I was interested to come across the CURL Strategic Themes 2006-2008. CURL, for non-UK readers, is the consortium of research libraries in the UK and Ireland. Four themes are suggested:
- To contribute to the development of a national framework for research support
- To facilitate new approaches to support for research
- To enhance resource discovery and delivery
- CURL as community: to improve support for members
It is interesting to see the emphasis on supporting new modes of research (‘the developing research support environment’) and integrated discovery to delivery across all resource types. These are of course major issues for research libraries everywhere. They are working towards a wider range of ‘research support services’ of which the institutional repository may be a part, and towards a new sense of discovery in a very changed network world. It is also interesting to see the focus on national collaboration, and working with national organizations to create shared approaches. One of the recurrent themes of the JISC/CNI conference of a while ago was the very different policy environments in the US and the UK. The importance of national, publicly funded bodies in developing services and policy is much greater in a UK, and broader European, setting than it is in the more decentralized US.
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