June 9, 2006 RLG Programs Partner Update
From Jim Michalko, President, RLG
The RLG Board and I are pleased to report that the RLG
membership voted in favor of the proposed combination with OCLC. As of
July 1, we will begin to operate as RLG Programs, a unit of the OCLC
Programs and Research Division. Integration of RLG services into the
OCLC service array will begin at that time.
Before we shift our focus and energies to the transition into the
future, I think it's important to reflect on our past which we've been
privileged to share with you.
RLG was founded in 1974 with the express goal of reducing institutional
costs of acquisitions, shared cataloging, preservation, resource
sharing, and communications. We met that goal over time in many ways
and for many constituencies by blending managed collaboration and
innovative service provision. This combination of an operational
capacity with your willingness to work jointly has delivered a legacy
of progress. Here's just a few of the many the extraordinary things we
achieved together:
- We built a catalog of remarkable breadth and depth
that met the essential management needs of librarians and archivists,
which grew to the point where it also met the research information
needs of students and scholars.
- We built a trusted global community of institutions
who borrow and loan materials so that researchers can do their work
better.
- We took on the brittle paper challenge and
collectively managed the preservation of thousands of at-risk volumes
and saved them for the future.
- We helped our community gain deeper understandings of
research collections and how collecting patterns could influence
collaborative collection development.
- We fundamentally redefined the description and
discovery of primary resources and changed the way users of original
source materials sought and made use of the rare, the special, and the
unique.
- We created communities of interest, professional
associations, and interactions that transformed careers and informed a
generation of library leaders.
Everything that we've done took research and scholarship
as its starting point. Expanding access to research resources is the
bigger goal that has informed our agenda for these 32 years across huge
shifts in technology, audiences, economics, expectations, and
institutional roles. You judged the work important as evidenced by the
continuing growth and globalization of the membership. And you
supported the work with your funding, energy, engagement, and effort.
More than a generation of RLG and member institution staff have much to
be proud of. By combining the RLG ethos and experience with OCLC's
capacities and practices, current staff and members will have even more
to look forward to.
At RLG's 25th Anniversary meeting, I said that our job was to "see the
future and make it work" for research and scholarship. Our reason for
existence is to help research institutions face and manage the
transformational challenges. With your support, we've now chosen to
transform the organization so that it can most effectively address
those challenges. We look forward to working with your institution in
our new form as a renewed collective for research institutions.
Honor the past accomplishments by taking a look at our timeline.
Read our prospectus
and come to the annual meeting next week ready to start shaping our
future.
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