Whose book is this [and does it matter]? How shared print programs are redefining our understanding of local collections

Whose book is this [and does it matter]? How shared print programs are redefining our understanding of local collections

Frank Livak Room

Shared print initiatives such as the Eastern Academic Scholars’ Trust [EAST] and the HathiTrust Shared Print Program are beginning to redefine collection ownership in academic and research libraries and offer opportunities for new forms of cooperation and collaboration. These large-scale programs effectively create mega-collections of scholarly materials that have been designated for retention or preservation and can be loaned to partner libraries. This panel will report on the results of these ground-breaking shared print programs, discuss plans for growth and posit ways in which such programs may impact collection development, resource sharing, and library collaboration at scale.

EAST has completed a collection analysis across more than 16 million holdings from its 40 retention partner libraries and committed to retain over 6 million items on behalf of the members. In addition, important work was done to validate presence and condition of over 240,000 items with further statistical analysis of this data likely to influence retention modeling in the future. The HathiTrust program builds on the commitments its members have made to digital preservation by working with libraries to extend commitments to the print equivalents. These programs focus on protecting print and digital collections in ways that reduce the costs of collection management and storage as well as provide models of ways in which shared print is changing the landscape for the ownership of scholarly titles. As more and more academic and research libraries commit to participate in such programs, it sets the stage for rethinking collection development and resource sharing.

The panelists will provide an update of the status of EAST and HathiTrust, and discuss the impact of such large-scale initiatives on their member libraries. Potential opportunities for further collaboration across shared print programs will be considered as will ways in which these initiatives can drive new forms of library cooperation and act as further catalysts for collective management of library collections.

Presenters:

Lorraine Huddy, CTW Consortium, Connecticut

Matthew Sheehy, Brandeis University

Lizanne Payne, Hathi Trust