During the Campus Master Planning effort the need to better understand and plan for the UMass Amherst collections was identified and an ad-hoc committee was created to help advance a better understanding of the existing collections and how best to plan for the future. The committee was comprised of Directors/ curators of campus academic collections, Campus Planning staff and other related campus professionals. The first task of the committee was to develop a basis for creating a planning framework for the academic collections. The Committee defined existing collections and set a framework and common language that enabled the classification and quantification of collections space on campus. The UMass Amherst Collections 2013 report summarizes each collection, its mission and the contact person responsible for the collection. The term collection was defined to include all the campus holdings that are used for academic, research and outreach purposes, with the exception of the Libraries, which had recently completed a facilities Master Plan outlining strategies for future facilities.