Response of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) to the Consultation
Questions of the Royal Society of Canada’s Expert Panel on the Status and Future of
Canada’s Libraries and Archives
September 2013
Contact: Brent Roe, Executive Director, CARL; brent.roe@carl-abrc.ca;
613-482-9344 x101; www.carl-abrc.ca

Questions
1. What is your mandate and who are your members?
CARL provides leadership on behalf of Canada’s research libraries and enhances their capacity to
advance research and higher education. It promotes effective and sustainable scholarly communication,
and public policy that enables broad access to scholarly information.
The Association’s current members are the 29 major academic research libraries across Canada
together with Library and Archives Canada and the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical
Information (NRC-CISTI).
Please refer to Appendix 1 for more detailed general information about CARL.

2. From your collective perspective, what challenges or issues are most prominent for your organization
today?
By way of a response to this question, I would not that in 2012, CARL member libraries adopted a set of
Strategic Directions 2013-2016, which are provided in full in Appendix 2. These serve to give a general
sense of the major challenges that CARL is asked to address for and with its member libraries.
Please refer to the “Some Recent and Current CARL Interests and Activities” portion of Appendix 1 for a
list of more specific concerns of CARL and what has been done recently by way of addressing them.

3. What do you anticipate as future challenges (by 2020), and how do you see your membership
contributing to address them?
Given that 2020 is only about six years beyond the present date, it is likely that many of the same
challenges addressed in some way in the 2013-2016 CARL Strategic Directions will remain challenges for
both CARL and its member libraries to deal with. That said, there are a number of general ongoing
concerns for research libraries that might be listed.

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Scholarly Communication
There remain, and will remain for some time, some major problems (for research libraries) in the area of
scholarly communication. Because the end-users (university faculty, most importantly) are not exposed
to the high price of subscriptions and licenses for access to the scholarly journals that they need, and
because the library would pay too high a political price on campus if it cancelled journals perceived by
faculty to be important, the library has little choice but to continue to pay the inflationary prices demanded
by some of the large international commercial (and even society) publishers. To refuse to do so is made
even more difficult when the libraries pay for large indivisible bundles of a publisher’s journals. The
development of consortial licensing in Canada will have helped control the price inflation to which
individual libraries, in a licensing environment characterized by non-disclosure clauses, would be
especially vulnerable.
Open access, which while certainly offering the benefit of enlarged access to research articles, has been
embraced by libraries also with a vague hope that it might eventually exert some downward pressure on
journal price inflation by lowering the value of the published journal the more its individual articles are
available elsewhere online for free; so far this has not occurred, but may yet. The development of fully
open access journals in many fields should be helpful inasmuch some of these journals may viably
compete against some subscription journals for manuscripts. Canadian research libraries are already
supporting the publishing of dozens of open access journals; the funding and staffing challenges of this
publishing activity remain considerable.
CARL has a number of current initiatives to address a number of these challenges (see Appendix 1 and
2), and will serve as a discussion forum for research library directors as they consider what more may
need to be done.
Information Technology
Information technology (IT) continues to evolve and no doubt will do so well into the future. Transitioning
to new technology or integrating new technology is costly and labour-intensive. While Canada’s research
libraries generally have good IT support, staff time is limited and the particular knowledge and skill
necessary for establishing a particular new technology may not be immediately available. Organizations
such as CARL can play a role in developing and providing training programs on particular themes of
common interest; they will need to liaise with the library and information programs around more formal
curricula insofar as the technical skills are seen as particularly relevant to library applications.
Cost of Access to Content
The “knowledge explosion” continues such that there is ever more scholarly content being published, still
most importantly as journal articles and books. Aside from the growth in traditionally published content,
there is also a growing interest in and availability of datasets of many kinds, which are expensive to
acquire. As many research libraries find their distinction in their special and archival collections, costs of
acquiring, processing, and preserving these rare or unique materials is a constant challenge. Even
without the journals pricing “crisis,” research libraries must be selective and cannot afford access to all the
content that their researchers, instructors and students need to consult: library acquisition budgets have
not generally been growing faster than the general inflation rate, a situation unlikely to improve unless the
economy markedly strengthens. With newer formats, e.g., data, there are costs not only in the acquisition
of content, but also in the building and maintaining of services to facilitate their use. With analogue

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formats, the storage of growing collections has been a challenge for research libraries, with some
creating storage facilities in lower-cost locations for lower-use materials, whether as an individual library
or in a consortium of other libraries in the region; while these may alleviate the need to build expensive
new libraries, they represent significant costs in themselves. In confronting these challenges, it will be
necessary for Canadian research libraries to continue to find ways to coordinate their acquisitions and
ensure that resource sharing is allowed for under digital content licenses. CARL will provide, again, a key
forum for such discussion among Canadian research library leaders.
Workforce Skills
As research libraries set out to provide new content formats or new services (e.g., research data
management) to their campus communities, they often find that they do not have the necessary
knowledge or skills for this in their current staffing. As it may not be easy to hire someone with the
appropriate skills in an emerging area, it may be necessary to have current staff develop the needed
skills, which can cost considerable time and money. Approaches to sharing skilled personnel, when
these are rare, among research libraries might be explored in a context such as CARL.
The need for newer skills in the research library workforce entails a number of additional challenges aside
from cost. If new technical skills are to be hired into a library, there can be question as to whether the
new staffing must be a librarian or can have other qualifications. If the new staffing has other
qualifications, it is often not obvious where they fit in the library’s human resources scheme: if they do
work in many respects similar to that of the librarians, should they not also have the “academic”
designation (and privileges and responsibilities) as the librarians? Indeed, of course, the
academic/faculty model of librarianship itself is established with widely varying thoroughness across
Canadian research libraries. There is as well a concern among some librarians that the librarian
profession is devalued when skills are found from outside of professional librarianship. The library and
information studies programs are challenged to evolve their curricula quickly enough to respond to the
needs experienced by the libraries for professional librarians with knowledge and skill in emerging areas
of practice. Libraries and organizations such as CARL will need to remain in contact with the professional
education programs.
Information Policy
Copyright law affects the cost for research libraries of providing content to their communities; it also
affects the uses that can be made of content whether in the library or elsewhere on campus. While the
Copyright Act amendments of 2012 where generally helpful for research libraries, especially with
“education” being designated a fair dealing purpose, the ultimate effect of the overriding legal protection
of technological protection measures remains to be seen. With the 2012 amendments, the Copyright Act
will be reviewed in Parliament every five years, with each review bringing the risk of retrenchment—but
also the possibility of further improvements if research libraries can identify and effectively advocate for
their needs. WIPO may also have some influence: it is currently studying library and educational
exceptions and their is discussion of a potential treaty mandating minimal exceptions in these areas.
Canadian libraries will need to strongly encourage the Canadian government to support progress in
WIPO in this still tentative process.
In the next few years there will likely be international trade agreements signed and put into operation by
the federal government that will contain copyright provisions. Perhaps the greatest risk in such provisions
is a lengthening of term of copyright from Canada’s current 50 years after the death of an author to the
US-favoured 70 years. If such a provision is agreed to, Canada’s public domain will cease to grow for 20

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years, which will have an immediate and severely limiting impact on digitization programs. All libraries
and library associations have an interest in making their views on this known to government.
Canadian Internet policy will remain a matter of interest to research libraries for the foreseeable future.
As universities grow their online educational offerings (including into MOOCs—massive open online
courses), as research becomes ever more based in multi-institutional teams and ever more dataintensive, and as libraries provide ever more digital content to their users, a high-speed broadband
Internet is crucial for research, teaching and learning, whether this links institutions (such as the
CANARIE network) or links institutions to individuals (through the commercial providers). In Canada,
there remain distant and rural areas without effective broadband access, and even in our largest cities,
there are those who cannot afford good Internet access. Even for those with high-speed broadband
Internet access, network neutrality on the part of the commercial access providers remains tenuous even
with the 2009 CRTC requirements. In addition, while the federal government’s repeated attempts to pass
“lawful access” legislation have not come to fruition, the revelations of massive covert government
monitoring of telephone and Internet traffic in both the US and Canada with the compliance of Internet
service providers and social networking companies have shown that the privacy of the reader, a long-held
principle of librarianship, is limited or even illusory. The library community will continue to need to clarify
for itself the importance of this and express its concerns to government.
Research Funding and Infrastructure
Supporting Research is a major raison d’être of research libraries, so if research is not well funded, that
becomes a concern for libraries as it represents a business risk: a vigourous campus research enterprise
assures the value of a research collection and the research-support services of research libraries.
Research libraries, have an interest in research funding, whether federal or provincial, which is at risk at
times of economic restraint. In a more specific sense, the federal Indirect Costs Program (ICP) has been
helpful to Canadian research libraries; they will have a continuing interest in seeing this program enlarged
or, at very least, continued. Well-funded granting councils can have considerable influence on the
practices of researchers, promoting (even perhaps compelling) open access and research data archiving
and preservation. As well, in Canada, because of the SSHRC Aid to Scholarly Journals program, they
can be influential over practices of Canadian journals. For CARL as an association, some elements of
federal government research infrastructure are of direct interest as members (LAC and CISTI), but
research libraries also want to see these, as well as other such elements (e.g., Statistics Canada, the
National Research Council generally, the research units in various federal departments, funding for the
Canada Foundation for Innovation) well supported: they provide both content and support for the work of
university researchers. Continuing advocacy will be necessary on these themes by research libraries and
organizations such as CARL.
Library Profile
It remains a challenge to document the ROI (return on investment) of a research library and its
importance for research and learning outcomes, but research libraries will need to continue to experiment
in this area. Libraries, however, struggle against a broader “image” problem within the universities. They
risk being seen to much as “nice” but not necessarily essential by faculty (who rarely enter the library) and
students (who don’t realize that many of the materials they have access to online are provided by the
library) and the public (who think that “everything” can be found on the [open] Internet). As well, libraries
are also not always seen as able to take on new roles in the academy, especially those that are
technology or business skills-intensive (e.g., publishing or research data management)—there are other
units within the university and other organizations beyond the university that are often more assertive of

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their place in such areas and of their readiness to manage funding that may become available for such
work. The fragmentation of the library community in Canada does not help this situation; there is a large
number of narrow-focus or overlapping associations and library-initiated service organizations, all with
their own independent boards and staffs that compete for funding and leadership. Any organization, once
founded, will work to continue its own existence, with the result that there is considerable organizational
overhead and time spent by leaders in negotiating inter-organizational roles. This is a theme that will be
considered in various research library fora in the coming years, including in CARL.
4. What would your organization be doing if funding were increased? And what are you not doing because
of cutbacks or reduced funding?
CARL, happily, has not experienced significant setbacks in funding. Nevertheless, there is much (or
much more) that could be done with an increase in funding. The following are proposed only as a few
examples.
 Develop and provide more training institutes for the staff of Canadian research libraries on
emerging services.
 Contract with professional researchers to produce studies on particular emerging themes or
problem areas.
 Contract with persons who could broker and coordinate joint initiatives in particular areas where
these would be strategically valuable (e.g., research data management or scholarly
communication projects)
 Coordinate and collaborate on projects with similar organizations in other countries.
5. How does your organization relate to Library and Archives Canada (LAC)? Or, in your view, how should
LAC relate to major archival and librarian organizations?
LAC is a full member of CARL, with the important exception that it (and its participants in CARL) does not
participate in any advocacy-related discussion or activity that may regard the federal government. It has
been helpful to have LAC as a CARL member over the years inasmuch as LAC often has a role to in
research library projects with the universities. The university libraries may be helpful collaborators with
LAC-initiated projects as well. As CARL is a forum most importantly for Canada’s research library
leaders, it is desirable that the Librarian and Archivist of Canada be personally involved in CARL
discussion insofar as this is possible. LAC’s continuing support of and involvement in Canadiana.org has
been and will continue to be important.
Beyond CARL, in the broader library and archival community, LAC has an abiding leadership role and the
fora that it can provide bring together both the library and archival communities, which does not occur
nationally in other contexts. The Librarian and Archivist of Canada, in addition to leading an organization
within government, has also traditionally been, in Canada, a certain “honorary” leader and representative
of the Canadian library and archival community both in Canada and abroad. The person in that role
ideally has standing in, and the respect of, the library and archival community, and in return respects this
aspect of that position.
6. What other information would you like to add?
None at this time.

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Appendix 1
A Brief Overview of CARL
The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) – www.carl-abrc.ca – 613-482-9344 –
info@carl-abrc.ca
The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL), “the leadership organization for the Canadian
research library community,” includes as members the 29 larger university libraries in Canada and two
major federal library institutions (Library and Archives Canada and the National Research Council’s
Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information).
In general, CARL provides a forum for discussion (in both English and French) among the directors of its
member libraries, coordinates joint projects of the member libraries, and advocates on behalf of Canada’s
research libraries in the interests of research and higher education. It should be noted that our two
national institution members do not participate in the advocacy discussion or activities of CARL. The
representatives of the CARL member libraries are normally the library directors, but others, e.g.,
associate university librarians or subject experts, participate in CARL committees and project work.
CARL is a not-for-profit corporation operating under the (federal) Canada-Not-for-profit Corporations Act
(S.C. 2009, C.23). It is also a registered charity. The Association is governed by an elected Board of
Directors of six member library directors. All Board terms are two years in length; the Vice-President
automatically becomes President (currently Gerald Beasley, Vice-Provost and Chief Librarian, University
of Alberta).
Operations of the association are managed by an Executive Director, Brent Roe, since 2008, a librarian
by profession. CARL’s staff of four currently works in a downtown Ottawa office inasmuch as it interacts
with both the federal government and other national organizations with interests in libraries, research and
higher education. The annual budget of the Association is currently about $750,000, most of which comes
from membership dues. Member libraries occasionally make special contributions to particular projects.
CARL is itself a member of the Canadian Library Association (CLA), l’Association pour l’avancement des
sciences et des techniques de la documentation (ASTED), the International Federation of Library
Associations and Institutions (IFLA), the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
(SPARC), the Coalition of Open Access Repositories (COAR), and Canadiana.org; it is an associate
member of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) and the Canadian Federation
for the Humanities and Social Sciences (CFHSS). CARL is a supporter and active participant of Research
Data Canada, the Digital Infrastructure Leadership Council, and the Canadian Consortium for Research.
The larger 17 CARL member libraries are also members of the (US-based) Association of Research
Libraries (ARL), with which CARL works closely, so the directors of those libraries also meet and network
in the context of ARL membership meetings and committee activities. CARL also maintains frequent
contact with the four regional university library consortia in Canada (COPPUL, OCUL, CREPUQ, and
CAUL), of which all CARL university library members are members of one or another.
CARL’s activities are guided by a strategic plan, the most recent “Strategic Directions” covering the years
2013-2016. The current Strategic Directions focus on “advancing the vision of Canadian research
libraries” by helping its membership to redefine the research library collection and services, collaborate
nationally, and develop their roles in university community engagement and internationalization; on
“building the capacity of Canadian research libraries” by facilitating the sharing and preservation of
research collections, the development of new library expertise, and the surmounting of resource
management issues; on “promoting the value of Canadian research libraries” by developing outcomes
measures and assessment of library services, and building the role of the library in research; and on
“supporting access to research” by coordinating research data management initiatives, promoting Open

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Access and new forms of scholarly communication, and representing academic and library interests in
information policy. A list of recent or current projects appears below.
CARL provides a number of regular services for its member libraries, including a library statistics
collection and management service and coordination of LibQUAL+ Canada; preparation of a weekly email alert of reports, articles, and events of relevance to research libraries; responses on members’
collective behalf to federal government consultations; a program of letters, briefs and visits to government
officials on information and research policy issues; support for institutional repository development and
promotion of member Open Access activities; a program of librarian research grants and special
achievement awards; resources for the sponsoring of member-promoted events consistent with
Association aims; production of awareness brochures, a website, annual reports and statistical reports;
and so forth.
Some CARL projects have developed into separate ongoing enterprises. The CARL-developed Canadian
National Site Licensing Project, begun in 1996 for negotiation of digital content licensing on behalf of most
Canadian universities was incorporated as the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) in 2001.
The 2006 CARL-originated AlouetteCanada project for the discovery and coordination of digitization
projects across Canadian memory institutions merged with Canadiana.org (formerly CIHM), an earlier
CARL-originated microfilming/digitization organization, to form a new Canadiana.org, incorporated in
2008.
Some Recent and Current CARL Interests and Activities
Open Access to the results of publicly-funded research
 Worked with federal granting councils in planning a stakeholder consultation on a potential policy
 Supported development of the Coalition of Open Access Resources (COAR)
 Developed recommendations for CARL, CRKN, and research libraries on how they might best
promote Open Access; following up on recommendations
 Ensuring that all researchers in Canada have recourse to an Open Access repository
 Consulting with Canadian journals on journal sustainability with Open Access
An infrastructure for the preservation and sharing of research data
 Developed a model of what such an infrastructure may look like and cultivated the interest of
research support organizations
 Supporting the development of Research Data Canada
 Working to develop a network of local and regional data management projects
Balanced copyright and understanding of copyright by library staff
 Prepared letters, briefs, visits encouraging the passage of Bill C-11 on copyright modernization
 Held teleconference with expert lawyer Wanda Noel on the implications of recent Supreme Court
decisions
 Wrote letters to encourage Canada’s support of the WIPO treaty for the blind
 Prepared letters and visits to express our concerns about potential copyright implications of trade
agreements
Access to broadband Internet for all Canadians; Internet privacy; federal government funding of research
and its indirect costs; federal government support of national research support institutions
 Prepared letters, briefs and visits to express our concerns recommendations for government
policy and programs

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Development of the research skills of academic librarians
 Planned and held Librarians’ Research Institutes (2012 and 2013)
 Offer two research grants for librarians’ research each year
Development of research data management skills of academic librarians
 Planned and held an Introduction to Research Data Management Services course for librarians
 Facilitating a “community of practice” among librarians beginning to deal with research data
Awareness of library directors of developments in libraries and scholarly communication around the world
 Organized a study tour to China for library directors in 2011; organizing another to Brazil in 2014
 Produce a weekly “E-lert” for library directors and their staff
 Organize spring and fall membership meetings for member exchange of ideas and experiences
Facilitation of library assessment
 Organized pan-Canadian consortial runs of LibQUAL+ in 2010 and 2013
 Carry out an annual collection and reporting of Canadian research library statistics
 Planning a Canadian Library Assessment Conference in October 2014
Understanding of trends in research library human resources (HR)
 Sponsoring a 2013 research libraries version of the national library HR study (“8Rs Redux”)
 Held a program for library directors to explore HR issues
Greater mutual and public awareness of local research library special collections
 Surveyed member libraries on needs and priorities; projects being defined
 Undertaking a census of information and potential digitization project on the Chinese experience
in Canada
Support for digitization of Canadian historical documentation
 Providing ongoing funding and governance support of Canadiana.org; supported communication
efforts around the major LAC-Canadiana.org digitization “Héritage Project”

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Appendix 2
CARL Strategic Directions 2013 - 2016
In a research, teaching and learning landscape transformed by technological, demographic and socioeconomic change, Canadian research libraries are adopting innovative strategies for acquiring,
preserving and sharing knowledge. CARL represents and actively supports the many new and expanded
roles for research libraries identified by its members. Specifically, CARL advances the vision, builds the
capacity and promotes the value of Canadian research libraries while supporting improved access to
research.

1 Advance the Vision of Canadian Research Libraries
1.1 Redefine our research collections and services
As academic resources in a growing number of formats become increasingly diverse, interdisciplinary and
aggregated, CARL helps its members redefine their collections in ways that serve new teaching and
research strategies and new areas of academic endeavour.
1.2 Strengthen the national role of the research library network
As its members identify and coordinate initiatives that extend beyond local and regional boundaries,
CARL offers support to Canada’s critically important national heritage, research, and higher education
agendas.
1.3 Promote community and international engagement
CARL members increasingly expect to contribute to, and derive support from, communities and
community organizations that exist outside their specific academic or institutional context. CARL
represents its members accordingly, and creates partnerships and opportunities for information exchange
that support a vibrant programme of collaboration and engagement.

2. Build the Capacity of Canadian Research Libraries
2.1 Facilitate collaborations to share and preserve Canada’s research collections
CARL members play a critical part in the stewardship of research resources that support scholarship,
policy-making and innovation. CARL explores and supports new collaborations between libraries and with
other research organizations to attain more cost-effective methods for this stewardship.
2.2 Develop expertise for new and emerging roles
As change in research, teaching and learning continues to accelerate, becoming increasingly
computational and extending globally, CARL supports the development of libraries that include a wider
variety of expertise and professional backgrounds.

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2.3 Help members address resource management issues
Transformations in research and higher education converging with socio-economic changes require new,
evidence-based approaches to leadership, the effective management of libraries and the successful
development of new library programs. CARL provides a forum for members to address these issues and
exchange best practices.

3. Promote the Value of Canadian Research Libraries
3.1 Support and develop more outcomes-based measures to demonstrate library impact on
research, teaching and learning
CARL coordinates the development of library-related metrics and tools relating to academic success,
research outcomes, success rates for grant proposals, etc.
3.2 Facilitate the assessment of library services
Through the delivery of assessment-related programming, information sharing, and support for relevant
research, CARL supports members as they use outcomes-based evidence to establish the research
library’s ROI (return on investment) and other measures of its value.
3.3 Expand the role of the library in research
CARL and its members develop strategies, alliances and metrics to increase the number of opportunities
to be research partners and to showcase library contributions to successful research initiatives.

4. Support Access to Research
4.1 Coordinate research data management initiatives
Recognizing the value and potential of research data and data-intensive research to transform
scholarship fundamentally, CARL coordinates efforts around awareness and advocacy, support and
training, access and discovery, archiving and preservation, and virtual research environments.
4.2 Promote open access and new forms of scholarly communication
CARL plays a leading role in promoting the ongoing transformation of modes of scholarly communication
and the values of equity of access, broad dissemination and long term preservation of research that
underpin the open access movement.
4.3 Represent the interests of the academic community in the information policy arena
CARL is a major national voice for the interests of the academic community in information policy and a
balanced and fair approach to copyright and intellectual property issues.

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