[Mcls-print-storage] SCS thoughts on sharing retention lists, etc.

[Rick Lugg]

Hello all,

 

Ruth, Andy, Eric and I spent some time yesterday with the group's idea of
sharing responsibility for this round of retention lists with newcomers. We
understand the desire to share the responsibility and to lessen the burdens
in particular on CMU, EMU, and WMU. In our view, though,  it's a fairly
daunting logistical challenge. 

 

In order to control the situation and to maintain an accurate master list,
we think it would be necessary to completely re-run all the allocations for
the group each time a new library joins. While we could probably find a way
to do this, it renders both withdrawal and retention lists
dynamic-complicating project management.

 

While it might be expedient to make side deals (e.g., CMU transfers 20,000
retention commitments to Oakland), there would have to be some mechanism for
deciding and documenting such actions. And there would be additional work
involved: CMU's retention list would need to be matched against Oakland's
holdings to see which titles they actually have. Given the relatively small
size of Oakland's collection (350,000 monographs), the degree of overlap
with retention lists from larger libraries may not be as great as needed. In
short, this puts several variables into play simultaneously, which is also
difficult to predict and manage.

 

A couple of other things to consider:

 

1.       Retention responsibilities could be adjusted over time. When the
next round of analysis takes place, retention commitments could be minimized
for CMU, EMU and WMU. If we think of this on a 25-year horizon, there would
be numerous opportunities to recalibrate commitments.

 

2.       Long-term, what's really needed is something like a shared print
inventory system, set up to dynamically re-allocate responsibility as new
members join the group. But that's a very complex system to design and
build, and it's not clear that it can provide enough value to pay for
itself. 

 

Bottom line: we don't have any great answers either, but we're more than
willing to keep thinking it through with the group.

 

Cheers,

Rick

 

Rick Lugg

Sustainable Collection Services LLC

63 Woodwell's Garrison

Contoocook, NH 03229

 

rick at sustainablecollections.com

 

p. 603-746-5991

f.  603-746-6052

 

www.sustainablecollections.com <http://www.sustainablecollections.com/>  

 

blog:  Sample  <http://sampleandhold-r2.blogspot.com/> & Hold

 

twitter:   @ricklugg 

 

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