Our work

This is a time of unusual uncertainty and significant disruption for research libraries, archives and museums. We believe that a critical part of the institutional response must be via renewed, revivified collaborative action.

RLG Programs and OCLC Research provide a venue for that collaboration and a significant resource to support the necessary action.

With our partners, we have a point of view about the current information context, the institutional operating environment and the implications for the future of research collections. You can read about it in our Information Contexts outlook (.pdf: 939K/ 4pp.).

Based on this view of the future, RLG Programs in concert with its advisors and partners has committed itself to a work agenda that can

• impact this future
• preserve and renew the value of research libraries, archives, and museums
• ensure that they are important in the emerging new processes by which research is done and learning occurs.

We have broad guidelines for deciding where to invest effort.

Our work agenda is dynamic and influenced by our partners. It has six broad themes representing persistent areas of shared uncertainty and change for the communities we serve.

• Supporting new modes of research, teaching, and learning
• Managing the collective collection
• Renovating descriptive and organizing practices
• Modeling new service infrastructures
• Measurements and behaviors
• Architecture and standards

Each theme is supported by several distinct programs, and most programs are being addressed by a series of individual projects.

For convenience, you may

• view the entire agenda online, organized by theme
• go to thematic pages to see individual programs by using the links in the list above.