At its Fall 2021 Association Meeting held virtually September 28–October 6, the membership of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) voted to invite University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) Library to join ARL as the 126th member, effective January 1, 2022. Elizabeth Cowell, the Richard L. Press University Librarian and Presidential Chair, University Library, UC Santa Cruz, accepted the invitation.
“Over the past 30 years, scholarship, teaching, and learning have changed tremendously,” said UCSC University Librarian Elizabeth Cowell. “How we absorb and disseminate information has been revolutionized. Libraries are not what they used to be. All this change means that serving library patrons is best done through intentional collaborative efforts. ARL gives us a much stronger voice in the efforts to achieve barrier-free access to information. This election is a great honor for our team and for the university as a whole.”
The vote to approve UCSC’s membership followed a review of the University Library that considered both qualitative and quantitative data and a site visit. The review process included an examination of the breadth and depth of collections, uniqueness of research resources, services to the library’s community, potential contributions to scholarship, and leadership in the library and information science profession.
“We are pleased to welcome the University of California, Santa Cruz Library as the 126th member of the Association of Research Libraries. UC Santa Cruz Library is advancing the mission of research libraries through its incredible commitment to research information, digital scholarship, open access, and special collections and archives. We look forward to UCSC’s active participation in the Association in our work to strategically advance and support the research enterprise,” said ARL President K. Matthew Dames, the Edward H. Arnold University Librarian, Hesburgh Libraries, University of Notre Dame.
About the Association of Research Libraries
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 125 research libraries in Canada and the US whose mission is to advance research, learning, and scholarly communication. The Association fosters the open exchange of ideas and expertise; advances diversity, equity, and inclusion; and pursues advocacy and public policy efforts that reflect the values of the library, scholarly, and higher education communities. ARL forges partnerships and catalyzes the collective efforts of research libraries to enable knowledge creation and to achieve enduring and barrier-free access to information. ARL is on the web at ARL.org.
