----------------------------Original message----------------------------
The following is a news announcement from the Research Libraries
Group.

                     BRITISH LIBRARY JOINS RLG

   Research Libraries Group welcomes first overseas member, opens
             new chapter of international collaboration

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., March 3, 1992 -- The Research Libraries
Group, Inc. (RLG) is pleased to announce that the British Library
has become an RLG general member.

In announcing this news, J. Michael Smethurst, the British Library's
director general of London Services, said: "We have worked closely
with RLG for a number of years, and the time is now right for a
closer relationship.  We want to develop new ties with the major
research libraries and the scholarly community in the United States;
because RLG works with both the library-bibliographic world and the
scholarly world, it is a good organization for us to be associated
with."

"The British Library's decision to join," said RLG president James
Michalko, "gives us the wonderful opportunity to make real the
rhetoric about the internationalization of scholarship.  We look
forward to working with the British Library staff, and perhaps with
some of their European colleagues, to really make global connections
among the various communities of scholars that will serve all our
interests."

Richard De Gennaro, librarian of Harvard University, which also
recently became a general member of RLG, welcomed the BL
announcement:  "This is genuinely exciting news for the North
American library community.  It signals a new era of cooperation
among the major libraries of the U.S. and Western Europe."

Two areas of expected collaboration within the RLG framework are
collection preservation and the enormous challenge of online access to
the world's historic collections, of which those at the British
Library and Harvard University are two prime examples.

Smethurst commented, "We hope to contribute to the development of
improved access to collections, to bibliographic work, and to
networking in general.  Very often American concepts and technology
are on the frontiers of such efforts, and we would like to join RLG
there in a shared exploration of new ways of tackling problems."

With the British Library an active RLG member, London will become
RLG's European hub for telecommunications with its information
system, RLIN.  This will reduce costs to European institutions that
enter data into RLIN.

RLG will welcome the chief executive of the British Library, Dr.
Brian Lang, to RLG's annual meeting in California on June 25, where he
will give the keynote address.

For further information, contact Jennifer Hartzell, RLG Director of
Corporate Communications, BL.JLH@RLG.BITNET or BL.JLH@RLG.STANFORD.EDU.