Center for Research Libraries

On Monday, someone from the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) visited our library. While I have heard of CRL, I really didn’t know what they did. CRL is a consortium of North American universities, colleges and independent research libraries and according to the CRL website:

The Center’s mission is to support advanced research and teaching in the humanities, sciences and social sciences by ensuring the survival and availability of the knowledge resources vital to these disciplines. The Center accomplishes this mission through cooperative action with its members and partners.

They do this by acquiring and preserving “newspapers, journals, documents, archives and other traditional and digital resources for research and teaching.” Basically the acquire and provide access to primary research materials that mos individual libraries could not afford to obtain independently. The collections they have are very interesting and I was surprised to see what they had available to our students and researchers. Just another reason to ask your local subject librarian if you are researching a topic. It almost makes me wish I was studying pamphleteering during the French Revolution of 1848.