Group Membership

New provisions adopted by the members at the 2004 Annual General Meeting in Edinburgh in November 2004, revised at the Annual General Meeting in November 2008

1. A group should be a corporate body or a group of libraries with a Leading Partner which is entitled to enter into a contract with CERL and act on behalf of the participants, having legally established relations with the said participants in order to define its role and the payments due from each. The Leading Partner will be responsible for dealing with search accounts and passwords as well as payment of the Group’s combined CERL membership fee.

2. Institutions participating in a Group can be from different countries.

3. Normally, only one national library or regional equivalent will be allowed in a Group, exceptions being permitted at the discretion of the Board of Directors.

4. The minimum number of participating institutions in a Group is two; there is no prescribed maximum number.

5. Group members will not be allowed to have Cluster libraries.

6. All applications for Group membership will be subject to approval by CERL’s Board of Directors.

7. The fee for Group membership consists of a Group fee, plus an additional fee for each participating library: The fee set by CERL is for the whole Group but the distribution of the cost within the Group is for the members of the Group to decide. The current annual level of fees (2008/2009) is set at €8,000 for the Group fee, plus €3,500 for each participant library after the first (i.e. €11.500 for a group of two members; €15.000 for a group of three members; etc.). The Directors may agree a specific fee for cases where the full amount is not appropriate.

8. The Group will be required to sign a three-year funding agreement.

9. A Group with two members has 1 vote at the AGM; a Group of 3 or 4 members has 2 votes; a Group of 5 or 6 members has 3 votes; a Group of 7 or more members has 4 votes.

10. The Group may either vote through its administrative body, or its votes may be exercised by nominated institutions within the Group.

11. Group members receive unlimited access to the HPB file, and each institution participating in the group will have 200 free searches in the OCLC WorldCat file.

12. Group members are warmly encouraged to submit files to CERL for addition to the HPB and the CERL Thesaurus, and to participate in other projects that CERL may develop.

Applications for membership of CERL should be addressed to:

The Secretary
Consortium of European Research Libraries
40 Bowling Green Lane
Clerkenwell
London EC1R 0NE
UNITED KINGDOM
E-mail: Secretariat@cerl.org
Tel: +44 (0)20 7970 5642
Fax: +44 (0)20 7970 5643