Announcement and Updates

There were two major shared print announcements at PAN Midwinter 2020.

• The first was an agreement between CRL, CDL, HathiTrust, Rosemont, and the Shared Book Collections Group. The goal is to bring the work of these groups together and act cooperatively in future shared print activities, especially infrastructure. Stay tuned as more develops on this important alignment.
• The second was an announcement that the Partnership for Shared Book Collections is now official. After much preparation, the website portal for this federation of existing shared print monograph programs is now live. Visit the Partnership’s website for more information.

Updates from programs included the Rosemont Operations Committee 2020 priorities. These include ratifying the last copy agreement, improving shared print infrastructure, developing decision support service (DSS) tools, and shared policies for serials. The goal is to have 102,000 new titles in the shared collection next year. OCLC reports that their Mellon Grant to build shared print tools is on track. The tools are in the testing phase. As part of this work, CRL reported successfully completing two import/export tests with OCLC tools, while East is testing data flows between OCLC and four EAST institutions.

Facilities and print storage environments

Facilities and print storage environments continue to be an important consideration for shared print programs. representatives from the University of Missouri, ReCAP, and the Internet Archive, spoke on the complexities of their storage environments and related work.

Corrie Hutchinson, Head of Acquisitions at the University of Missouri (UM), presented on UM's newly built offsite storage facility, which improves on existing storage. Special design elements for the facility included building for local weather issues (tornados and heavy ice storms), fire truck access, and gender-neutral bathrooms. The Library of Congress provided some consulting work, helping UM test the dew point of their collections during transportation. The intention was to keep the dew point low while transferring special collections and archival materials from the off-site facility to campus. LC tested during the summer, measuring the fluctuation of temperature and humidity. To limit exposure for at-risk materials, they designed a car port inside the facility, choose specially designed storage tubs, and have a policy to avoid transferring materials on hot or humid days. Other challenges included serving the transportation needs of four locations, deduping of titles, and ensuring UM continue to work within the MOBIUS shared collections' guidelines. 

ReCAP’s Ian Bogus presented on ongoing maintenance at the ReCAP facility, such as aging equipment that includes 20-year-old air handlers and a roof that is almost 25 years old. To resolve these and other problems, the pros and cons of various scenarios are being considered. Lowering energy bills and rethinking the guidelines for humidity and temperature variation are also part of this work. A preservation environment with a lower temperature setpoint of 45F-55F and humidity 37%-43% would save $25,000 per year in energy costs.

The Internet Archive's Chris Freedland reported on their physical archive and acquisition program. The goal is to store one copy of every book ever printed in a facility located in Oakland, California. The physical archive is designed for the long-term preservation of infrequently used materials. To complement this work, the Internet Archive's Open Libraries project is building an online public library with the digital version of these books, and has developed a controlled digital lending (CDL) tool for libraries. The CDL was developed by the open access community and is freely available. The CDL tool offers libraries that hold a particular monograph the choice to lend a print or Internet Archive digital copy. This strategy for lending the digital copy is a one-to-one lending model: one print volume for one digital volume. Currently, Internet Archive has 20,000 daily digital lends from 1.3 million in-copyright books. Content may be checked out and viewed but not downloaded. A digital surrogate may be available when a library's print copy is destroyed.

New Shared Print Tools

New shared print tools introduced at PAN were PALCI's resource sharing tool and EAST's collection analysis tool with GoldRush. Jill Morris of PALCI spoke about Project ReShare's tool for sharing physical items. This tool is an open-source cross-platform (ALMA, RAPID, ILLIAD, etc.) competitor to ILL management systems like Tipasa, ILLiad, and Clio. The software is built on the Folio Apps open source library software. The collaboration partners are very interested in serving the shared print community's resource sharing needs. Members include PALCI, TRLN, and ConnectNY. The website has more information on this work.

EAST and Goldrush are working together to create a low-cost tool for EAST's collections' analysis. Gold Rush's Library Content Comparison System lets groups of libraries upload their MARC records to compare holdings. EAST intends to replace their current database with Goldrush to leverage its full MARC capabilities.

New Report on Collective Collection

Lorcan Dempsey from OCLC discussed an OCLC/BTAA report on Operationalizing the BIG Collective Collection: A Case Study of Consolidation vs Autonomy. The report develops a framework for understanding the current academic library environment. Libraries are embedded in a web of networks and relationships that extend beyond their local constituency. For example, Ohio State University has relationships with BTAA, CARLI, CRL, OHIOLINK, USMAI, EAST, and others. These oneto many relationships complicate the OSU academic library environment. There are tradeoffs between libraries with consolidated collections (such as ReCAP) and those with autonomous single library collections. Libraries need to think about the big picture and improve resource sharing in the network environment.

Updates

Updates submitted in writing to PAN Midwinter 2020 include news that SCELC has completed its first merged instance of Greenglass with all cohorts. They also announced that some ATLA members will participate in SCELC's shared print work. ASERL's Collaborative Federal Depository Library Program (CFDP) announced a demonstration of their dispositions database is available online. 

For more information about the topics mentioned in these notes, please go to PAN Event Index and find the PAN 2020 Midwinter Event page.