Council On Library And Information Resources

Council On Library And Information Resources (CLIR), a tax-exempt nonprofit organization headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, operates as a federal grant recipient and occasional federal contractor providing professional development, cultural heritage preservation support, and library science research coordination to federal agencies and cultural institutions. CLIR competes exclusively in full-and-open procurement — it holds no set-aside designations and operates entirely as a prime recipient or prime contractor, with no subcontract footprint across its recent federal award history.

CLIR's federal work splits between two distinct capability streams. The first involves organizational membership dues in international consortia—CLIR holds purchase orders from the Smithsonian Institution ($4,675 for 2023 IIPC membership dues, completed June 2023), the National Library of Medicine ($10,125 for IIPC organizational membership, expiring December 2025), and the National Gallery of Art ($10,000 for IIIF Consortium membership, completed December 2022). The second and substantially larger capability set centers on grant-funded professional development, cultural heritage initiatives, and equity programming. Recent grant awards from the Institute of Museum and Library Services include a $400,000 Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program grant (CFDA 45.313) awarded September 2026 to design and pilot a sustainable fellowship model for early-career and contingent cultural heritage professionals through the Digital Library Federation, running through August 2028; a project grant for climate resiliency workshops and resource development for librarians, archivists, and cultural workers (August 2023–December 2027); and a project grant supporting a two-and-a-half-day convening for Black librarians in Charleston, South Carolina, focused on healing, mentorship, equity advancement, and community-building (August 2023–November 2026). CLIR also holds cooperative agreement work with the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs on cultural heritage delegation facilitation and a project grant for manuscript digitization and preservation training for Khizana managers (completed September 2026).

Customer concentration tilts toward cultural institutions and library-focused agencies. The Smithsonian Institution leads by award count (8 awards, $60 thousand combined potential value) and stands as the top customer by dollar share, followed at distance by the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (7 awards) and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (5 awards). The National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences holds 4 awards ($38 thousand combined potential value), and the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, National Library of Medicine, and National Gallery of Art round out the active federal customer base. CLIR served nine distinct customer agencies across the recent award history. Award activity has been light and episodic — one to four awards per year from 2022 through 2026 — with combined potential value across all recent awards totaling $181,000, though obligated dollars across the portfolio reach $4.8 million, reflecting the dollar magnitude of multi-year grant programs relative to their stated ceiling values. Only two awards face ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months, creating minimal near-term recompete pressure.