RLUK wishes our colleagues, partners and all a wonderful Christmas break and a very Happy New Year!

In this post we take a look back at some highlights from the year for us.

Richard Ovenden (Bodleian Libraries) spoke at the Digital Shift Forum about long-term sustainability of knowledge.

The Digital Shift Forum brings colleagues together to discuss the future of the digital shift in collections, services, and audiences. Events during the year looked at opportunities and issues around open infrastructure for research and its implementation in research libraries, and the impact of AI on infrastructure development. The forum also took a broad look at sustainability for libraries: environmental impacts, sustainability of knowledge, and sustainability of our services and systems. You can watch previous DSF events here.

The Inclusive Collections, Inclusive Libraries series fosters conversation around decolonisation and inclusive practice in collecting. The seminar series held a number of talks during the year that explored the challenges around decolonisation within libraries as well as a number of issues concerning the development of inclusive and diverse collections. Delegates had the opportunity to hear case studies and talks on the use of digital storytelling and digital platforms for engagement and co-curation with underrepresented groups, on  overcoming gender biased language when developing inclusive collections, and the nature of ‘community’ and its role for research libraries and their collections. ou can watch all previous ICIL events here.

Towards equity and inclusion through special collections and archives event.

Event exploring successful institutional strategies to to overcome structural barriers in research engagement

RLUK’s Research Shift Programme provides a space to empower and support librarians, archivists, information professionals, and colleagues across the Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (GLAM) sector to actively engage in research. The first series of RSP events explored the concept of research, overcoming structural barriers, and practical strategies for initiating and sustaining research projects. A second series is currently being planned for 2026.

The RLUK Space Programme is a forum for RLUK members to engage in open dialogue and share their knowledge and experience around spatial redesign and capital builds. Space programme events were held in the year explored the evolving role of libraries and their spaces in supporting a sustainable future and how libraries are embedding EDI principles in the design of spaces as well as in the practices that shape user experience and engagement. You can watch all Space Programme events here.

Campus sustainability and the role of the research library event.

UK PBC

The UK Print Book Collection (UK PBC), a national initiative designed to preserve and provide access to scarce print monographs across the UK, was launched in October. The UK PBC is a shared service supported by RLUK and SCONUL, the British Library and Jisc. It is administered by the British Library and underpinned by the National Bibliographic Knowledgebase (NBK), operated by Jisc.

Ensuring the efficient management of print collections has become critical for libraries as pressure on space grows and as access to online resources increases. This has led to strong demand for a collaborative approach to ensure preservation and access for future scholars. The success of the UK PBC depends on as many libraries as possible signing up to supporting a national distributed collection of monographs based on a minimum number of seven retained copies across the participating libraries (seven libraries with a copy). Any Higher Education and specialist library in the UK is welcome to join. There is no fee. The only prerequisite is to contribute your bibliographic data to the NBK and refresh it regularly (support is available for any libraries needing assistance).

libraries X research

RLUK continued its joint work with AHRC under the Research Engagement Programme (REP) – a series of activities that include the Professional Practice Fellowship Scheme (PPFS) and Research Catalyst Cohort Programme (RCC) – that help support our members and the wider academic and research library community in developing and promoting research capacity, capability, and confidence amongst their staff.

In May 2025, we celebrated the second round of PPFS research projects with an event in London. Fellows presented their research projects to Library Directors, project mentors, and to colleagues representing the major research funders in the sector: Arcadia, ESRC, Arts Council England, Wellcome Trust, and the Rothschild Foundation. Their research will be shared in 2026.

The third Research Catalyst Cohort Programme began in September. 19 colleagues from libraries across the UK will learn about making competitive applications to academic funders as research partners and leaders and how to build valuable relationships between the academic library and research management communities.

EDI in the research library

RLUK’s Special Collections and Heritage Network (SCHN) published a position paper in February on ‘Equity, diversity, and inclusion in the research library: a special and heritage collections perspective’. The paper underlined RLUK’s strong commitment to the values of equity, diversity, and inclusion and presented a set of objectives which will help member libraries and others work towards achieving EDI goals from a special and heritage collections perspective.

Embedding Environmental Sustainability in Libraries: insights from RLUK members

For Green Libraries Week, RLUK shared some key insights that have emerged from ongoing conversations around environmental sustainability within its membership. Environmental sustainability is a central priority across UK universities and libraries are emerging as key agents of change. Positioned at the heart of academic and community life, they are often at the forefront of piloting and implementing innovative sustainability initiatives.

RLUK was also a partner in delivering the Green Libraries Conference, which this year took place in London on Monday, 27 October.  The Conference took as its theme Planting seeds of change: from small beginnings to a mighty forest and programmed presentations from across the library sector.

Looking to the Future – Mapping the Environment for Research Libraries

In 2025 RLUK began work to develop its new strategy, that will run from 2026 to 2030. Predicting the environment in which research libraries might operate over any five-year span is a thankless task – history is full of future-gazing that reality has failed to validate. In a blog post published in August we outlined how the Future Cone methodology has helped us to examine a range of possible futures, to try to understand where we think research libraries are going, and so frame the new RLUK strategy.

RLUK and AI

Earlier this year, RLUK revisited its Digital Shift Maturity survey using ChatGPT 4.0. It was an opportunity to explore the survey with an LLM, developing prompts and structuring the data to generate themes and identify potential gaps in the survey results. It was a valuable exercise but one which still underscored the importance of the ‘human in the loop’ to validate the results, refine the prompts and sense check the themes generated. The summary report is available here and we published a short blog post on the work.

In the new year RLUK will also launch an introductory video on Discipline Specific Gen AI. This video featuring academic colleagues from Leicester, Leeds, Newcastle, Reading and UEA reflects on the challenges and impact of GenAI in education.

The RLUK25 Conference, Champions of knowledge: Libraries as beacons of trust and integrity was held in person at Spaces at the Spine in Liverpool, 19-21 March 2025. The Conference explored the philosophical and pragmatic challenges for research libraries and their role in upholding the values of trust and integrity.

This was the first in person RLUK conference since 2019. Keynote talks were delivered by Lucy Everest (University of Liverpool) and Christopher Smith (AHRC) as well as Ciaran Talbot (University of Manchester), Mahaletchumy Arujanan (International Service for the Acquisition of Agribiotech Applications) & Emmanuel Boakye (founder, African Reproducibility Network). Michelle Charters, Head of the International Slavery Museum closed the conference.