University of Texas Libraries Director and Vice Provost Fred Heath has been elected chair of the Board of Directors of the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), a consortium of North American university, college and independent research libraries.
Heath succeeds Yale University Librarian Alice Prochaska, and will serve along with representatives of such prominent universities as Emory, Michigan and Duke, among others. He will serve a one-year term and is eligible for re-election.
CRL was formed in 1949 as the Midwest Inter-Library Center in an effort to plan and build a central regional collection deposit library to house materials from 13 midwestern universities. The group eventually changed its name and broadened the scope of the project to include North American institutions in the late 1960s. By 1974, CRL represented 130 members.
Today, the CRL claims 250 participating institutions with a collection of about four million items. CRL acquires and preserves traditional and digital resources for research and teaching and makes them available to member institutions through interlibrary loan and electronic delivery.
