The Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries is an association of a number of libraries in Colorado

Colorado

Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...

 and Wyoming

Wyoming

Wyoming is a state in the mountain region of the Western United States. The western two thirds of the state is covered mostly with the mountain ranges and rangelands in the foothills of the Eastern Rocky Mountains, while the eastern third of the state is high elevation prairie known as the High...

.

Purpose

The Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries was established in 1974. One major purpose of the Alliance is to share resources and provide the best terms and price to its members by group purchasing. Projects of the Alliance over the years include:

• Prospector, a unified catalog
  Union catalog
  A union catalog is a combined library catalog describing the collections of a number of libraries. Union catalogs have been created in a range of media, including book format, microform, cards and more recently, networked electronic databases...
  
   of academic
  Academic library
  An academic library is a library that is attached to academic institutions above the secondary level, serving the teaching and research needs of students and staff...
  
  , public
  Public library
  A public library is a library that is accessible by the public and is generally funded from public sources and operated by civil servants. There are five fundamental characteristics shared by public libraries...
  
  , and other libraries in Colorado and Wyoming (current)
• Gold Rush, a database of online article resources (fulltext journals and abstracts) and access options (current)
• Alliance Digital Repository, a consortial repository service supporting the preservation of, management of, and access to digital content (current)
• CARL and UnCover (historical)

Prospector also provides a faster and more convenient mechanism for interlibrary loan

Interlibrary loan

Interlibrary loan is a service whereby a user of one library can borrow books or receive photocopies of documents that are owned by another library...

s from member libraries, which can be ordered by patrons directly from the catalog.

CARL and UnCover

CARL started as a character-based access system to resources, in particular catalogs of participating libraries as they were being computerized, available via dialup long before the advent of World Wide Web

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

. The CARL system eventually included a subset of the Dialog

Dialog (online database)

Dialog is an online information service owned by ProQuest, who acquired it from Thomson Reuters in mid-2008.Dialog was one of the predecessors of the World Wide Web as a provider of information, though not in form. The earliest form of the Dialog system was completed in 1966 under the direction of...

. The flagship CARL product was UnCover, an article index database. UnCover provides free article search and access to the article text for a fee.
CARL was spun off in 1988 into a for-profit company, later owned by Knight-Ridder and then Dialog before becoming briefly Uncover, Inc. In 2000, UnCover has been acquired by Ingenta

Ingenta

Founded in 1998, Ingenta provided technology and associated services to the publishing and information industries. Its software enables scholarly, financial and business publishers to make content available to online institutional and individual end users, under a variety of business models.In...

 and is now accessible as a part of Ingentaconnect.

Member libraries

These libraries are members of the Alliance:

Library	University
Arthur Lakes Library	Colorado School of Mines Colorado School of Mines The Colorado School of Mines is a small public teaching and research university devoted to engineering and applied science, with special expertise in the development and stewardship of the Earth's natural resources. Located in Golden, Colorado, CSM was ranked 29th, in America among national...
Auraria Library Auraria Library Auraria Library is an academic library located in downtown Denver, Colorado. The library serves three institutions of higher learning: the downtown Denver campus of the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State College of Denver, and Community College of Denver.Built in 1976, the library...	Community College of Denver Community College of Denver Community College of Denver is a community college located in Denver, Colorado, United States. The main campus is at Auraria Campus, and it has two other locations in the Denver metropolitan area. CCD focuses on underserved, first-generation and minority students... Metropolitan State College of Denver Metropolitan State College of Denver The Metropolitan State College of Denver is a four-year college and now offers certain Graduate programs located in Denver, Colorado, United States. As of 2009, Metro State had the second-largest enrollment of undergraduates of any college in Colorado... University of Colorado Denver University of Colorado Denver The University of Colorado Denver, shortened as CU Denver, UC Denver, or UCD, is a public university in the United States state of Colorado. It is one of three schools of the University of Colorado system. The university has two campuses — one in downtown Denver at the Auraria Campus, and the other...  - Denver Campus
CSU Libraries	Colorado State University Colorado State University Colorado State University is a public research university located in Fort Collins, Colorado. The university is the state's land grant university, and the flagship university of the Colorado State University System.The enrollment is approximately 29,932 students, including resident and...
Denver Public Library Denver Public Library The Denver Public Library is the public library of the city of Denver, Colorado in the United States. Its administrative headquarters is on the 7th floor of the Central Library in Downtown Denver. , the library system had 2,519,977 items in its collection, and a library card base of 417,616 local...	N/A
Health Sciences Library	University of Colorado Denver University of Colorado Denver The University of Colorado Denver, shortened as CU Denver, UC Denver, or UCD, is a public university in the United States state of Colorado. It is one of three schools of the University of Colorado system. The university has two campuses — one in downtown Denver at the Auraria Campus, and the other...  - Anschutz Medical Campus
Jefferson County Library	N/A
Kraemer Family Library	University of Colorado at Colorado Springs University of Colorado at Colorado Springs The University of Colorado Colorado Springs is a campus of the University of Colorado system, the state university system of Colorado....
Penrose Library	University of Denver University of Denver The University of Denver is currently ranked 82nd among all public and private "National Universities" by U.S. News & World Report in the 2012 rankings....
Regis Libraries	Regis University Regis University Regis University is a private, co-educational Roman Catholic, Jesuit university in the United States. Founded by the Society of Jesus in 1877, it is one of 28 member institutions of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities...
Tomlinson Library	Colorado Mesa University
Tutt Library	Colorado College Colorado College The Colorado College is a private liberal arts college in Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. It was founded in 1874 by Thomas Nelson Haskell...
University Libraries	University of Colorado at Boulder University of Colorado at Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder is a public research university located in Boulder, Colorado...
UNC Libraries	University of Northern Colorado University of Northern Colorado -Organization:The University of Northern Colorado offers 100 undergraduate programs and more than 100 graduate programs. The university has a satellite campus in Denver, Colorado...
UW Libraries	University of Wyoming University of Wyoming The University of Wyoming is a land-grant university located in Laramie, Wyoming, situated on Wyoming's high Laramie Plains, at an elevation of 7,200 feet , between the Laramie and Snowy Range mountains. It is known as UW to people close to the university...