Shared collections promise access to more diverse and comprehensive holdings at a more sustainable cost as well as better documentation and preservation support for the volumes in the collection. Achieving the goals of shared collections requires new approaches to the discovery, storage, bibliographic documentation, and delivery of library materials. Panelists are key voices in projects that seek to realize the potential for a more nationally unified structure for collections and the resource-sharing, preservation, and digitization services related to them. They will describe:
- new technologies and operations management strategies that enable libraries to transform their user services and reduce the costs of collection management;
- recent studies on the potential costs of establishing a national repository system for print materials;
- the roles and requirements of service and archival monograph collections; and
- how the experience of the Center for Research Libraries and the Print Archive Network (PAN) can guide the development of a nationally integrated collection.
This session brings together an impressive range of experience—from major research libraries (ReCAP) and regional partnerships (WEST), to the nation-wide HathiTrust print monograph program and the collectively built and maintained collections led by the Center for Research Libraries, to global operations and innovative business practices (Iron Mountain). Informed by the work of OCLC Research and 10 years of Print Archive Network forums, these projects seek to radically transform our collective ability to provide access to truly comprehensive research collections.
