Membership Requirements

Excerpt from By-law No. 1, Section 3.1 Classes of Membership

Subject to the Articles, there shall be one class of Members in the Corporation. Membership in the Corporation shall be available only to research libraries of a Canadian University, or non-university research libraries located in Canada, which are interested in furthering the Corporation’s purposes and who have applied for membership according to the Corporation’s policies, and have been admitted into Membership in the Corporation by Ordinary Resolution of the Board or in such other manner as may be determined by the Board. Each Member shall be entitled to receive notice of, attend and vote at all Meetings of the Members of the Corporation.

Excerpt from the Policies of the Board of Directors of CARL “Membership criteria and application procedures”

Definitions

Member research libraries of Canadian universities exhibit the following characteristics:

1. A member library has extensive collections and services of sufficient breadth to contribute to the Canadian distributed national research collection.
2. A member library’s institution is committed to graduate study and research, having established PhD programs, normally in the arts, social sciences and sciences.
3. A member library’s institution has annual revenue from sponsored research normally equal to or greater than 15% of the institution’s general operating budget; the designated information source will be the CAUBO Financial Information of Universities and Colleges (FIUC) Statistics.
4. There is a clear and sustained institutional commitment to and support of a member library.

Member non-university research libraries exhibit the following characteristics:

1. A member library is a non-university library, an archive, a museum, gallery or other memory institution in Canada whose activities are supportive of academic research on a national scale.
2. A member library has distinctive research-oriented collections and resources of national significance in a variety of media on a scale appropriate for the support of a broad range of research activities.
3. A member library is able to make a significant contribution to the work of CARL on a continuing basis.
4. There is a clear and sustained institutional commitment to and support of a member library.

A university member representative, normally the library director or other chief executive, is eligible to propose or be proposed as a member of the Board of Directors. All member representatives are expected to participate in one or more of the Association committees and to contribute to collaborative working groups in the furtherance of CARL’s mission and goals.

The CARL Board of Directors will consider requests for membership from Canadian university libraries or non-university research libraries that can demonstrate that they meet CARL’s membership expectations.

Potential members will be asked to provide a written statement demonstrating that they are fully committed to CARL’s mission and are able to make a positive contribution to the work of the Association.

The CARL Board of Directors will consider an application for membership at any time. It is recommended that the initial point of contact would be an informal discussion with the Executive Director. If the library wishes to proceed, it would prepare a formal letter of application. The letter would provide an explicit statement of how the applicant’s membership will contribute to CARL’s mission and how the applicant meets the membership guidelines. Further, the application must include a statement noting acceptance of all existing CARL inter-institutional agreements.

The Board of Directors will review the application in confidence and then vote in camera on the admission or not of the applicant library.

Membership will commence as soon as approved by the Board of Directors. Association dues are pro-rated based upon the time remaining in the Association’s fiscal year but will under no circumstances be less than half of a normal year’s dues.