Mandate ¦ Committee members

In order to effectively support research and education as they evolve, research libraries must build an appropriately-skilled and well-informed professional staff, and must clearly demonstrate the library’s value and contributions to researchers and administrators. The work of the Research Libraries Committee will help CARL to advance the ability of its member libraries to fulfill their individual missions in meeting the challenges of the changing scholarly and educational environment.

This Committee was established on November 12, 2009, in Ottawa.

Through the work of the Research Libraries Committee:

CARL will study national-level concerns in university education and identify potential contributions of research libraries with a view to the development and promotion of new models and approaches to librarianship to achieve profound progress in developing sustainable services, skills, and tools.

CARL will consider ways (e.g., return on investment and benchmarking approaches) by which Canadian research libraries can demonstrate a clear return on investment by their parent institutions and improve library service to researchers and students.

CARL will work with other organizations in Canada to develop the library work force that will be needed to achieve a transformational role change for research libraries, with a focus in CARL on leadership development for academic libraries. It will work to develop research skills in research libraries and to promote evidence-based librarianship.

CARL will provide various means by which Canada’s research libraries can share their best practices with each other and learn of the issues and developments in other settings that may have importance for member libraries or the Association. It will develop resources and programming to help member libraries increase local awareness of their role in university research and education.

The Committee reports regularly to the Board and to the membership at General Meetings.

Membership

The Research Libraries Committee will normally be staffed by 8-12 CARL library directors. The President and the Executive Director are ex officio members of the Committee. Normally at least one member of the Committee will also be a Board member. The Chair of the Committee, as recommended by Committee members, will be approved by the Board.

Subcommittees and Working Groups

The Committee will strike subcommittees or working groups as needed. The members of these groups need not all be members of the Research Libraries Committee, but the Chair of the subgroup normally will be. Subcommittee and working group mandates, chairs, members, and project budgeting will be approved by the Research Libraries Committee.

2010-05-19

Committee members