The June 2017 Print Archive Network (PAN) Forum brought together leading practitioners of shared print initiatives to exchange information, expertise, and best practices on the strategic management of print holdings. The theme of the PAN ALA Annual 2017 meeting was "Validation of Shared Print Collections." Representatives from the Central Iowa Collaborative Collections Initiative, EAST, the "Book Traces Project" at the University of Virginia, and OhioLINK offered their perspectives on the significance and implications of validating monographs and serials considered for print retention or withdrawal. Participants discussed the relative benefits and costs of performing comprehensive validation versus sampling. Validation will become increasingly important as the number of extant copies of print titles dwindles. 

Short presentations at the meeting included an update on the HathiTrust Shared Print program, a CRL investigation and proposal to clean up and reduce record redundancy for JSTOR journals, an ongoing investigation by PALCI into coordinating archived reference titles, and a presentation on the continued importance of microform as a backstop to print preservation efforts. Presentation slides are available on the PAN event page. 

Some additional highlights from program updates include: 

BTAA SPR
Active building of BTAA's Phase 1 collection at Indiana University will end on June 30, 2017. In 2018 Phase 2 will begin with a collection housed at the University of Illinois. BTAA is working with librarians to explore the feasibility of a program to cooperatively manage widely held microform sets in a distributed retention model... read more.

COPPUL SPAN
This spring SPAN is celebrating its fifth anniversary. They will be conducting a review of their activities to date, including consultations with stakeholders and recommendations for the future. In January project participants modified the retention model to include filtering out commonly held materials. Phase Four of COPPUL SPAN's Government Documents Print Archiving project will contribute to achieving Statistics Canada's goal of creating a comprehensive archive of print publications from SPAN participants. COPPUL SPAN was asked to participate in a feasibility study on monographs, commissioned by the UK’s National Monograph Steering Group ... read more.

CRL
The Center for Research Libraries was scheduled to hold a Forum in June at the ALA Annual on Friday, June 23, 2017, that explored CRL’s role in the current shared print landscape and its agenda for 2017-2026. CRL is processing records from Scholars Trust for PAPR... read more.

EAST
EAST received an extension and reallocation of funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation through June 30, 2018 from the original June 30, 2017 end date. All Cohort 1 members have signed copies of the EAST MOU. Cohort 2 members will sign the MOU once their retention allocations are finalized. Twenty-two EAST Cohort 1 members have agreed to be Serial and Journal Retention Partners. EAST is focusing on widely held serial titles that are likely to be at greatest risk of withdrawal. The data from the EAST validation sample study are being used to identify at-risk titles targeted for retention in the Cohort 2 phase. EAST has engaged the Center for Research Libraries to perform collection analysis work, which will be completed by the end of June 2017... read more.

FLARE
FLARE has signed an MOA with the GPO to become a Preservation Steward for Congressional Hearings documents. Currently FLARE has 1.3 million items available. The JRNL database has 32,224 unique journal titles loaded in JRNL... read more.

Maine Shared Collections Cooperative (MSCC)
MSCC currently has 39 members across the state of Maine; new members have collectively agreed to retain approximately 1,700 print monograph titles in addition to those already retained. On average 38% of a member library’s print monograph collection already has an MSCC retention commitment with another member library, so there are substantial withdrawal opportunities for members. A new MSCC collection analysis will take place in 2019 and will include holdings from both the original grant libraries and libraries that have recently joined. Portland and Bangor public libraries will withdraw formerly committed children’s non‐fiction titles, as they would be of limited importance and usefulness over time. The withdrawal decisions are based on a list of publishers approved by the MSCC Collections and Operations Committee... read more.

OHIOLINK
OhioLINK continues its serials deduplication project in its five depositories. To help save time they have instituted a new verification policy that each title will be verified at the volume level (rather than issue level) for all titles where there are at least two print copies recorded in OCLC. OhioLINK with Ohio University has received an LSTA grant to help identify unique monographs and serials in the Southeast Depository (one of the five OhioLINK depositories)... read more.

Rosemont Group
The Rosemont Group continues its formative stages. It has adopted the new name "Rosemont Shared Print Alliance", created a website, developed governance documents, which were to be finalized at ALA Annual 2017, and approved a "roadmap" for the next five years. Rosemont is in discussions with CRL and SCS regarding possible collaboration... read more.

SCELC Monograph Shared Print Agreement
The SCELC Shared Print Operations Group (aka SPOG) finalized its retention model in May, and in June SCS created lists of allocated titles. Participating libraries have until the end of July to review and commit to retain titles. SCELC held a webinar on June 5 to report on the retention model. The slide deck and a recording of the webinar are available at https://scelc.org/libraries/shared-print/documentation... read more.

Scholars Trust
Sixty-one institutions currently use JRNL to register their needs and wants. The National Agriculture Library, a member of Scholars Trust, will contribute approximately 700 agriculture titles by the end of September 2017... read more.

UC Shared Print
UC Libraries identified 1.7M monographs for retention in Phase 1 of the HathiTrust Shared Print Monograph program. Most are held at the UC's Regional Library Facilities. The UC Libraries third annual journal archiving campaign (JACS3) will begin in summer 2017 with approximately 500 titles consolidated for long-term retention and access in the UC Regional Library Facilities. A website with information on JAC1 and JAC2 includes a program assessment. UC Libraries recently adopted a disclosure policy for its shared journal collection that will make information about the UC collections, including holdings and gaps, better known to the research library community... read more.