We are pleased to announce the acceptance of our bid to join the IIPC Steering Committee, based on a vote by the IIPC membership. SUL joins the 15-member group as one of two currently-serving university library members (the other being the University of North Texas Libraries) and as the third university library to ever serve on the body (the other being the California Digital Library).

The Steering Committee provides strategic direction for the IIPC, defining the structures for successful projects and collaborations, overseeing sponsored initiatives and partnerships, discussing and approving the annual budget, and vetting new member applications. This particular Steering Committee will have the additional role of guiding the creation of the 2016-2018 membership agreement, which informs the IIPC mission and goals.

Recent years have seen an especial increase in the number of IIPC members that are both research university libraries and based in North America; SUL exemplifies this category. And though (PDF) the percentage of U.S. web archiving organizations that are IIPC members is in the single digits, the work of the IIPC strongly affects the field as a whole.

We look forward to participating in the IIPC Steering Committee starting in 2015 and, through this opportunity, advancing both the SUL web archiving program and web archiving generally.