Curating Collective Collections--Protecting the Scholarly Record: Shared Print at Scale Bob Kieft [email protected]
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Against the Grain Volume 28 | Issue 5 Article 44 2016 Curating Collective Collections--Protecting the Scholarly Record: Shared Print at Scale Bob Kieft [email protected] Susan Stearns Boston Library Consortium, [email protected] Anna Perricci Eastern Academic Scholars' Trust, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/atg Part of the Library and Information Science Commons Recommended Citation Kieft, Bob; Stearns, Susan; and Perricci, Anna (2016) "Curating Collective Collections--Protecting the Scholarly Record: Shared Print at Scale," Against the Grain: Vol. 28: Iss. 5, Article 44. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7771/2380-176X.7541 This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. Curating Collective Collections — Protecting the Scholarly Record: Shared Print at Scale by Susan Stearns (Executive Director, Boston Library Consortium, and Project Director, Eastern Academic Scholars’ Trust) <[email protected]> and Anna Perricci (Project Manager, Eastern Academic Scholars’ Trust) <[email protected]> with thanks to Sara Amato and Matthew Revitt of the EAST Project Team Column Editor: Bob Kieft (688 Holly Ave., Unit 4, St. Paul, MN 55104) <[email protected]> Column Editor’s Note: The shared print Collections Initiative), 2016 marked a new in support of collection development and local community has been watching developments milestone as the Eastern Academic Scholars’ deselection activities after the EAST retention in the Northeastern United States for some Trust (EAST) announced that it had secured commitments are in place. time now — so many books and libraries, commitments from 40 academic and research Here are a few data points concerning the so many distinguished institutions, and a libraries in the Eastern U.S. to retain and lend EAST collective collection: 1 number of consortial projects begun in the over 6,000,000 monographs for 15 years. • Total number of holdings: last decade and more in Connecticut, Maine, The EAST project stretches back to 2011 16,573,071, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania. when some 100 academic and research li- • Title sets2 held by only one library in From ad hoc discussion initiated by the Five braries across the Northeast began planning EAST: 50%, Colleges of Massachusetts five years ago a collaborative regional program that would • Titles sets with more than 10 aggre- through an evolution encouraged by a legacy focus on managing retention commitments for gate uses across the EAST libraries: of resource-sharing and other partnerships, infrequently used monographs and journals. 20%, The project’s implementation phase began in commitment to communal solutions, and, not • Title sets represented in HathiTrust: 2015 with funding from both the Andrew W. least, grant funding, those ad hoc discussions 39% have now borne fruit in the country’s largest Mellon Foundation and the Davis Educational shared print program for monographs in terms Foundation. As of summer 2016, 48 libraries Over the course of a quite intensive three- of the number of members and retention com- (see http://www.eastlibraries.org/members for month period, March through May 2016, the mitments. Housed now by the Boston Library details) are participating in EAST, which the EAST team worked with SCS and the EAST Consortium and running regionally in parallel Boston Library Consortium manages as the Monographs Working Group (MWG) to de- with the new Collections Initiatives program of administrative host. The EAST team consists velop potential retention models using tools in GreenGlass. Early on, the MWG, and later the Ivies Plus group, EAST (Eastern Academic of Susan Stearns and Anna Perricci; Sara the full membership, endorsed the tenet that Scholars’ Trust) is a good example of trends in Amato, Data Librarian; and Matthew Re- EAST should retain at least one copy of titles shared print agreements that propel libraries vitt, Shared Print Consultant. Lizanne Payne served as the Shared Print Consultant until that met the retention model and wanted to toward a national-level of policy and gover- focus on retaining more than one of titles that nance. EAST’s work has also provided through she was appointed to a full time position with HathiTrust in the spring of 2016. were scarcely held by the comparator groups a verification study important corroboration as well as those titles with significant usage by of availability and condition findings by the Collection Analysis and Building a the member libraries. smaller-scale studies reported in this column by consortia in Iowa (Teri Koch, December Retention Model In order to come to consensus and ensure 2014-January 2015, p. 76) and California Following the formal kickoff of the EAST support of the full EAST membership, the MWG surveyed the membership about possible (Mike Garabedian, June 2016, p.72) and of project in June 2015, the EAST team began models. Following three cycles of developing findings yet to be published by Prof. Andrew work with OCLC Sustainable Collection candidate models and soliciting feedback from Services (SCS) on the large-scale collection Stauffer at the University of Virginia. More- the members, the MWG agreed to a final model, over, as the SCS client base burgeons and its analysis which would be critical to selecting the titles to be retained. The participating libraries which was later approved by the EAST Exec- database of holdings and circulation data ex- utive Committee. This model was designed pands, libraries have an increasingly important provided SCS with extracts of bibliographic and item date for in-scope monographs as well to meet the needs of the broad range of EAST data set for understanding not only holdings partner libraries and specifies: but use patterns on a national scale. Much is as circulation data by the end October, 2015. happening “back East,” as those of us west SCS then normalized the data and performed a • retain all copies of titles scarcely held of the Mississippi say, and, together with the variety of matches of the data against compar- among comparator groups in order to protect unique and rare materials; news that the Harvard Depository and ReCAP ator groups that EAST had identified: Hathi- are beginning to work together, EAST and its Trust, WorldCat, major research and college • retain up to 5 copies of titles that members’ many interlocking relationships will libraries in the Northeast that are not EAST have been frequently used across the continue to focus shared print community at- members, and ConnectNY and Maine Shared libraries in order to ensure access to tention on the possibilities for drawing the big Collections Strategy, EAST participants which adequate copies for future users; picture. In this regard, I particularly commend had retention commitments in place already. • retain one copy of all other titles that to your own and your consortium’s attention the This collective EAST dataset was then load- are defined as in scope in order to questions the authors pose in the concluding ed into SCS’s online system, GreenGlass, and protect the remainder of the collec- section of the article. — BK made available to the participating libraries and tive collection. the EAST team to begin the process of analysis Applying this model to the EAST collective and building a retention model. As those of collection resulted in EAST Retention Partners hared print initiatives for monographs you who have used it know, GreenGlass is a agreeing to retain approximately 36% of their are growing up or at least are growing powerful, highly interactive tool that can be local in-scope collections, though some librar- S“larger.” While programs involving a somewhat addictive. For many of the EAST ies offered to retain significantly more. This few academic libraries have been around for libraries, GreenGlass provides considerably resulted in the 40 EAST Retention Partners a number of years (such as the Maine Shared more insight into their local circulating print committing to retain over 6 million holdings Collections Strategy, the Michigan Shared Print collections than they had previously. Many representing over 4.3 million titles. Initiative, and the Central Iowa Collaborative EAST libraries will continue to use GreenGlass continued on page 90 88 Against the Grain / November 2016 <http://www.against-the-grain.com> of 6,000 would require about 130 hours of the academic faculty and administration have in Curating Collective Collections time of workers and 24 of staff overheard for a programs such as EAST. And, while today each from page 88 total of 154 hours. shared print initiative has its own set of retention We are planning a second validation study for rules, EAST has shown that consensus can be Validation Sample Studies late 2016. While the details of this study have reached among partners with a diverse range of As those familiar with shared print initia- yet to be finalized, we expect to drill down into needs, institutional sizes, type, etc. tives know, the issue of validation — verifying the data set from the initial validation sample. A Few Final Remarks and Questions the existence and in some cases the condition We will first identify the subset of the 240,000 — of retained items is often not feasible. Such samples that represents actual EAST retention for the Readers validation, however, can be critical to building commitments. Using additional data fields We hope and expect EAST to grow and trust, particularly with academic faculty, in provided by SCS, we will look at questions prove the sustainability of large-scale regional programs such as EAST. such as: what is the impact of publication data shared print programs. We anticipate that the The size and geographic distribution of on condition? how does aggregated circulations important preservation role EAST and other the EAST member libraries made a full scale impact the likelihood that an item is available? shared print programs play in maintaining ac- validation program impossible.