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CERL was officially registered as a company on 24 June 1994. We celebrated our tenth anniversary at the National Library of Scotland in 2004 and were extremely pleased to be able to return to Edinburgh for our Annual General Meeting in October 2025.

We were happy to welcome so many currently members to our meeting, and honoured to be able to welcome Dr Ann Matheson, former Chairman of CERL, as our guest. Especially so, because during 2025 she had been working with members of the CERL Secretariat to prepare the publication of a history of CERL’s early years. As our Occassional Publications II, CERL presents Crossing Borders: About the birth of the Consortium of European Research Libraries, the organisation’s early years and its path to maturity, spanning the period from the late twentieth century to the first decades of the twenty-first century. Eds. Claudia Fabian and Marian Lefferts (Dublin, 2025), which will be made available on the CERL website in early 2026.

In her preface to this volume, Dr Claudia Fabian remarks ‘These Occasional Papers gather four key contributions about the foundational characteristics of CERL, mirror and reflect the lived experience of establishing a new research library, collection and data orientated, organisation across borders, fostering a community for Europe‘s printed heritage, common as well as dispersed, at an important stage of transition from traditional cataloguing to the intense demand for accessible data.’

We are extremely grateful to Dr Lotte Hellinga (first CERL Secretary, from 1994-2002), Dr Ann Matheson (second Chairman, from 2002-2006), Dr Elmar Mittle (third Chairman, from 2006-2011) and Bob Henderson, HPB Project Manager from 1994-1997) for preparing articles about CERL’s origins.

The first copy of this volume was presented to Dr Matheson during the CERL seminar in the National Library of Scotland (21 October 2025), a fitting tribute to her longstanding commitment to CERL and to collaborative bibliographical scholarship. It was a particular honour for members and guests to witness this presentation and then hear her reflect on the history, purpose and enduring value of shared work across European research libraries.

Her acceptance speech is printed in full below.

Dr Ann Matheson was Chair of CERL from 2000 to 2006. During her tenure, she was instrumental in consolidating the Consortium of European Research Libraries as a significant actor within the European research library landscape. She furthered the strategic expansion of CERL membership, the development of core services, and the articulation of CERL’s distinctive role in facilitating access to early printed books and manuscripts. She also played a pivotal role in creating new collaborations, most notably through the negotiation and implementation of the first Memorandum of Understanding with LIBER, which formalised cooperation in the fields of special collections, library security, and new digital heritage initiatives. Under her leadership, Matheson advanced both the institutional autonomy and the international visibility of CERL, ensuring that it emerged as a central hub for scholarship, standards development, and the coordinated stewardship of Europe’s early bibliographic heritage.

Speech by Dr Ann Matheson

Thank you, Marian. I gladly accept this copy on behalf of all the authors.

When the Consortium of European Research Libraries came into being in the early 1990s, it was a time of hardship for many citizens and libraries in the ‘new Europe’ but, looking back, many of us experienced it as an optimistic time when borders were opening, the riches of the scholarly collections in libraries in Central and East European libraries were opening up, and the potential, and the will, to co-operate across borders for the benefit of scholars, researchers and the general public was opening too.

CERL was the first pan-European organisation from this time created to bring research libraries together in a practical common endeavour to use technology to open up the contents of our historical collections, their cross-influences and the reception and dissemination of ideas and values across Europe and to the ‘new Worlds’. In working together for a common goal, we learned much from one another, our respective histories, traditions and viewpoints, and over time we were gradually able to build the trust that is essential for library co-operation.

I should like to thank our American colleagues too since they gave tremendous help in many ways to our European library organisations at that time, not least supporting conferences and travel to conferences, which was very expensive in parts of Europe then. We stand with them now in their testing times and I am very sorry that the current upheaval has a link to the Highlands of Scotland, and to my culture.

Today we live in very different times to the late 1980s and early 1990s, but, despite the gloom, we should remember that our libraries are resilient; our European library organisations are stronger than they were; we have seen fine new and refurbished libraries rise in Europe over these last thirty years; we have much better digital tools; and we have much longer experience of working together – we take for granted today what was still experimental and fragile then.

Libraries can be cultural bridges in harsh times, keeping doors open and upholding democratic values. The last thirty years has taught us that libraries are stronger and achieve more for their societies when they work together for common goals.

It is a pleasure to see you all here in Edinburgh. I congratulate CERL on its achievements over these thirty years and wish you continuing success since we have still much to learn about how ideas migrated across European countries and beyond. And as Thomas Carlyle, from the little village of Ecclefechan – about seventy miles from where we are today – observed, ‘For in books lies the soul of the whole time past’.

21 October 2025