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About the Catholic Research Resources Alliance (CRRA)

Vision and Mission

The Catholic intellectual tradition and the scholarship which studies and presents it encompass the experience of a flourishing Church currently made up of a billion human beings who live on every continent and whose history reaches back over two millennia. With a vision of ensuring permanent global access to all Catholic research resources reflecting this tradition, whether in print, digital, or other formats, leaders from eight Catholic universities (Boston College, The Catholic University of America, Georgetown University, Marquette University, University of Notre Dame, St. Edwards University, University of San Diego, and Seton Hall University) in the United States formed the Catholic Research Resources Alliance (CRRA).

The mission of the CRRA is to provide enduring global access to Catholic research resources. Our immediate focus is creating access to those rare, unique and uncommon research materials relating to every aspect of the Catholic experience, which are held by college, university, and seminary libraries and archives in North America. While abundant in quantity, these resources are scattered among the many special collections and archives. All too often the existence of these rare, unique and uncommon research resources is documented only in the mind of the archivist or librarian. We are all poorer for our collective inability to find the knowledge of our predecessors.

The purposes of the CRRA are to:

  • Ensure permanent global access to all Catholic research resources;
  • Promote the advancement and dissemination of knowledge and services reflecting the Catholic intellectual tradition;
  • Facilitate the sharing of scholarship which studies and presents the Catholic intellectual tradition and correlative disciplines;
  • Make accessible to a global community information concerning Catholic research resources, whether in print, digital, or other formats;
  • Cooperate with charitable, educational, theological and other library organizations, institutions, agencies, or consortia, whether public or private, in developing and/or providing library and information services for the good of the global community interested in Catholic intellectual scholarship;
  • Develop and encourage activities which enhance global access to information and educational resources and services relating to Catholic scholarship;
  • Promote efficient access to the Catholic information, library and archival resources in the Americas through maintenance of a single entity to which participating institutions may contribute.

At recent meetings of the directors of Catholic college, university and seminary libraries and archives, participants spoke both to the unique resources of their institutions and the challenges of providing access to these kinds of resources in other institutions. Just as no individual library can collect all materials, no single library can provide a comprehensive guide to resources in special collections. Scholars can search the vast reaches of the Internet through any of the popular search engines, but again, such searches will find only a fraction of the rare and unique research resources that exist in college, university and seminary special collections and archives. Even in the nascent period of the CRRA, many directors indicate their desire to participate.

Scholars note the ever-increasing recognition of the importance of including Catholics in the broader historical and cultural narrative, resulting in new work in many fields. The CRRA will greatly assist researchers and students in identifying Catholic research resources, with the net effect of more productive Catholic scholarship. The Catholic portal will enhance the contributions of Catholic and religious studies scholars in the generation of new knowledge.

The Catholic Portal

Current access to rare, unique and uncommon Catholic research resources is best characterized as haphazard and unpredictable. For some collections, there are bibliographic records and finding aids pointing to individual items in the library online catalog, while in many other cases there are only the briefest of records or none at all. In some libraries and archives, there are web-accessible pages for broad subjects, such as Religion or Theology, that serve as portals through which users can find references and links to many resources. Some of those portals identify special collections in other libraries, but not on a systematic basis. No directory, bibliography or catalog inclusive of the full array of rare, unique and uncommon Catholic research resources is known to exist. Our mission is an ambitious effort to identify and provide access to these rich research resources.

The Catholic portal is a core component of our work. Using national library standards, the portal collects metadata from special and archival collections around the country. The portal currently includes records from member institutions, which remain under the care of the owning institution. Records include descriptions of named collections or items and the location of the materials. For non-digital resources, the owning institution is identified and where the resources exist in a digital format, there is a link to the digital resource. The VuFind interface enables users to limit a search by a number of facets including institution, format, call number, language, era, region, author, topic, and genre.

Portal Themes

The CRRA has identified twelve primary collecting themes:

  1. Catholic education
  2. Catholic intellectual life
  3. Catholic literary figures
  4. Catholic liturgy and devotion
  5. Catholic missions
  6. Catholic social action
  7. Diocesan collections, including papers of Bishops
  8. Men's religious orders
  9. Peace building
  10. Religion and citizenship
  11. Vatican II
  12. Women's religious orders

The Portal and the Technical Infrastructure

The portal uses the open source application VuFind to index and search the metadata records describing the collection's rare, unique, and uncommon materials. Presently, the process begins with the acquisition of MARC and/or EAD files from participating institutions. These files either describe individual items (MARC records) or collections of materials from archives (EAD files). Since VuFind currently only accepts MARC records as input, the EAD files are converted to rudimentary MARC records, and in either case they are indexed by VuFind's underlying indexer -- Solr/Lucene. Once indexed, the system supports free text and field-specific searches. Results are displayed with cover art, when available, and provide a number of Web 2.0 features such as facet browse, "Add to my favorites," and "Make a comment."

Action Plan

The Board of Directors has established working groups of librarians, archivists and scholars to accomplish specific tasks and provide staff time and funds for the project. As other institutions become involved, they too will provide resources for their participation. Currently, there are three working committees: the Collections Committee, the Digital Access Committee, and the Scholars Advisory Committee.

Actions completed

  1. Designed and implemented a test portal for easy, effective and global discovery of Catholic research resources in formats including documents, images and audio.
  3. Defined the immediate scope of resources to be identified: rare, unique and uncommon research materials.
  4. Created a process and identified national standards to assist institutions in bringing resources under intellectual control and making them accessible for harvesting by the portal.
  5. Created an online directory of directors of Catholic college, university and seminary libraries, archives and library schools. The libraries, archives and library schools listed are part of institutions belonging to the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities and are located primarily in the United States and Canada.
  6. Held working working sessions at the University of Notre Dame (November 2006), Boston College (November 2007) and Loyola University (July 2009) of the Board of Directors, Collection and Metadata Committees. Evaluated progress to date, affirmed actions in progress and identified next steps.
  7. Established a Leadership Council of distinguished leaders to promote the vision.
  8. Approved an organizational structure and bylaws that will enable the CRRA to carry out its mission.
  9. Drafted CRRA Metadata Guidelines.
  10. Established a Scholars Advisory Committee of prominent scholars to advise the CRRA on desired scope of content, functionality and services.
  11. Published the book chapter: Toward Enduring, Global Access to Catholic Research Resources by Ruth Bogan, Diane Maher, Edward D. Starkey, and Jennifer A. Younger in Digital Scholarship ed. By Marta Mestorvic Deyrup, 2009.
  12. Hired a Digital Project Librarian.
  13. Invited and added Villanova University as the ninth institutional member.
  14. Identified and affirmed twelve primary collecting themes.
  15. Collaborated with Catholic University of America, St. Catherine University, and Marquette University in submitting a successful CLIR grant proposal (September 2009).
  16. Identified procedures for contributors to submit content for ingestion into the portal.
  17. Drafted and approved the Collection Policy Statement for the Catholic Portal.
  19. Developed the CRRA Blog.
  20. Met the goal of identifying and ingesting into the portal 20,000 records from member institutions. All member institutions have contributed both MARC and EAD records.
  21. Hosted focus groups with graduate students and scholars at six member institutions to better understand user needs for portal content.

Actions in progress in 2009/10

  1. Continue to work with members to identify and ingest new content into the portal.
  2. Refine a financial plan that enables the CRRA to carry out its mission. Project costs for development and maintenance of the portal. Project the kinds and amounts of costs per item (staff time, other costs) for adding items.
  3. Seek external funds to support the mission and activities of the CRRA.
  4. Develop a growth plan to extend the portal to the holdings of rich special collections in dioceses and religious orders and additional libraries in North America. Invite new members based on the capacity to support new members and criteria of institutional interest, expertise and collections that will add value to the portal.
  5. Investigate harvesting options.
  6. Continue to demonstrate and describe the mission, activities, and projects of the CRRA to individuals and professional organizations.
  7. Design and implement usability tests to evaluate and improve portal functionality.

Actions projected

  1. Assess the breadth and depth of materials that could be included by conducting a survey of ACCU institutions. Survey other institutions with rich holdings in Catholic research materials as known. Ask each library to identify its most important materials and summarize the extent of its rare, unique and uncommon Catholic research materials.
  2. Develop a list of at-risk special and archival collections in Catholic colleges, universities and seminaries that need early attention, e.g., at institutions without adequate resources.
  3. On the basis of the assessment survey and pilot, prepare estimates of fixed and variable costs. Develop a plan (with estimated costs) for bringing in special collections and archives of small and large institutions during a ten-year time period.
  4. Prepare a proposal for external funding for the purpose of digitizing selected high priority resources in North America.
  5. Create a process and criteria for evaluating and prioritizing digitizable collections of texts, images and artifacts.
  6. Develop a timeline and plan for including access to research resources in Central and South America.
  7. Assess the need for providing reference services.

CRRA Leadership

Board of Directors

The Founding Steering Committee was composed of representatives of the Founding Member institutions. The members included:

  • Martin Barringer, Georgetown University (retired)
  • Nicholas Burckel, Marquette University (retired)
  • Martha Hale, Catholic University of America
  • Artemis Kirk, Georgetown University
  • Thomas W. Leonhardt, St. Edward's University
  • Howard McGinn, Seton Hall University
  • Michael McLane, Catholic University of America
  • Timothy Meagher, Catholic University of America
  • Edward Starkey, University of San Diego
  • Jennifer Younger, University of Notre Dame

The Steering Committee is now known as the Board of Directors. The Board of Directors is a self-perpetuating Board which administers the CRRA, including responsibility for strategic planning, finance and funding sources. The Board determines the needs of the CRRA and determines the criteria, rights, and responsibilities of each category of membership. Members of the other committees are recommended and appointed by the Board of Directors.

Leadership Council

This honorary committee is comprised of invited prominent scholars, theologians and leaders who recognize the need for the access to and dissemination of Catholic research resources. These invited members promote the activities of the Catholic Research Resources Alliance.

Collections Committee

The Collections Committee consists of librarians, archivists and other specialists. They select representative materials from among the member libraries' collections to focus on particular aspects of Catholic research and are responsible for authoring and maintaining the CRRA Collection Policy Statement.

Digital Access Committee

The Digital Access Committee is composed of librarians, archivists, and other specialists. They develop and advise on best practices for providing access to and preservation of portal resources. They maintain the CRRA Metadata Guidelines.

Scholars Advisory Committee

The Scholars Advisory Committee is made up of scholars and researchers. Members advise on areas of content and collections which best serve the needs of scholars active in Catholic research.

Team Catholic Portal (TCP))

Team Catholic Portal is a working committee comprised of librarians and arhivists from the University of Notre Dame.

The Future

The founding members of the Catholic Research Resources Alliance (CRRA) have committed time, talent and treasures to develop the portal on a pilot basis and to establish a collaborative endeavor for its continued development and support. The member libraries are laying the foundation for what has the potential to be a significant advancement in providing global access to Catholic research resources in the Americas. With over 200 Catholic institutions of higher education in the United States and many others outside the United States, however, a portal that provides enduring global access to Catholic research resources must move from a volunteer effort to a financially supported collaboration with a sustainable infrastructure.

Scholarly Catholic research resources of the Americas are vital not only to the researchers in the Western Hemisphere but also throughout the world. No one at this moment is marshaling the resources into a comprehensive and accessible resource. The CRRA is taking the first critical step in providing a searchable portal that makes it possible to find Catholic cultural and scholarly resources and in establishing a library collaborative to shepherd the continuing portal development. Making available these rich resources will support research into the Catholic intellectual tradition, will enhance the recruitment and development of faculty at Catholic colleges and universities, and will benefit scholars and students worldwide.

Updated June, 2010
Jennifer Younger