat about his professional trajectory, what's unique about CRL and why he's excited to lead it at this moment in its history, and priorities for his first year.  Jen: As a 10-year-old, you likely weren’t answering the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” with “I want to be deeply embedded in the world of research libraries.” What was your trajectory into this world?  

This past summer, Dr. Jennifer L. Jenkins joined CRL in the role of part-time Communications and Membership Coordinator; on November 1, she transitioned into the full-time position of CRL’s Head of Membership Engagement and Communications. In this expanded role, Jen will engage with and better get to know colleagues at CRL member institutions, which will inform how CRL articulates and communicates the benefits of CRL membership for our member institutions.

As the Center for Research Libraries prepares for a leadership transition, we sat down with CRL President Greg Eow to talk about the accomplishments of his tenure and what the CRL community can look forward to in the years ahead. 

The Center for Research Libraries is excited to announce that Jacob Nadal, currently the Director for Preservation at the Library of Congress, will succeed Greg Eow as CRL President, effective November 18, 2024. Nadal is a nationally recognized expert on preservation who has served in leadership roles at a variety of independent, academic, and government organizations.

The Center for Research Libraries and Saint Louis University Libraries are pleased to announce that SLU has joined CRL as its newest full-voting member. 

The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) is pleased to announce an updated model license agreement which reflects a community-generated template that addresses some of the most pressing challenges in the emerging scholarly communications landscape.

CRL’s Licensing and Acquisitions Team is seeking member feedback.

The new three-year open publishing agreement provides seven NERL member institutions with read access to the entire corpus of Springer journals and permits eligible authors to publish open access, with fees covered, in hybrid journals across the Springer portfolio

The CRL Board of Directors is pleased to announce the appointments to the CRL President Search Committee.   The CRL Executive Committee received an outstanding expression of interest from member directors in response to their open solicitation for search committee members. The Executive Committee carefully reviewed and appointed search committee members that represent many of the various organizational types and perspectives among CRL membership. Constituting the 2024 CRL President Search Committee are: 

The CRL Licensing and Acquisitions Team seeks suggestions and input from members of the community on the CRL Model License. 

The CRL Board of Directors is pleased to announce the new Global Collections Advisory Task Force. The Global Collections Advisory Task Force will actively engage CRL community stakeholders and gather membership feedback as we move forward with CRL’s reinvestment in its longstanding mission to collectively build, preserve, and share global collections at scale in service to scholarship. 

East View Information Services and the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) have launched Soviet-Era Ukrainian Newspapers (SEUN), the sixth in-copyright collection of titles produced under the Global Press Archive (GPA) CRL Alliance, available now to all CRL member institutions.

East View Information Services and the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) have launched the Daily Observer Digital Archive (DODA), the eighth Open Access collection produced under the Global Press Archive (GPA) CRL Alliance.

The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) is pleased to announce that Robert Van Rennes will join CRL’s growing licensing team as the new Licensing Librarian. Currently Associate Director of Library Initiatives at the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA), Van Rennes comes to CRL with a wealth of experience in licensing.

East View Information Services and the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) have launched Local and Independent Ukrainian Newspapers (LIUN), the fifth in-copyright collection of titles produced under the Global Press Archive (GPA) CRL Alliance, available now to all CRL member institutions.

On behalf of the CRL Board of Directors, we write with an update on the current initiative to strengthen CRL’s global programs.   

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. 

CRL is pleased to announce the following leadership for the new NERL Steering Committee and the NERL Program Council. The NERL community came together in 2022 to finalize its operational and governance structure as a cooperative program under the CRL organizational umbrella. Charges for the NERL Steering Committee and Program Council were developed by the NERL community and approved by the CRL Board in July 2023. The CRL Nominating Committee issued an open call this summer to secure initial leadership appointments to establish the NERL Steering Committee. 

TRAIL (Technical Report Archive & Image Library) has released its Summer 2023 Newsletter.