Founded in 1949 and located at the University of Chicago, the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) is a consortium gathering US universities, colleges and research libraries, and is a framework for institutional cooperation and resource-sharing. With its almost two hundred participating institutions and a collection of approximately four million items, it serves not merely as a repository of valuable research materials, but as a dynamic partnership at US national level. The consortium acquires and preserves newspapers, journals, documents, archives and other traditional and digital resources for research and teaching. The center’s website gives access to the consortium’s huge catalog, provided with advanced search engines and quick links by topics, more than 600,000 titles. Users are also allowed to retrieve otherwise inaccessible and important digital resources from special digital collections, including image formats and microfilms. Metadata are always provided and navigation and catalogue search and browsing is free. Direct online access for the digitalized records is available only through the member institutions. Also available are info on current center’s activities, description of ongoing projects as well as the annual reports in pdf version and content always up-to-date.
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