Book Description

This study is an outgrowth of recommendations made in a report issued by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) in 2001 (Nichols and Smith 2001). The report made three broad recommendations for addressing print preservation: (1) Establish regional repositories to house and provide proper treatment of low-use print matter drawn from various collections; (2) Investigate the establishment of archival repositories that would retain a "last, best copy" of American imprints; (3) Build interinstitutional networks for information sharing about the status of artifacts and delegation of responsibilities for caring for them. This report examined how, and to what degree, various consortia and university systems are using repositories to move beyond the immediate goal of providing cost-effective collection storage and delivery and to be-gin to cooperatively manage and preserve their research collections. The report also suggests which practices, policies, and programs best foster the equitable sharing of the costs of collections care and to identify which practices and organizational and financial structures best support the integration of cooperative collection development and preservation efforts. Finally, it explores the extent to which the repositories studied represent an emerging architecture of broader cooperation, whereby the participating libraries might move beyond serving their regional communities and participate in a national network for cooperative preservation. A further purpose of this study was to appraise prospects for further rationalization of libraries' efforts to manage the growing print corpus in institutions across the nation. Appendixes include four tables and brief overviews of the Australian National Collections Storage Program, national collections planning in the United Kingdom, and a Collaborative Academic Library Store for Scotland; and information on methodology and sources for the study. (Contains 13 references.) (AEF).