2016 Charleston Library Conference

This panel discussion will focus on the work the Eastern Academic Scholars' Trust [EAST] project is engaged in to protect print scholarly resources for the future. EAST is a collaboration of 48 academic and research libraries, primarily in the Northeast, that has developed a retention program to protect over 6 million scholarly monographs at least through 2031. The panel includes representatives from the EAST project team, the vendor with whom EAST worked on the collection analysis, and participating libraries. The audience will be asked to participate through polling and feedback on each of the major topics discussed, which include:

• The EAST collection analysis - how 40 libraries, over only a 9-month period, came to agree on a model for retention and what the implications are for other regional and national shared print initiatives
• Validation Sample Study - the process of sampling 240,000 items in 40 libraries to develop an "availability metric" and how this work can inform future retention modeling as well as ongoing research
• Developing policies for shared print - the challenges of developing consensus across the diverse EAST membership on policies and operating procedures
• Building a sustainable model for shared print - how EAST is working to expand to other libraries in region and evolve a business model for ongoing sustainability
• What EAST could mean for access to scholarly content in the future - what are the implications for traditional "ILL" of large-scale projects such as EAST and how might EAST change collection development across the region.