AGUA
Vision Statement: AGUA is a tool that enables the shared print community to work together.
About
AGUA is a web-based service that provides key collection data to the Western Regional Storage Trust (WEST) and UC Libraries Shared Print Initiative. AGUA supports WEST’s efforts to identify and secure retention commitments for titles that are highly duplicated across member institutions as well as titles that are at risk for permanent content loss due to a lack of electronic access points by gathering and synthesizing data from member institutions and outside sources.
WEST’s collection model is rooted in data-driven decision making, calculating risk based on a combination of criteria, identifying optimal candidates for archiving through overlap analysis across member holdings, and dictating what actions should be taken during archiving to strengthen the reliability and accuracy of the collections. By automating much of the analysis process WEST is able to perform this analytical work at scale, ingesting holdings from dozens of members and outside sources and making proposals to the member institution with the deepest holdings and optimal storage conditions. WEST is also able to facilitate collaborations between members to fill gaps in archived collections by comparing member holdings and highlighting these connections in reports produced as a result of the AGUA analysis.
AGUA Reports and Use Cases
| Report Type | Use Case |
|---|---|
| Collection Comparison Reports | You want to see at a glance all holdings in your collection which are archived for WEST |
| Validation Reports | You want to engage in local data remediation or view areas where your holdings data had a discrepancy with WorldCat holdings data |
| On Demand Comparison Report | You want to generate a comparison report any time of year (not just at the end of the archive cycle) and specify the journals you want to review locally |
| On Demand Analytics Report | You want to generate a report of archived and unarchived titles held by specific groups such as WEST, CARLI, or SCELC (see AGUA user manual for a full list of groups) |
| WEST All Archived Titles Report | You would like to view a complete list of WEST archived titles |
| WEST All Archived Titles MARC File | You want a file of all WEST archived titles to load into your local catalog for more seamless discovery by your users |
History
The collections analysis and decision support tool that we know as AGUA today has its origins in an important partnership with the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) beginning back in 2011. CRL and California Digital Library (CDL, also administrative host for WEST) partnered to develop a collective registry for shared print serials – what became the Print Archives Preservation Registry (PAPR). Part of that development included scripts that support collections analysis of aggregate library serial holdings known at the time as the PAPR Collections Analysis service.
In 2016, CRL and CDL changed the nature of their partnership in order to meet specific community priorities. CRL took on the responsibility of stewarding and advancing the public-facing PAPR shared print registry functionality. To this day, CRL offers free access to submit and export data from PAPR.
As WEST’s host and development partner, CDL went on to create a graphical user interface for collections analysis and decision-making to better manage WEST workflows – what became AGUA. AGUA was also adopted by UC Libraries to support their systemwide serial shared print initiatives.
Recent Developments
Helpful Links
- AGUA (requires login)