CURLSupporting the research community

Robin GreenExecutive Director, CURL

Cardiff University, 11 May 2006

What is CURL?

Partnerships

What we do and how

Some current issues

What is CURL?

CURL Members• Higher Education: Aberdeen, Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge,

Cardiff, Durham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Imperial College, Leeds, King's College London, Liverpool, University of London Research Library Services, LSE, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, School of Oriental and African Studies, Oxford, Sheffield, Southampton, Trinity College Dublin, University College London, Warwick

• National Libraries: British Library, National Library of Scotland, National Library of Wales

• Others: Victoria and Albert Museum, Wellcome Institute

Mission

…..to increase the ability of research libraries to provide for the information needs of the local, national, and international research community.

Partnerships

National and International

• British Library: monograph interlending, collaborative storage

• JISC: national digitisation study, COPAC

• SCONUL: scholarly communications, e-Research

• RIN: collaborative collection management, researcher use of libraries

• RLG: database access and resource discovery

• ARL, CARL, LIBER….

How and what we do

Who is CURL

• CURL Board

• Steering Group and Task Forces

• Members

• Partners in CURL activities

• Secretariat

Strategic Themes 2006-2008

• National Framework for Research Support

• Enhancing Resource Discovery and Delivery

• New Approaches to Support for Research

• CURL as Community: improving support for members

CURL Groups and Task ForcesResource Discovery Strategy Group

Resource Management Task Force

Scholarly Communications Group

E-Research Task Force

Research Support Task Force

CURL as Community Task Force

Resource Discovery Strategy Group

• CURL strategy on the development of resource discovery services

• Role and development for COPAC/CURL database• Oversight role: other CURL-related resource

discovery projects and services (e.g., Archives Hub)

• Membership: British Library, JISC, RIN, Manchester Computing, CURL members (including Cardiff’s Richard Mellowes)

CURL Database• c.46m member library and other records

• Records from 1100s on; half are post-1980

• Members contribute their records and have unlimited use

• Customer income supports CURL initiatives

COPAC• National and international research resource

• 31m unique records

• Nearly 700,000 searches in January 2006

• Link out from COPAC to full text; download records into EndNote

• Real-time information on who holds a work, with classmark and if on loan or not

Resource Management Task Force

• Collaborative collection management

• COPAC and interlending

• CURL and digitisation

Joint Scholarly Communications Group• Lead role on behalf of the UK/Irish academic library

community

• Monitor the impact of UK and other scholarly communications developments

• Sponsor advocacy in academic communities

• Identify and promote initiatives

Research Support Task Force

• Identify services to support the research process: create a shared best practice model

• Engage with LIS and researchers over identifying current or new services

• Exchange of experience/skills development events

• Work with other agencies to develop best practice support for physical research spaces and VREs

e-Research Task Force

• Raise awareness/understanding of support for e-research

• Position library staff to engage with local e-research stakeholders and contribute at research proposal stage

• Identify skills gaps and assist in addressing them

• Ensure information management to support e-research is a high priority for future investment by funders

• Advise CURL and SCONUL on support of e-research

CURL as Community Task Force

• Identify ways to improve the benefits of CURL membership and increase Members’ engagement

• Implement a CURL brand and communications strategy

• Liaise with other CURL groups to facilitate networking and development opportunities

Some Issues (of many…)

• Googlezon/Amazoogle environment

• Engaging with researchers in an increasingly distributed digital world

• What makes a research library?

www.curl.ac.uk