UK Research Reserve: Working Together to Establish a National Collection

This article describes the history, structure and workings of the UK Research Reserve, a national collaborative programme to release space in Higher Education Libraries and secure copies of print journals. The program's key processes are described to illustrate how a national collection of copies for access and preservation is created using coordinated de-duplication and shared storage. Achievements to date and possibilities for future developments are outlined.     

Collaborative Stewardship: Building a Shared,Central Collection of Print Legal Materials

Libraries are in an unprecedented period of change. The predominant publishing model is moving from print to digital. Libraries seek to strike the right balance between providing information that today's researcher needs just in time and preserving materials in print for tomorrow's researcher just in case. Legal resources present even greater challenges. This article will reflect how two organizations, the Legal Information Preservation Alliance (LIPA) and NELLCO, an international consortium of law libraries, are currently working together toward a collaborative solution.     

Like a Snowball Gathering Speed: Development of ASERL's Print Journal Retention Program

The Association of Southeastern Research Libraries has instituted a distributed print archive program to share the costs and effort of long-term retention of print journals. Beginning with a review of the history of the project, the authors address the voluntary nature of participation in the program, methodologies for identifying journals to be retained, as well as methodologies for tagging retained journals so that an accurate record of current decisions is maintained over the 25-year length of the commitment. Policies and procedures continue to evolve as participation increases and lessons are learned with each step.     

Michigan Shared Print Initiative and GreenGlass for Groups for Data Analysis in Developing a Collaborative Collective Collection

The Michigan Shared Print Initiative, involving 11 Michigan public university libraries, has partnered with Sustainable Collection Services in using Sustainable Collection Services' new collection analysis and data decision support tool, GreenGlass for Groups. This tool effectively analyzes the group of libraries' individual and collective holdings, sharing mechanisms, and retention needs. This article outlines the establishment of the Michigan Shared Print Initiative, the creation of its collaborative print monograph collection, the use and benefits of GreenGlass for Groups, which is being used for the required collection data analysis for the venture, and the general elements that have contributed to the project's success.     

A Foundation for Change: Using Challenges and Opportunities as Building Blocks for Collection Management

Abstract

Large-scale collection management represents not just opportunities in terms of space, budgets, and personnel but also an important responsibility for the library’s ability to provide quality service and access to knowledge in the future. Libraries must address many challenges when managing collections, but by taking advantage of opportunities when presented, libraries can improve access for today and tomorrow. Using the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as an example, this article will explore how opportunities like high-density storage, shared print initiatives, digitization efforts, and mass deduplication can address challenges facing libraries and improve current and future access to collections.     

No Substantial Penalty for Withdrawal: The PALCI Shared Print Journal Archive

The Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium (PALCI) has developed a shared print archive, an archive that promises to maintain rarely used print journals from noted scientific society publishers for a ten year period. The goals for this collaborative project are to ensure access to commonly held print journal titles, to allow libraries to withdraw materials so they may re-purpose valuable space, and to share the responsibility of storing print titles at individual institutions instead of requiring a centralized storage facility. This paper discusses the grassroots origins for this project and the process decisions involved in turning the archive from vision into reality.     

Small Scale: Using a Regional Pilot Project to Explore the Potential of Shared Print

The long-standing cooperative culture within the research library community should serve as a useful foundation for building regional cooperative agreements to support repositories of print journal backfiles. Serious storage constraints facing Iowa State University, the University of Iowa, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison mandated an effort to tackle this problem in a deliberative and coordinated way. An inter-institutional Task Force was formed to design and implement a process with a selected group of titles as a pilot project. The immediate goal was to liberate shelf space with an eye toward the future development of a consortial collection management plan for the storage of print journals among the three institutions.     

From Collaborative Purchasing Towards Collaborative Discarding: The Evolution of the Shared Print Repository

Academic research libraries have a tradition of collaboration, from selecting foreign language material to licensing electronic resources. Although most storage facilities have tended to be local, some libraries have collaborated on operating shared storage facilities. The growth of digital repositories of printed materials has given the library community the opportunity to engage in a conversation about how to collaboratively take responsibility for the long-term selection and preservation of the print originals. Establishing regional repositories will allow member libraries to draw down local print collections. This review article will trace the major development of this progression from local storage facility to regional print repository.     

Building the College Library Collection to Support Curriculum Growth

Because the mission of smaller academic libraries serving fewer than 10,000 full-time enrolled students is mainly to serve the curriculum-based needs of students and faculty, collection management in these libraries needs to be directly related to changes in the curriculum of the parent institution. A look into applicable collection management literature, combined with one library's experience, offers insights about effective curriculum-based collection building in a smaller academic library setting. To achieve efficiency, collection managers must maintain up-to-date knowledge of changing instructional and research needs at their institutions, the needs new programs have for library materials, appropriate collection assessment tools, and the tasks involved in a focused expansion project. By optimizing consultations with faculty and evaluation procedures scaled to its needs, the library at North Georgia College & State University, a modestly sized academic institution, established a model for becoming an active participant in new course and program planning during the application stage, ensuring appropriate library support for new courses and programs of study.     

Rethinking Collection Management Plans: Shaping Collective Collections for the 21st Century

The emergence of shared print repositories has created new opportunities for libraries to provide cost-effective stewardship through collaborative collection management. This opportunity also presents challenges, as libraries must reenvision collection management in the context of local, regional, and national priorities. In previous decades, collection management plans were used to communicate an institution's strategies for managing local collections. As libraries prepare to participate in cooperative agreements, formal collection management plans and policies can and should be used once again as a practical framework for decision making. The authors offer practical advice on developing a collection management plan in a collaborative context.     

All Together Now: Planning for Shared Print Archiving at Canada's Western Universities

The Council of Prairie and Pacific University Libraries is a consortium of twenty-two university libraries in western Canada. Planning for a regional shared print archive has included the formation of several task groups, the engagement of a project consultant, and local development of a holdings registry tool. The original impetus for the project was to clear maximum shelf space at member libraries quickly. The planning challenge that has emerged is to design a project that meets this short-term regional need for repurposed space in member libraries, while building in scalability to address a broader preservation mandate, and that allows linking to related initiatives in other jurisdictions.     

CIC Co-Investment to Protect Print Research Library Collections in the Midwestern United States

The Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) is one of the nation's oldest and most respected academic consortia. The CIC libraries hold more than 85 million volumes with print collections occupying approximately 10 million linear feet—or 2,000 miles—of shelving. The price tag for maintaining CIC print holdings, in stacks and storage facilities, is approximately $200 million per year. Between 2009 and 2011, the CIC University Librarians (ULs) affirmed a list of core principles for developing and managing a shared storage program. The ULs made an initial investment to support building a shared collection of 250,000 journal backfile volumes to be housed at Indiana University.     

Radical Relocation: Adapting Print Collections to an E-Centric World

With the advent of e-journal preservation projects and publisher digitization of journal backfiles, academic libraries have begun to move their corresponding print volumes of these titles to storage to avoid duplication and save space. This article examines the supporting justifications, outreach mechanisms, and logistical procedures undertaken at American University Library to relocate the entire bound journal collection to offsite storage in order to address severe physical space constraints and to support patron use of and preference for electronic journal content. In addition, the article presents preliminary data regarding the use of bound volumes sent to storage and an overall analysis of this transformational project.     

Hacking the Collection: Changing the Collection in Response to a Migration

Abstract

In 2016, the Munday Library at St. Edward’s University migrated to a new discovery layer. The Library had been an EBSCO Discovery Services (EDS) customer for six years, and the migration to Ex Libris’s Alma-Primo negatively impacted content discovery and collection usage due to issues with EBSCO’s proprietary metadata and Primo’s OpenURL link resolver. This article discusses switching the library’s collection using collection data analysis to respond to the change in discovery layer. The data-informed changes made to the collection improved collection usability and access.     

Assessment in a Tight Time Frame: Using Readily Available Data to Evaluate Your Collection

The William S. Carlson Library of The University of Toledo is experiencing a major renovation project. Its first floor is being transformed into a state-of-the-art information commons. In order to provide the space necessary for this transformation, several collections, specifically the reference and circulating, needed to be moved and shifted in a timely manner. This paper highlights how readily available data were used to evaluate the volumes in the reference collection and the circulating collection in order to maximize the space for the renovation projects.     

Space Case: Moving from a Physical to a Virtual Journal Collection

Journal publishing has evolved and changed considerably over the years, leaving many libraries to grapple with analyzing and identifying the purpose and scope of these collections. After numerous discussions and an analysis of how the current print journal collection was being used, Kraemer Family Library at the University of Colorado–Colorado Springs decided to withdraw over 50% of the library’s print journal holdings in order to create a collaborative space for students. This article begins with an overview of journal publishing as it relates to academic libraries and the impact of electronic serials on the scope and purpose of a print journal collection. It then highlights the steps used to complete the project, and communication goals and methods employed to keep library staff members, faculty on campus, and other constituents aware of the changes taking place in the library.     

Building a New Paradigm: Analysis of a Case Study in Organizational Change in Collection Management Using Bolman's and Deal's Four-Frame Model

In 2010, the Oregon State University Libraries implemented changes to its organizational structure to align itself better with the university and respond to the ongoing fiscal crisis. The Collections & Resource Sharing Department was created at that time. This case study describes and analyzes changes in collection management using the four frames in Bolman's and Deal's model: structural, human resources, political, and symbolic. The article concludes with a discussion of ongoing challenges that are likely to require greater use of the political and symbolic frames for planning and implementing further changes.     

Taking Shared Print to the Next Level: The Partnership for Shared Book Collections

Abstract

This article introduces the Partnership for Shared Book Collections, a federation of monograph shared print programs. Collaboration of programs at the network level allows for:

• Reducing the cost of retaining the scholarly record through shared distribution of commitments;

• De-duplicating efforts;

• Developing and promoting evidence-based best practices;

• Increasing the effectiveness of communication with end-users and funders;

• Tackling large-scale projects and research that are out of reach for individual shared print programs. This shared stewardship of collection is critical as local resources are depleted due to the COVID-19 pandemic and access to print for digitization increases.

     

The Dark Side of Collection Management: Deselecting Serials from a Research Library's Storage Facility Using WorldCat Collection Analysis

To address the situation of its nearly full storage facility, the Purdue University Libraries developed guidelines for the deselection of very low–use serial titles and conducted a pilot project to identify material for withdrawal. The library school intern hired to conduct the pilot used WorldCat Collection Analysis to create subject lists of titles to be considered for withdrawal. These lists also contained value-added information about how many benchmark institutions owned and duplicated the local holdings of each title. Working with subject specialists, the intern developed criteria to guide a major serials deselection project. After the success of the internship in six subject areas, the libraries funded a longer-term position to complete the deselection project.     

Creating a Library-Wide Collection Management Cycle: One Academic Library’s Approach to Continuous Collection Assessment

Abstract

Collections assessment in academic libraries has experienced a shift in recent years from project-based models to continuous models that aim improve the responsivity of library collections to campus needs. This article reports on how one university library used a library committee with representation from across library departments to develop a holistic, on-going Collection Management Cycle. This newly created process evaluates the entire library collection over a five-year period and aligns with library reporting requirements for university program review to minimize additional workload and improve the impact of external reporting activities.