This is the first CURL Newsletter, to bring members up to date with what CURL is doing and also with what is happening in member libraries. It will appear every two months. It is very much hoped that this newsletter, as well as the CURL pages, will be a vehicle not just for CURL to inform members about what it is doing but also as a means of sharing information between members. So if you have any news which you wish to share with other members, maybe about a project you are involved with, or an event which has taken place at you institution please let me know so that it can be included. We will also be setting up a noticeboard on the web pages in the near future to include information about events and job vacancies within the CURL libraries, so again if you have anything you would like to see there please let me know. All contributions should be sent to Anne Mealia.
Board business
Board membership
CURL now has a new Board of Directors, elected in March 2000. The Chair of the new Board is Clive Field, University of Birmingham. Michael Hannon, University of Sheffield, continues as treasurer. The other members of the new Board are: Paul Ayris, University College London; Tom Graham, University of Newcastle; John Hall, University of Durham; Ian Mowat, University of Edinburgh; Frances Thomson, University of Liverpool; Jan Wilkinson, University of Leeds
CURL Strategic Directions and Taskforces
In order to implement the Strategic Directions 2000-2004 the Board has agreed that a number of task forces should take forward development in a number of areas.
The Resource Discovery and Description Steering Group is to continue with the same remit, to oversee development of the CURL Database, COPAC and the HE Archives Hub on behalf of the JISC. John Hall is now Chair of RD&D following Clive Field’s election as Chair of CURL. The next meeting of RD&D will be on 20 June in Durham.
Other taskforces are:
Fund-raising, to be chaired by Clare Jenkins. To look at generating revenue for CURL in order to establish a basis for funding collaborative activity and also to consider ways in which CURL should influence future policy making at a national level.
Scholarly Communications issues, to be chaired by Paul Ayris. This taskforce will continue the work done by CURL in discussions with publishers and in lobbying funding bodies.
Staffing Resources, to be chaired by Frances Thomson. This taskforce will have a broader remit than the previous staffing group and will look at ways of promoting and supporting CURL’s mission to improve support for research-led universities. It will also consider collaborative ways in which to share specialist expertise.
Resource Management, still under discussion, but to involve the national libraries.
Learning and Teaching, still under discussion but primarily to identify learning and teaching support issues of importance to CURL members and to recommend areas of activity for CURL to engage in, for the benefit of members.
Latest news and developments
Annual Report
The Annual Report for the period 1998-99 is now up on the web pages
CURL Database
The CURL database now contains over 21 million records
CURL recently purchased a UKMARC to MARC21 conversion program from Crossnet Systems and Manchester Computing has just installed it on the z39.50 service and the service is up and running smoothly.
RLIN ‘all you can eat’ deal
The CURL ‘all-you-can-eat’ deal for 2000-01 is currently in the process of being negotiated and more news will be posted as soon as more details are available.
CURL AND NESLI
CURL has been active, both consortially and through its individual members, in trying to secure improvements to the NESLI deals with Academic Press and Elsevier. In both cases, it has been instrumental in persuading these publishers to revise their proposals in ways which are more favourable to the needs of large research libraries. With Elsevier, CURL has been negotiating directly with the publishers and has brokered a special bolt-on deal to NESLI for UK higher education libraries, whether in membership of CURL or not, with an annual spend on Elsevier print subscriptions of more than £250,000.
Projects
HE Archives Hub
CURL is pleased to announce that the present project is progressing well and is on target. The JISC have agreed, in principle, to provide continuation funding for a full scale national service for three years beyond the present pilot. More information about the service can be found at http://www.archiveshub.ac.uk/. JISC is also allocating a sum for the creation of additional collection-level content, to be awarded competitively.
National Union Catalogue Feasibility Study
A Feasibility Study into a National Union Catalogue for the UK is being funded jointly by the JISC, RSLP and the British Library and will report in December 2000. The Study is being undertaken by a consortium led by the University of Sheffield Library and including CURL, the University of Glasgow Library and Crossnet Systems. The aim is to undertake a review of key issues that impinge on the creation of a National Union Catalogue. More information can be found at http://www.uknuc.shef.ac.uk/.
Heritage Lottery Fund
Three bids are being prepared:
Early Printed Books, led by Edinburgh - bid being prepared by Richard Ovenden
Music, led by Birmingham - bid being prepared by Marie-Pierre Detraz
Maps, led by Oxford - bid being prepared by Mary Clapinson mary.clapinson@bodley.ox.ac.uk.
It is expected that the first bid, Early Printed Books, will be submitted at the end of June
CURL-shares
A CURL-Shares group is in the process of being set up. A subset of the CURL libraries will use RLG’s ILL Manager software or RLIN ILL to interlend monographs among themselves as a complementary service to existing services. Two of the CURL members - Oxford and Newcastle - are reviewing RLG’s ILL Manager software. For more information about the group please contact Frances Thomson or Stephen Prowse (stephen.prowse@kcl.ac.uk)
Other events
CURL Staff conference
The third CURL conference was held in Newcastle 3-4 April. The theme of the conference was Collection development and exploitation in the hybrid library. The number of delegates and the interest in the conference showed that the conference was a success. Some of the papers are on the CURL web site at http://www.curl.ac.uk/about/3conference.html and more will be going up in due course.
The theme for next year’s conference has been suggested as continuous professional development.
CAUL/CONZUL visit
A delegation of library directors from Australia and New Zealand arrived in the UK for a very successful two-week study tour which began with their attending the SCONUL conference. They then travelled to Edinburgh and visited the Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling. The second week of their tour was based in London and the itinerary included visits to the British Library, BLPES, the new Public Records Office building, and the new Greenwich Library.
There were a number of presentations on JISC activities, on CEDARS, on RSLP, on various eLib projects and on the M25 consortium.
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