Library of Congress Joins CIRLA

At its March meeting the board of the Chesapeake Information Resource Library Alliance (of which Georgetown is a member) agreed to the request of the Library of Congress to become a member, raising the total number of CIRLA institutions to eight. Members now include, besides Georgetown, the University of Delaware, Johns Hopkins University, Howard University, the Library of Congress, the University of Maryland, the National Agricultural Library, and the Smithsonian Institution Libraries.

The Library of Congress, like the other members of CIRLA, will give on-site privileges to faculty members from other CIRLA institutions. In addition, the group voted to accept reciprocal borrowing privileges for graduate students, who will be able to take advantage of resources at other institutions depending on local conditions. The Library of Congress will provide interlibrary lending for other CIRLA institutions on a peer basis; with other libraries, LC acts as a "library of last resort," only lending material when no other source is available. The CIRLA arrangement will place Georgetown faculty in an unusually advantageous position, although the intention of Lauinger Library is to provide materials needed on a day-to-day basis from within Georgetown holdings.

CIRLA membership also provides Georgetown with the capability of working with peer institutions to attain access to full-text databases, almost 200 of which are being made available this semester as a pilot project.