An early version of a “CARL” first existed as the Canadian Academic Research Libraries section of the Canadian Association of College and University Libraries (CACUL), itself a division of the Canadian Library Association (CLA) as CLA was reconstituted with a divisional structure in 1972.
On October 21, 1975, CARL members meeting in Ottawa voted “that CARL agrees to organize a Canadian association of academic research libraries independent of CACUL and funded directly by member institutions.” The new association was officially launched in 1976 at its first membership meeting in Regina. Its original by-laws were prepared by Syd Harland, University Librarian, University of Regina.
29 of the current member libraries were CARL members from the beginning, later adding as members the Library of Parliament (1999), Brock University (2009), and Ryerson University (2010).
CARL became a federally incorporated non-profit corporation in 1981 and registered charity in 1984.
CARL had no staff until 1981, after which it hired Margaret Allen as Executive Secretary (1981-1984), Bonnie Jehu as Executive Director (1984-1986), and subsequent Executive Directors (now full-time), David McCallum (1986-1995), Timothy Mark (1995-2008), and Brent Roe (2008-present).
The CARL office was accommodated in the Morisset Library, University of Ottawa, from the 1980’s until 2011. By then with a staff of five, the CARL office moved to Constitution Square, downtown Ottawa, in space shared with the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, of which CARL is an associate member.
In a review of CARL membership meeting discussion topics (1976-2005), the late Alan MacDonald noted that the most frequent ones were (in descending order, slightly paraphrasing) copyright, the National Library of Canada (and later Library and Archives Canada), library statistics, government publications, interlibrary loan and document delivery, universities, library collections assessment and rationalization, computing networks, scholarly communication, Canadian statistics, research funding councils, preservation and conservation of library materials, CISTI, licensing consortia, microfilming and digitization, and the (US-based) Association of Research Libraries. In the years since, most of these topics have remained of interest to the Association and new topics have been added to the list, including open access, institutional repositories, research data management, broadband Internet issues, and librarian research among others.
CARL has had two formal strategic plans, the first 2006-2009 (updated in 2008) and the second 2010-2012.
Two major CARL projects have become service organizations in themselves. The Canadian National Site Licensing Project (1999) became incorporated as the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) in 2001. The project to promote and coordinate institutional digitization projects, AlouetteCanada, merged with an earlier Canadiana.org, formerly the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproduction (CIHM)—itself a creation of CARL member libraries—to form a reconstituted Canadiana.org in 2008.
CARL’s Presidents through the years
|
Hans Moeller |
University of Ottawa |
1976-1977 |
|
Marianne Scott |
McGill University |
1977-1978 |
|
Geoffrey Briggs |
Carleton University |
1978-1979 |
|
Gertrude Gunn |
University of New Brunswick |
1979-1981 |
|
Anne Woodsworth |
York University |
1981-1983 |
|
Guy Cloutier |
Université de Sherbrooke |
1983-1985 |
|
Graham Hill |
McMaster University |
1985-1987 |
|
Doug McInnes |
University of British Columbia |
1987-1989 |
|
Carole Moore |
University of Toronto |
1989-1991 |
|
Ted Dobb |
Simon Fraser University |
1991-1993 |
|
Jean-Pierre Côté |
Université du Québec à Montréal |
1993-1995 |
|
Carolyn Presser |
University of Manitoba |
1995-1997 |
|
Marnie Swanson |
University of Victoria |
1997-1999 |
|
Frances Groen |
McGill University |
1999-2001 |
|
Bill Maes |
Dalhousie University |
2001-2003 |
|
Joyce Garnett |
University of Western Ontario |
2003-2005 |
|
John Teskey |
University of New Brunswick |
2005-2007 |
|
Leslie Weir |
University of Ottawa |
2007-2009 |
|
Ernie Ingles |
University of Alberta |
2009-2011 |
|
Thomas Hickerson |
University of Calgary |
2011-present |
CARL has held regular spring and fall membership meetings at different cities around Canada—and beyond, on occasion--which are listed on our Membership Meetings page.