Boston, MA -- March 12, 2018 -- The Eastern Academic Scholars’ Trust (EAST), which includes 60 academic and research institutions with a mission to secure and provide access to the scholarly record, has joined the Rosemont Shared Print Alliance, a partnership of regional shared programs focused on collaborative print journal archiving. The Rosemont partners seek to coordinate their work in service of ensuring “the preservation and availability of print journal literature.”
EAST, among the largest monograph shared print programs in the United States, has recently completed the first phase of ongoing collection analyses and retention allocations for print serials and journals. Almost half of EAST’s 60 member libraries are serials retention partners and their retained holdings comprise an estimated 10,000 titles, which will be added to Rosemont’s tally of retained serials.
Following Rosemont’s governance conventions, EAST has appointed Susan Stearns (Boston Library Consortium) and Matthew Revitt (Shared Print Consultant) to the Rosemont Operations Committee, and Peggy Seiden (Swarthmore College) and Simon Neame (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) to the Rosemont Executive Committee. Peggy Seiden, who serves on both the EAST Executive Committee and the EAST Serials & Journals Working Group, commented: “EAST’s collaboration with Rosemont reinforces the mission of EAST and is a natural progression from our early work on monograph retention. As a Rosemont partner, EAST is able to take advantage of the know-how of programs that have existed for many years and have clearly demonstrated their commitment to ensuring access to scholarly print journals and serials.”
Jay Starratt, Chair of the Rosemont Shared Print Alliance Executive Committee and Dean of Libraries at Washington State University, extended the invitation to EAST following a unanimous vote from the Rosemont Executive Committee. “As libraries look to the future of print preservation, coordination at a national level which includes the major players in shared print is the logical next step. Having EAST as part of Rosemont ensures an expansion of our efforts geographically and enhances the Rosemont Alliance’s ability to shape shared print to the benefit of scholars nationally.”
About EAST
The Eastern Academic Scholars' Trust (EAST) is a shared print initiative involving 60 academic and research libraries in 11 states from Maine to Florida. EAST is focused on retaining unique, scarcely held and frequently used scholarly monographs and serials in support of scholarship, research and teaching. EAST member libraries commit to retain agreed upon titles in their local collections for a minimum of 15 years and make those titles available to other EAST members, allowing these libraries to consider weeding and deselection of titles locally in order to free up space for new and innovative library services. EAST is funded by generous grants from the Davis Educational Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as well as through the financial support of its members.
About Rosemont
The Rosemont Shared Print Alliance is a collaboration of regional programs interested in coordinating their efforts on a larger scale to ensure the retention of and access to print journal backfiles. Rosemont was founded in 2015 by representatives of the Big 10 Academic Alliance, the FLorida Academic REpository (FLARE), ScholarsTrust, and the Western Regional Storage Trust (WEST). Working collaboratively, these programs anticipate significantly growing the collection of serials and journals currently being retained and archived by libraries as well as develop shared policies and standards.
Contact: For further information on Eastern Academic Scholars’ Trust (EAST), please contact the EAST Project Manager, Mei Mendez at mmendez@blc.org