ARL executive director Elliott Shore and ARL partnership consultant Kathleen Shearer presented a paper describing the results of the Association’s recent Strategic Thinking and Design process—a new Strategic Framework and innovative approach to the work that ARL undertakes in partnership with its member libraries—at the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) Academic and Research Libraries Standing Committee preconference in Cape Town, South Africa, on August 13–14, 2015, prior to the IFLA World Library and Information Congress.
The Association embarked upon this transformation in 2013 to foster greater collaboration and innovation amongst its members. A key component of the new approach involves effecting change within higher education through a “system of action” made up of interrelated and interdependent components. By collaborating within this system of action, the Association aims to catalyze collective action to improve access to and preservation of research content, as well as support new educational models.
The paper, “Fostering Collaboration in the 21st-Century Research Library” (PDF), is freely available as part of the online proceedings from the preconference, The Quest for Deeper Meaning of Research Support.
About the Association of Research Libraries
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 124 research libraries in the US and Canada. ARL’s mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, facilitating the emergence of new roles for research libraries, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the web at https://www.arl.org/.
