Center for Research Libraries

What is CRL?

The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) is an international consortium of university, college, and independent research libraries. Founded in 1949, CRL supports advanced research and teaching in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences by preserving and making available to scholars the primary source material critical to those disciplines. CRL holds approximately five million newspapers, journals, dissertations, archives, government publications and other traditional and digital resources for research and teaching. Current acquisitions emphasize materials produced outside of the United States, especially publications and archives from developing regions. CRL's Area Microform Projects are important sources of this material.

CRL items are currently searchable and requestable via the USF Libraries catalog.  USF's CRL membership allows faculty, students, and staff to request materials through interlibrary loan for extended periods to support their research.

CRL Online Catalog

Collection Highlights

Collection highlights include:

  1. Largest collection of circulating newspapers in North America:
    • 10,000 international newspapers
    • 2,500 U.S. newspapers, many dating to the colonial era
    • 1,800 ethnic titles indexed by language, state, culture, etc.
  2. More than 38,000 international journals rarely held in U.S. and Canadian libraries
  3. More than 800,000 non-U.S./non-Canadian doctoral dissertations
  4. Area Studies: major collections from Africa, Latin America, Middle East, Europe, Asia, Southeast Asia, and in subject areas such as human rights
  5. College and University Catalogs
  6. Primary and Secondary Textbooks
  7. Railroad Publications
  8. Curriculum Guides
  9. Foreign Centra Bank Publications