Managing the Print Archiving Process: Building a WEST Archive

Winter is a busy time of year for WEST. In addition to gathering holdings data for cycle 4 collections analysis, our Archive Builders are also building cycle 3 print archives to hold in storage. Your institution may have recently received a request for holdings from an Archive Builder. WEST members are encouraged to contribute holdings to ensure the completeness of the archives. Your contributions are what make WEST’s archives strong.

WEST Archive Builders handle medium and high risk titles that are widely held across the membership; these titles fall within the Silver and Gold Archive types. With each archive cycle, Archive Builders are assigned and commit to archive journal families for which their holdings represent the deepest backfiles amongst fellow members.

Because it is rare for an institution to hold a comprehensive backfile of an individual journal, Archive Builders request journal volumes from other WEST members to help build a complete journal run. Once obtained, Archive Builders validate the backfiles and update the holdings records of the titles that they’ve committed to archive. The Archive Builder agrees to retain the backfile in environmental conditions stipulated for the Archive Type.

Once the complete backfile for a journal family is built, the Archive Builder becomes an Archive Holder for that family.

To find out more about how a WEST Archive Builder manages a call for holdings to build the backfiles for a list of journals, please take a look at the Building an Archive for WEST video.