CURL Strategic Directions for 2000-2004

• Introduction
• Mission
• Vision
• Strategic goals
  • - Leadership role and awareness raising
  • - Resource description and discovery
  • - Resource management
  • - Membership services

Introduction
CURL was formed in 1983 to bring together the larger research-based university libraries in the UK and Ireland, to share resources and to foster collaboration for the mutual benefit of the CURL libraries and the users of their collections.
During the 1990s CURL's membership expanded, and by the beginning of 2000 there were twenty-one university libraries in full membership of the consortium. The shared interests of university research libraries with the national libraries and other institutions with major research collections, is recognised by including these libraries as associate members of CURL.
Following its expansion and more recent consolidation CURL feels it is appropriate to review its mission in the context of those factors affecting research institutions nationally. The staff in the CURL libraries will play a crucial role in this process and they will be central to the implementation of the CURL Strategic Plan for 2000-2004.

Mission
CURL's mission is "to promote, maintain and improve library resources for research, learning and teaching in research-led universities"

Vision
By the end of the year 2004, CURL will have consolidated its consortium partnership by:

• providing strong leadership and opportunities for innovation for the scholarly library and research communities
• providing the academic research community with physical and virtual access to the shared resources of all the CURL libraries
• providing a framework of mutual support, enabling its members to develop individual and collective strengths
• raising the profile of CURL and its members in appropriate forums, to ensure an understanding of the value of the research libraries to the national and international research community

Strategic goals
Leadership role and awareness raising
To lead in the development of a national strategy for information provision for research in higher education and, in so doing, to raise the profile of CURL nationally and internationally among the research and the LIS communities and to develop appropriate partnerships and strategic alliances.
Principal activities will include:

• To develop a strategic business plan for CURL’s future directions
• To consider CURL’s mission and membership in the light of cross sectoral and cross domain developments nationally
• To identify priorities for funding within CURL libraries and to be proactive in influencing national agendas/priorities for funding for research support (e.g. following on from RSLP)
• To influence JCEI/CWP in the development of content policy for the UK (e.g. by developing a response to CWG Collection Policy) and thereby
• To influence national agencies engaged in consortial purchase activities, such as CHEST and NESLI in order to ensurethe needs of research and scholarship remain a priority.
• To publicise and disseminate information about CURL and its activities as widely as possible in appropriate contexts.
• To make appropriate responses to consultation processes.

Resource description and discovery
Principally through the development of COPAC and the CURL database that underpins it, and the HE Archives Hub, to provide tools for resource description and discovery of the combined holdings of the CURL libraries, for the benefit of research scholarship. It is expected that COPAC and the HE Archives Hub will contribute to the JISC’s Distributed National Electronic Resource. The Resource Discovery and Description Steering Group will continue to drive this agenda, as it has an ongoing remit for the development path for COPAC, on behalf of JISC.
The principal objectives in this area fall into three categories:

Business Planning and Marketing

• To develop a business plan for the development and maintenance of the COPAC database as a national resource within the DNER beyond current JISC funding.
• To develop a business plan for the development and maintenance of the HE Archives Hub as a national resource within the DNER, beyond the present pilot.
• To contribute to the development of a UK national union catalogue

Content

• To provide access to the bibliographic records of all CURL’s members
• To implement a strategy for enhanced access to and provision of catalogue records for serials
• To enrich the provision of machine-readable bibliographic records for printed resources housed in CURL libraries.
• To provide access to dynamic location information of CURL holdings recorded on COPAC.
• To provide machine-readable records, at least at collection level, of archive, manuscript and other non-book collections housed in CURL libraries.
• To provide metadata for the electronic resources accessible from CURL libraries.
• To provide access to metadata for the electronic resources accessible from CURL libraries.
  Systems and Interoperability Issues
• To ensure the development of COPAC functionality and its interoperability with other bibliographic databases and library systems.
• To ensure the development of the HE Archives Hub in terms of its functionality and its interoperability with other resource discovery tools, and including other archival hubs.
• To develop the functionality of the CURL database for record retrieval purposes to enhance its level of interoperability with other library cataloguing systems.
• To implement, where appropriate, developing standards and protocols

Resource management
To optimise the combined information resources and expertise of the CURL libraries, in partnership with relevant organisations, for the benefit of research scholarship and to facilitate the exploitation of content for national agendas for teaching and learning.

The principal objectives in this area fall into two categories:

Information Resources

• To contribute to the development of a national collection ‘mapping’ strategy building on RSLP projects
• To play a leading role in the development of national collection, retention, preservation and digitisation policies, in collaboration with the British Library, the Digital Preservation Coalition and other organisations.
• To take a lead in national and international initiatives, which are focused on scholarly communication such as publishers’ pricing policies, intellectual property rights and hybrid library issues.
• To promote wider physical and virtual access to resources in CURL libraries.
• To collaborate in microfilming, preservation and digitisation programmes, at national and international levels, for both access and preservation.
• To consider digital preservation and archiving strategies beyond CEDARS
• To play a leading role in the development of new models of effective resource sharing, including the possibility of collaborative collection management, interlending and document delivery between CURL libraries.

Staff Resources
To review the feasibility within CURL of shared expertise of specialist staff to provide enhanced support for research (e.g. in areas such as acquisitions, cataloguing, reference services, information skills training and the hybrid library).

Membership services
To strengthen the links between CURL's administration and its members, to ensure a firm consortium partnership and professional support infrastructure. To co-ordinate the implementation of CURL’s strategic plan and to provide appropriate liaison and communication.

• To ensure appropriate and adequate channels of communication are in place, so that all members are informed of CURL activities in a timely manner, and provided with opportunities to participate in CURL activities.
• To pursue opportunities for advantageous consortia activities.
• To involve CURL staff with recognised expertise in CURL Task Forces in order to implement CURL’s strategic plan and to facilitate their career development within a wider national context