North American Storage Trust (NAST)

Background

In 1999 members of the of the Association of South Eastern Research Libraries Association (ASERL) began discussing a cooperative "shared virtual storage" project. The project was originally conceived by Paul Willis, dean of libraries at the University of Kentucky, and Paul Gherman, university librarian of Vanderbilt University, as an effort to promote shared institutional commitments to retaining and sharing research collections held in offsite library storage facilities. The idea gained further traction during a 2002 ARL/OCLC Forum on Future Library Architecture, when Don Kelsey (library facilities planner at the University of Minnesota) observed that at least some offsite library storage collections will "never be weeded"—suggesting that a shared pool of low-use research collections could effectively be maintained in perpetuity.

In 2003 OCLC Research staff undertook a special project to identify unique holdings in Vanderbilt University Library's collections. When compared to WorldCat collections as a whole, some 24,000 titles were found to be held by Vanderbilt University alone. Additional analysis was performed to identify "true last copies" within Vanderbilt's collections, effectively confirming that a systemwide approach to collection management could enable the institution to make wise weeding and preservation decisions. Results of this study were published in College and Research Libraries; a preprint is available here.

In 2004 in collaboration with OCLC, 9 ASERL members participated in a collection assessment exercise directed at identifying overlaps in regional library holdings and opportunities for systemwide rationalization of collections. These efforts are described in an April 2005 article on ASERL's Virtual Storage/Preservation Concept and in an Overview of ASERL's Proposed Virtual Storage System (May 2005). The ASERL overlap study confirmed that economies of scale could be achieved if member institutions adopted a cooperative collection management regime.

In 2006 OCLC surveyed 500 member libraries in North America to explore the level of community interest in a systemwide approach to managing print collections. Three concepts embodying different levels of cooperative engagement were tested, ranging from a simple data-sharing scheme to a transformative model that would consolidate low-use collections in a shared physical space and provide participants with cost-effective access and preservation services. Results from the survey were presented at the October 2006 meeting of the Association of Research Libraries and are summarized here. A group of research institutions interested in advancing the vision of shared print management coalesced in the North American Storage Trust (NAST).

Current work

In December 2006 RLG Programs began working with members of the NAST interest group to develop a policy framework that would enable participating libraries to implement shared collection management practices, including joint commitments to retain and provide continuing access to "virtually shared" research collections. A series of structured interviews with managers of shared print repositories in the US and Canada helped to identify gaps in current policy frameworks and core infrastructure requirements for multi-institutional collection sharing.

A parallel effort to identify data requirements for a registry of items held in library storage was also undertaken. Two focus groups of institutions currently managing offsite collections were convened to identify data elements for a specially adapted collection analysis report. Eventually, this dynamic report will help inform weeding and collection management decisions, enabling institutions to make local decisions based on the availability and preservation status of items held in remote storage facilities.

• Policy Frameworks for Shared Print Collections
• Data Requirements for Shared Collection Analysis Report

Several working groups have been convened to build consensus and provide outcomes in the following areas:

• Formulating a value proposition for shared print management
• Establishing a common vocabulary (lexicon) for shared print management
• Refining data requirements for collection analysis

Status and outcomes of continuing work in this area will be shared informally with NAST interest group members and others at national conferences (including ICOLC, ACRL, ARL and ALA) with most work culminating by the end of June 2007. A joint implementation effort with partner institutions will begin soon thereafter.

For additional information about this effort, contact Constance Malpas.