SCONUL members
SCONUL promotes excellence in library services in higher education and national libraries across the UK and Ireland. |
Our members
All universities in the United Kingdom and Ireland are SCONUL members: so too are many of the UK's colleges of higher education. Also members are the major national libraries both sides of the Irish Sea.
Most of our activities are carried out by the heads of library services, often through SCONUL's range of expert groups or our Executive Board.
Full-time support and coordination is provided from SCONUL's office in London. We have three staff.
Membership criteria
In brief, the following UK and Irish institutions are eligible for membership:
- universities
- institutions which are part of a federal university (subject to certain conditions)
- higher education institutions not included above, funded by one of the UK's higher education funding bodies
- national libraries, either officially designated, or (by approval of SCONUL's Executive Board and General Meeting) de facto
Our benefits
Committed to collaboration
On behalf of all members, SCONUL
- manages reciprocal access and borrowing schemes for library users
- works to improve information handling skills
- influences publishers' pricing policies
- provides staff development opportunities
- shares experience of innovative library design, and many other aspects of library operations
- collects and publishes statistics from our member libraries, enabling benchmarking and other comparative analysis
- engages with parliaments and government departments (UK and European) to emphasise the needs of academic and research libraries in legislation.
Our aim is to do well cooperatively what is efficient to undertake together.