During this Membership renewal season, institutions are likely facing unplanned financial, staffing and service challenges. LYRASIS is committed to helping institutions navigate these uncertain times as they work to provide vital programs and services for their communities. LYRASIS will not raise member dues for the sixth year in a row.

The value of belonging to the LYRASIS organization has never been greater. There is no other non-profit membership organization that provides the broad scope of services for libraries, archives, museums and research organizations. LYRASIS gives members the opportunity to network and engage with peers through online events. Members can upscale staff expertise with LYRASIS Learning continuing education platform’s broad catalog of classes and workshops on vital topics of interest, preserve significant collections using LYRASIS open technologies and hosting services, and protect budgets through strategic partnerships with vendors and content providers.

The merger with DuraSpace was completed in 2019 and as a result, LYRASIS is a global organization with global outreach. LYRASIS now brings our entire community closer to the research activities, ideas and innovation efforts in other parts of the world. LYRASIS technical leadership in open source technologies, programs and services is unmatched. This will be an area of significant innovative deployment in the coming year, with LYRASIS members directly benefiting from our investments.

Membership in LYRASIS offers two significant types of benefits: those that save you money and/or time and those that contribute to thought leadership and community engagement. In 2020, LYRASIS is launching a new Research & Innovation Division – which will create a formal space to innovate, share ideas, produce research and more. Stay tuned as we launch the Research & Innovation Division. This new division sets LYRASIS apart as an organization that is not just strategically focused on the future, but tactically invested. Our members will benefit through participation, contribution and engagement with the Research & Innovation Division and the new member-focused initiatives, technological intersections and programs that will follow. 

Ways that LYRASIS helps you increase your value to your patrons, users and communities include:

  1. Catalyst Fund – Each year, LYRASIS distributes more than $100,000 directly to member institutions to fund innovative projects from within your organization. Recipients are chosen each year by the Leaders Circle. LYRASIS has received over 150 Catalyst Fund submissions from institutions of all types and sizes and we have funded 34 idea proposals to date. The Catalyst Fund amplifies your ideas in a way that moves them to market, funds startup costs and applies our scale and operational efficiencies. It has become one of our most exciting programs. Only LYRASIS member organizations are eligible to apply. 
  2. LYRASIS Learning – A growing repository of recorded classes plus unlimited institutional access to live classes gives your entire staff all the training they need to keep their skills ahead of the curve. Now in its third year of availability, the catalog is both deep and diverse. This resource is exclusively available to LYRASIS member organizations by annual subscription and can be rolled into your membership fee, upon request. During the COVID19 Crisis, we are making LYRASIS Learning available to member institutions for free. Email es@lyrasis.org to register for this no cost trial.
  3. Leaders Circle – Join our “think tank” group of innovating leaders who help us set the agenda, determine Catalyst Fund recipients, and work together to ideate and develop new programs that benefit the entire field. The Leaders Circle is an essential network of individuals tackling challenges, identifying trends and collaborative solutions and/or recommendations that represent a diverse membership perspective. This growing membership tier is a unique network of leaders, future leaders and technologists representing the many facets of cultural heritage from public libraries, academic libraries, museums, archives and beyond. These conversations will become essential in the coming year as we collectively grapple with a new normal including reduced budgets and a greater need for distributed technologies and scaled service capacity. Leaders Circle members also set the annual research agenda for LYRASIS. At last year’s 2019 Member Summit, our Leaders Circle determined that scholarly publishing and diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) would be our areas of investigation for the coming year.
  4. Leaders Forum – While our Spring 2020 regional in-person forums were postponed, we continue to plan for virtual events, organized around our research topics and other important issues in the community. We hope to reconvene our regional in-person events in the Fall. We have a slate of amazing speakers already lined up and we hope you can join us and network within your community with local experts. These regional perspectives roll up into a global conversation at the annual Member Summit.
  5. Annual Member Summit – Our 2020 LYRASIS Member Summit is still being planned as an in-person event in Philadelphia on October 27-28, 2020. Save the date for this no-cost meeting that brings our members together to chart the future for archives, libraries, museums and the entire research community. The Member Summit highlights global networking, celebrates accomplishments including presentations by all 2020 Catalyst Fund award participants and setting the course for the next year together by determining research focus and program priorities together.

Saving money, optimizing your resources and freeing up your team to focus on important services:

  • Take back control of your eBook lending with SimplyE. With LYRASIS hosted SimplyE mobile application, public libraries are now able to consolidate and aggregate access to the various commercial eBook and audiobook distribution platforms. SimplyE can minimize patron confusion and reduce ongoing staff training, while increasing circulation. LYRASIS is in an exclusive partnership with NYPL and DPLA to create an eBook and audiobook ecosystem and marketplace that puts the public library relationship with the patron where it should be: direct, unmediated and consistent with your commitment to accessibility, patron privacy and data controls. LYRASIS is also leading the way to developing an Academic version of SimplyE for the research ecosystem. 
  • Member discounts for hosting, migration and technical support of the LYRASIS portfolio of open source programs, including ArchivesSpace, Islandora, DSpace, ArchivesDirect, SimplyE, DuraCloud and CollectionSpace. By increasing scale, we’ve kept hosting prices low for the fourth year in a row, saving you time and money, and putting your resources in trusted hands, so that you can focus on other critical areas.
  • LYRASIS has a collaborative approach to eResource licensing. We continue to be a national leader in scholarly communication initiatives, providing LYRASIS members with best service terms and prices. We lead open access conversations and open access publishers and service communities look to LYRASIS for national distribution of content and ideas. Additional adjacent benefits include access to our pre-vetted digitization service partners, including member-exclusive pricing on services and high-end cameras and scanners for on-site digitization projects.

There may never be a time when access to communities, scaled service discounts and exclusive member benefits is more critical than now. LYRASIS is not just where you come for discounts, training and expert services. LYRASIS is where you can come to convene the conversations that directly impact your future and the future of our entire global community. 

Membership renewal invoices have been delivered to the person listed as the order contact at your institution. Should you need to delay payment until your next fiscal year budget is available, please let us know. Additionally, members have access to a Deposit Account which provides institutions greater financial flexibility when needed. If you have any questions about your LYRASIS membership or our programs, products and services, please do not hesitate to reach out to me directly or contact your Regional Outreach Representative.