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WEST Program Reflections – Progress on WEST 2019 Strategic Directions and 2021 Year-In-Review

March 8, 2022 Author: Anna StrikerCategories:

In 2019 the WEST governance groups met in Oakland, CA, to define strategic recommendations to guide WEST’s work over the next three years. WEST has made considerable progress on the 13 strategic recommendations and sub-recommendations identified by the WEST governance groups during that meeting, and we are pleased to share  updates on our progress: WEST 2019 Strategic Directions – Updates

In addition to the progress made on the 2019 strategic recommendations, WEST and its members were very active with other projects and initiatives. Major activities during 2021 include

  • starting the migration of retained materials from OCLC second symbols to Archivers’ primary symbols and registering committed materials as shared print in OCLC;
  • updating the WEST governance documentation to modify the composition of the Executive Committee to include a voting member from the OCC to serve as liaison between the two groups, to expand candidacy criteria to include senior-level leaders like Associate University Librarians, Associate Deans, etc., and to specify that the OCC shall review operational policies at least every five years to ensure ongoing currency and relevance;
  • adopting major modifications to the WEST collections model for Cycles 12 & 13, including
    • new Abstracting & Indexing title lists to act on WEST’s DEI principles and enhance our ability to identify and target diverse titles in the collections analysis
    • HathiTrust Digital Library as a comparator title list for identifying Bronze archiving candidates
    • archiving priorities for scarce and unique materials held by WEST members
  • investigating the prevalence of gaps in legacy Silver and Gold collections and WEST’s options to mitigating these ongoing risks to the collective collection
  • executing the fifth AGUA Development Phase (Phase 5), which saw the successful development and launch of eight major system enhancements projects; and
  • adopting WEST’s first articulated vision, mission, and guiding principles document.