Lyrasis -- New Organization to be Formed from the Merger of SOLINET and PALINET

Many of you know that the SOLINET and PALINET networks have been working for almost a year to make a decision to merge their organizations together to better serve the libraries in their regions and beyond. Earlier this week, SOLINET and PALINET announced the name of the new organization – Lyrasis. You can find more detail about the new name at the merger website -- http://www.mergerupdate.org/.

SOLINET (and PALINET) have just opened the voting process for each of their memberships to approve the Boards’ recommendations to proceed with a merger. You can find those documents at http://www.mergerupdate.org/SOLINET%20Voting%20Documents.aspx Voting will conclude on January 31st and the final vote ratified at a special membership meeting in Atlanta on February 4th. Each governing member has one official vote – in our case I believe that MCL, Law and the University Libraries are governing members and the director/dean of each of our libraries will vote.

As the Board Chair of SOLINET, I am very excited about what lies ahead for Lyrasis. I have agreed to continue for an additional year on the board of Lyrasis as vice chair (see board slate in the voting documents). This is a time of great change for library consortia particularly those who do business with OCLC.