Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL)

The Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL) is the membership organisation for all academic and national libraries in the UK and Ireland. 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 their activities are carried out by the heads of library services, often through SCONUL’s range of expert groups or Executive Board. SCONUL has 10 Working Groups, including four that focus on e-research, access, quality assurance, scholarly communications. Their full-time staff are contracted to engage in policy development as part of their duties.

SCONUL states its aims as being for the benefit of their libraries and their users, promoting the sharing and development of good practice, influencing policy makers, encouraging debate, as well as raising the profile of higher education and national libraries. Activities include advocacy for the higher education library community, training and sharing best practice, making arrangements for reciprocal access to libraries, and the collection of statistics.

SCONUL’s service provision for its membership mean that it can manage reciprocal access and borrowing schemes for library users, work to improve information handling skills, as well as share experience – experience of innovative library design, imaginative learning spaces, and many other aspects of library operations. SCONUL also collects and publishes statistics from their member libraries, enabling benchmarking and other comparative analysis, in addition to engaging with parliaments and government departments in Westminster, Brussels and Strasbourg to emphasise the needs of academic and research libraries in legislation.

Its members include libraries in higher education institutions, including universities, HE colleges, specialist schools and conservatoires. The British Library and the National Libraries of Ireland, Scotland and Wales; and libraries in national museums and other specialist institutions are also valued for their contribution beyond the HE infrastructure.

The organisation was founded in 1950 as the Standing Conference of National and University Libraries. It merged with COPOL, the Council of Polytechnic Librarians, in 1994 when British polytechnics became universities. In 2001 it extended its membership to libraries of Colleges of Higher Education. SCONUL is governed by its members whose Representatives meet twice a year, and between meetings by an elected Executive Board.

SCONUL was one of 14 organisations with a direct stake in effective scholarly communications to endorse Research and the Scholarly communications process: Towards strategic goals for public policy, the statement of principles document RIN published in 2007, which the Policy Centre is supporting.