Strategic Plan: Areas for Collaboration 2017-2021
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Advancing a Collective Journal Retention Strategy: Retention Milestones and Last Copy Agreement
At the PAPR II Summit in Summer 2015, we learned that the scope of potential print backfiles held by academic and research libraries may be somewhere around 400,000 to 1 million journals. While not all of them need to come under an explicit retention program, libraries stand to benefit significantly by securing retention commitments to many more titles. Thus far, shared print programs have retained approximately 50,000-70,000 journals. And of those retained, typically only one copy is retained; the safety net we are creating may be too thin. Furthermore, there is no clear set of community behaviors for what to do when a last copy is identified in the community of academic libraries. There is certainly more to be done.
Rosemont shared print programs agree to the following collection retention strategies. Actions will be taken by all programs over the next five years to achieve the following collective collection milestones:
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Action 3-1: Thinking Bigger shared print programs will set a 5-year milestone to bring a certain number of new journal backfiles (i.e. backfiles for which there are no current commitments) under retention control.
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Action 3-2: Thinking Bigger shared print programs will set a 5-year milestone to ensure there are an average of 3 copies of all backfiles currently under a retention commitment, ideally geographically distributed. |
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Action 3-3: Thinking Bigger shared print programs will should develop a last copy agreement to provide explicit guidance on what to do when a last backfile copy is detected in a collection. The agreement should provide an avenue for member libraries to retain in place or deposit with a storage facility able and willing to receive such backfiles. Included will be expected behaviors, due diligence in researching “last copy” status, and explicit pathways for communicating, securing and/or transferring the backfile amongst institutions. We will explore whether guidelines should be established to compensate for receiving these additional backfiles “for the greater good”, particularly from institutions that do not have depositing relationships with a facility. |
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Developing Shared Policies or Guidelines
The Thinking Bigger project team believes that cross-regional collaboration can benefit from some standardization of policies or development of guidelines for certain operational aspects.
Rosemont shared print programs agree to develop the following common policies or guidelines. Actions will be taken by all programs over the next five years to achieve the following common behaviors:
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Action 4-1: Thinking Bigger libraries should develop a common metadata standard or policy to disclose retention commitments. This will include record retention commitments, program attributes, describe preservation action outcomes, and ensure records integrate with resource sharing, discovery, registry and collections analysis systems. The standard will also provide common guidelines for disclosing retention commitments in the PAPR Registry and OCLC WorldCat. |
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Action 4-2: Thinking Bigger libraries should develop validation guidelines to describe expected actions and outcomes when completeness and condition are reviewed at the volume level. |
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Action 4-3: Thinking Bigger libraries should develop common access guidelines for patrons who seek to use the original print content. |
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Action 4-4: Thinking Bigger libraries should establish basic expectations and guidelines for filling gaps in print journal runs that are archived as part of this effort. |
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Local Decision-Support Services: Engagement with OCLC’s Sustainable Collection Services (SCS)
OCLC’s Sustainable Collection Services (SCS) is developing tools & services to support shared print journal retention programs. Initially, the primary focus is to develop local decision-support services (i.e. to facilitate individual library comparisons to a group or knowledgebase of historical print publications). SCS is taking four pathways to develop requirements for these initial capabilities, outlined below.
Rosemont shared print programs agree to support SCS’s exploration in the following ways. Actions will be taken by the indicated programs to work with SCS over the next two years to help SCS advance its service development and to influence that development.
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Action 1-1: To share expertise about developing a canonical list, holdings depth algorithm, and institutional load balancing. WEST will collaborate with SCS to share expertise in building the canonical list and knowledgebase, holdings depth calculation and institutional load balancing (January 2017-June 2017). WEST can help gather additional requirements from other programs in this area. |
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Action 1-2: To provide holdings export files. Big 10 SPR and WEST provide export files of institutions’ journal holdings for SCS’s data assessment. (Spring 2016). |
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Action 1-3: To share expertise re: Needs & Offers capability. Benjamin Walker, Danielle Westbrook, Emily Stambaugh and Cheryle Cole-Bennett provide high level requirements for Needs & Offers capabilities (April – July 2017). These may include requirements for ad hoc gap filling as well as larger scale inventory (backfile) requests. |
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Action 1-4: To participate in the holdings sample study. 2-4 Libraries from each Thinking Bigger regional program participates in the sample study (January 2017- July 2017). |
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Action 1-5: To share expertise re: finances and to advise on a financial model. A small Thinking Bigger committee to work with SCS to develop a financial model for the planned journal decision-support services and a roadmap for future group decision-services. Jointly develop a plan for on-boarding Thinking Bigger libraries to the initial service. (January 2017-September 2017, Ben Walker, Emily Stambaugh, Kim Armstrong, John Burger, others presently serving on OCLC Boards). |
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Action 1-6: |
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Areas that Rosemont/Thinking Bigger groups will not pursue collectively at this time
- Interim use of AGUA group decision-support capability until such time as SCS’s group capability is available
- Coordinated, systemmatic gap filling, for archives held in place or at storage facilities
- Digitization of print only backfiles
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Committees, charges and decision process
An Executive Committee and Operations Team are charged with carrying forward these agreements. The committees are appointed for a five year term and require representation from the founding shared print programs during this term.
Meetings
Decision process
Executive Committee Charge
- Handle membership inquiries from other shared print programs and individual institutions
Executive Committee Roster
Operations Team Charge
- Ratify this Strategic Plan 2017-2021 with regional shared print program steering committees
- Develop and publicize a roadmap for implementing the Strategic Plan
- Create a brand (name, logo), basic website and communications structure
Operations Team Roster
Administrative Support