RLUK

RLUK is very pleased to announce that David Prosser has been appointed Executive Director. David joins us from SPARC Europe, where his leadership and advocacy skills have played a critical role in the success of the European Open Access movement.

The Chair of RLUK, Dr Mark Brown of the University of Southampton said: “We are delighted that David will be joining us as our new Executive Director. David brings ten years' experience of shaping strategic thinking for an active membership organisation, and encouraging partnerships and collaborations which can bring together librarians, publishers, and funders. We look forward to David playing a key role in delivering our exciting new strategy”

David Prosser said: “It is a great honour to join RLUK as the new Executive Director. These are exciting times for research libraries in terms of new delivery of content, use of physical space and the ways in which researchers and students use our collections. They are also potentially difficult times as public spending tightens and decisions need to be made on priorities for the future. Now, more than ever, the UK community needs to speak with a strong voice to ensure that the case for research libraries is heard. We also need to look for innovative collaborative solutions for budgetary issues. I look forward to working with the Board, members, and RLUK staff to address these issues and help fulfill the RLUK vision of ensuring that the UK should have the best research library support in the world.”

Information for editors: RLUK is a consortium of 29 of the largest research organisations in the UK, including the three national libraries. Founded more than 25 years ago, RLUK (formerly CURL) has directly and indirectly sponsored some of the major free online UK resources in support of research, including Copac, the de facto UK Union Catalogue of over 35 million books and serials, the Archives Hub, a national gateway to descriptions of archives in UK universities and colleges, the award-winning SHERPA, whose aim is to facilitate the rapid and efficient worldwide dissemination of research output, and the 19th Century Pamphlets Online project, which has made over 1 million digitized pages of pamphlet material in our libraries available to HE and FE institutions, UK Public Libraries and Archives, and UK Schools through a special partnership with the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the not-for-profit trusted repository, JSTOR.

For further information about RLUK contact Mike Mertens, mike.mertens@rluk.ac.uk, 0121 4158107