ARL has brought Kathleen Shearer on board as a partnership consultant, effective November 6, 2014. Shearer’s work for ARL will include developing an ARL policy on partnerships and collaborations, establishing and nurturing relationships internationally, and updating ARL on global trends in research data management and scholarly communication. Based in Montréal, Québec, and professionally active internationally, Shearer brings a much-needed Canadian perspective to the ARL team and will facilitate greater synergies among related initiatives around the world.
Shearer is the part-time executive director of COAR, the Confederation of Open Access Repositories, an international organization aiming to align repository networks globally. ARL and the SHARE initiative are working through COAR to maintain an ongoing dialogue with similar large-scale endeavors. Shearer is also coordinating a project led by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) to develop a national research data management network, Portage. Additionally, she is the co-chair of two Research Data Alliance groups—Long Tail of Research Data and Libraries for Research Data—which are developing best practices and promoting the role of institutions in research data management. Shearer will continue to serve in all of these capacities while consulting for ARL.
Larry Alford, ARL vice president/president-elect and chief librarian at University of Toronto, said, “We are delighted that Kathleen Shearer has agreed to consult for ARL. Her experience working both in Canada and internationally will be invaluable to ARL in strengthening the Association’s collaborations worldwide. At a time when research and education are becoming increasingly global, Kathleen’s work will provide ARL with a more inclusive perspective and facilitate stronger connections with other organizations across North America and around the globe.”
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 125 research libraries in the US and Canada. ARL’s mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, facilitating the emergence of new roles for research libraries, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the web at https://www.arl.org/.
