1. “Never the Twain Shall Meet?”
Why RLUK became Members of The
European Library
The European Library Annual Conference 2013,
Amsterdam
Mike Mertens, Deputy Director, RLUK

2. Your Mystery Europhile
“There is no document of civilization which
is not at the same time a document of
barbarism.”

3. Essential Themes
•Discovery
•Impact
•Network/New partnerships
•Solidarity/Service/Co-development
•Hidden Collections & “Collections, wherever they are”

4. About Research Libraries UK (RLUK)
• Research Libraries UK – formally founded in 1983
• Initially 7 members – currently 33
• Original focus of activity: shared national services built on collective
strengths (Copac, Archives Hub).
• Current strategic themes:
• Redefining the Research Library Model
• Collaborating to reduce costs and improve quality
• Shaping ethical and effective publishing
• Promoting unique and distinctive collections
• Modelling the Library Role in Research Data Management

5. Essential Themes
•Discovery
•An extension of our work on discovery, discoverability and access,
from a national to an international context
•Ensuring the collections of our members are better known
•Working on new modes of discovery and metadata - creating a linked
open data set
•Deepening and strengthening the notion of collections in context -
already developed through the creation of a native collection
management tool

6. Essential Themes
•Impact
•With regard to our members - membership offered as an additional,
cost-free service
•Of scholarly information/information for scholarship - broadening the
audience of our members’ collections to go beyond Higher Education
(similar to work done under our Britain in Print and 19th
Century
pamphlets projects)
•Public good - as a charity we are obliged (and happy!) to create value
for everyone. Adding our information increases benefit to the public -
to more (citizen) scientists/humanists/researchers

7. Essential Themes
•Network/New Partnerships
•New platform for library development
•The possibility of bidding for EU funding
•Stronger lobbying position, for e.g., regarding text- and data-mining
•Sharing best practice through closer dialogue and doing together with
European partners

8. Essential Themes
•Solidarity/Service/Co-development
•The European Library is governed by libraries, for libraries - a very
valuable proposition that we wanted to support practically and
intellectually, joining with our sister organizations CENL, LIBER and
CERL
•Responsiveness - as an organization, we have found The European
Library to be open to ideas, to input, to discursiveness. Good customer
service experience
•To encourage further development from the research library side, for
example, on the archival aspect of what we do

9. Essential Themes
•Hidden Collections & “Collections, wherever they are”
•Virtuous aggregation building: perhaps work towards our goal of
helping to accelerate the describing collections by making our own
metadata available to public bodies
•To help create a broader backdrop to a more comprehensive
understanding of “The European Collection”
•To facilitate the closer mapping of collections to identify further
opportunities for digitization and the re-use of digital content, as well
as cataloguing

10. Quiz & Contact
Quiz
Your mystery Europhile: Walter Benjamin (Theses on the Philosophy of
History - and I don’t agree with him, so let’s keep on keeping the
documents of civilization!).
Contact
mike.mertens@rluk.ac.uk
@RLUK_Mike