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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 experiences 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. The mission of the Catholic Research Resources Alliance (CRRA) is to provide enduring global access to Catholic research resources, beginning with access to the rare, unique and uncommon research materials held by college, university, and seminary libraries and archives in North America. While abundant in numbers, these resources are scattered among many special collections and archives and often known only to those at the institution. Our mission is firmly grounded in the nexus of faith and reason: that the past, present and future Catholic intellectual tradition and scholarship be used to study and inform the challenges of the 21st century.

Brief History

Between 2001 and 2008, directors and librarians from Catholic college, university and seminary libraries and archives held several discussions that lead to the formation of the CRRA (formerly CRRI, Catholic Research Resources Initiative). Participants spoke about the unique resources of their institutions as well as the challenges of providing access to these types 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. All agreed that a collaborative initiative to create a virtual library of these unique and uncommon resources would enhance their capacity to support the teaching, learning and research of their faculty and students. In 2008, with a vision and mission to create enduring permanent global access to Catholic resources, the CRRA was established by eight founding institutions: Boston College, the Catholic University of America, Georgetown University, Marquette University, Seton Hall University, St. Edward's University, University of Notre Dame, and the University of San Diego. Their intent, now realized, was to lay the foundation for a collaborative and sustainable initiative through the development of a portal and a supporting membership organization.

Strategic Directions and Goals

The CRRA pursues its mission by:

  • Identifying and creating permanent, global access to Catholic research resources;
  • Establishing the Catholic portal and best practices for adding materials to it;
  • Building the network of libraries, archives, and other institutions that further this work;
  • Promoting the advancement and dissemination of knowledge and services reflecting the Catholic intellectual tradition;
  • Facilitating the sharing of scholarship which studies and presents the Catholic intellectual tradition and correlative disciplines; and
  • Collaborating with members, other institutions and organizations in developing and advancing shared interests.

The annual strategic plan is developed by the membership through committees and annual membership meetings. Members evaluate progress to date, affirm actions in progress and identify goals for the coming year. Goals fall into four broad areas: 1) collection scope and themes, 2) data input and ingestion, 3) search functionality and display, and 4) growth plan and outreach.

The Catholic Portal

The Catholic portal is a core component of the CRRA's mission. The current aim is to develop a portal rich in rare, unique and uncommon Catholic scholarly resources with a robust search and display functionality for MARC and EAD records. By 2012, the goal is to have a critical mass of full text content and to have digital humanities tools in place that will enable scholars to discover new knowledge across collections and resources. More information can be found in Steps in building the portal. The Catholic portal provides access through a number of approaches, including author, title, subject, keyword, format, and holding institution. Resources remain under the care of the owning institution. Portal records identify the owning institution and, where the resources exist in a digital format, link directly to the digital resource. Using international standards, the portal collects metadata from participating special and archival collections. The portal features a robust EAD indexer and viewer, making finding aids searchable at their most granular level. By electronically bringing together resources in many formats from many collections, the Catholic portal enables easy, effective and freely available global discovery of Catholic research resources.

Content and scope of the Catholic portal

Portal content emphasizes rare, unique, and uncommon Catholic scholarly resources. The content and scope are described in the Collection Policy Statement. The CRRA has identified twelve primary collecting themes of particular interest and importance:

  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

Portal 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. The process begins with the acquisition of MARC and/or EAD files from participating institutions. VuFind's underlying indexer, Solr/Lucene, is used to index all records. 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."

Making content available

Metadata records submitted to the Catholic portal follow national metadata guidelines with minimal content requirements designed to make it possible for a wide range of institutions to participate. For more information about how members expose content in the portal, see Making your content available in the Catholic portal.

Joining the CRRA

Foremost among the Benefits of Membership is the ability to better support faculty and students in their teaching, learning and research, and to advance the institutional mission. Additionally, members contribute to and benefit from their leadership roles in shaping the Catholic portal and the network of institutions committed to advancing Catholic scholarship worldwide. As described in the Principles of Membership, the CRRA seeks members who share the values, goals and interests of the Alliance and who support the CRRA in carrying out its mission. The Membership Dues Schedule for FY2011-12 explains annual dues. For more information about joining the CRRA, contact any member, Pat Lawton, CRRA Digital Projects Librarian (plawton@nd.edu) or Jennifer Younger, Chair, Board of Directors (younger.1@nd.edu).

Governance

The CRRA is a not-for-profit membership alliance which operates to develop the Catholic portal and carry out the goals as defined by its membership. The Bylaws were adopted on February 4, 2008. CRRA standing committees include:

  • The Board of Directors provides overall direction and ensures sufficient support to carry out the mission.
  • The Collections Committee determines the scope and content to be accessible on or via the Catholic portal.
  • The Digital Access Committee identifies metadata guidelines, best practices and protocols for making metadata and content accessible via the portal.
  • The Scholars Advisory Committee advises on areas of content and collections which best serve the needs of scholars active in Catholic scholarly research.
  • The Leadership Council is comprised of invited prominent scholars, theologians and lay leaders who promote the vision, mission and activities of the Catholic Research Resources Alliance.

Current members


View CRRA Members in a larger map

CRRA News and Events

Links to Key Documents

Updated September, 2011
Jennifer Younger
Pat Lawton