New Publications of Note

The past several months have seen a flurry of new publications focused on the historical and ongoing evolution of print management in libraries. 

Ben Walker of the University of Florida published a history of library storage solutions at the University of Florida, starting with compact shelving in the 1960s through the opening of the Florida Academic Repository (FLARE) high density storage facility, and looking ahead to future needs for print collection management. 

An article in the journal Collaborative Librarianship describes the evolution of the Keep@Downsview collaboration in Canada. What started as an idea to collaboratively expand a storage facility to be shared by a number of universities in Ontario has grown to encompass a number of other areas. The shared need for print collection management solutions provided an arena for additional collaboration between the institutions, including shared print, collective collection development, and access to and preservation of materials in the shared facility.

An interesting perspective on current and anticipated library collection management trends comes from Iron Mountain, a vendor that provides moving, storage, inventory, and other services to libraries (among many other services to a variety of industries). In a short video distributed at the 2021 ALA Annual Conference, Britt Mueller, a library services solutions architect with Iron Mountain, describes the changes in access solutions, physical space use, and managing resources that have accelerated over the past year.

Finally, Lorrie McAllister and Shari Laster from Arizona State University, a long-time WEST member and Archive Builder, have edited a new book soon to be published by ALA Editions, Transforming Print: Collection Development and Management for Our Connected Future. The chapters in this book highlight new ways to think about existing print collections, new possibilities for expanding our understanding of what’s included in a library’s print collection, and new opportunities to connect collections to users and communities by interrogating the gaps in collections and how collections are accessed, and who gets left behind when print is relegated to a second-tier format. The first chapter, “The New Open Stacks” by Lorrie McAllister, is available through the ASU KEEP institutional repository.