National Library Organizations

(Compiled by Nancy Magnuson, Director, Julia Rogers Library, August 2007)

American Library Association (ALA) http://ala.org/  and its eleven divisions linked here: http://ala.org/ala/ourassociation/divisions/divisions.htm, each of which is further subdivided into sections ( for example, Nancy Magnuson, Director of Goucher's Julia Rogers Library, is active with the College Library Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/aboutacrl/aboutacrl.cfm).  ALA is the major professional association, a membership organization for individuals and institutions. 

Association of Research Libraries (ARL http://www.arl.org/arl/ is a separate organization.  Its members are the largest research institutions.

OCLC http://www.oclc.org/ is a worldwide library cooperative that provides important services to libraries such as the WorldCat product http://www.worldcat.org/ that has resulted from their database of shared cataloging records for over 50,000 member libraries.  Research Libraries Group (RLG )  http://www.rlg.org/ had developed a similar catalog system for the largest research libraries and the two have recently merged.  

Society of American Archivists (SAA).  http://www.archivists.org/  4,800 individual and institutional members. SAA's mission is to serve the educational and informational needs of more than and to provide leadership to ensure the identification, preservation, and use of records of historical.

Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). http://www.clir.org/. An "think tank" kind of organization that works to position libraries to deal with changes in the information environment.  http://www.clir.org/about/about.html

Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) http://www.cni.org/  is an organization dedicated to supporting the transformative promise of networked information technology for the advancement of scholarly communication and the enrichment of intellectual productivity.

International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA)  http://www.ifla.org/ is the leading international body representing the interests of library and information services and their users. It is the global voice of the library and information profession.

Those are maybe the key ones, but here is a glimpse of the specialized and regional things that are out there too: http://www.libraryhq.com/orgs.html