New OCLC Research Report – Understanding the Collective Collection: Towards a System-wide Perspective on Library Print Collections.

This report brings together the important work that we have done for the community in providing a quantitative, analytic, system-wide view of library collections. This body of work has established an evidence base that has allowed and encouraged libraries to begin the shift from local provisioning of library collections and services to increased reliance on cooperative infrastructure, collective collections, shared technology platforms, and “above-the-institution” management strategies.

Key highlights include:

• Interest in shared print strategies has had several drivers: Google Books; the digital turn: changing patterns of research and learning; the opportunity costs of current use of space; efficient access to materials; and a general move to collaboration.
• The network turn is leading to changes in the focus, boundaries and value of library collections.
• Libraries and the organizations that provide services to them are devoting more attention to system-wide organization of collections—whether the “system” is a consortium, a region or a country.
• Libraries are beginning to evolve arrangements that facilitate long-term shared management of the print literature as individual libraries begin to manage down their local capacity
• A system-wide perspective signals a real shift in emphasis.
• A range of first-ever calculations providing quantitative estimates and analyses of the system-wide collection. For example,
  • “. . . given any two Google 5 libraries—or, if the Google 5 results can be extrapolated to a larger context, given any two large research libraries—eight out of ten books in their combined collections will be unique.” (p. 43)
  • “. . . post-1923 materials collectively account for more than 80 percent, or about 12.6 million, of the US-published print books in WorldCat.” (p. 73)
  • “If the current growth trajectory of the HathiTrust Digital Library is sustained, we can project that more than 60% of the retrospective print collections held in ARL libraries will be duplicated in the shared digital repository by June 2014.” (p. 80)
  • For ARL libraries, cost avoidance of $500,000 to $2 million per year and space savings of more than 45,000 assignable square feet could be achieved through shared print provision. (p. 81)

Download

• Complete report (.pdf:68.6MB/232pp.)
• Introduction (.pdf:116KB/10pp.)