WEST welcomes additional Archive Holders for cycle 4

In Archive Cycle 4, WEST will invite approximately 60 current members to participate as Archive Holders in the distributed archive; during previous cycles, approximately 20 members participated as Archive Holders. These institutions will be asked to archive low risk titles (print titles that are also digitally available and digitally preserved).

One key finding of the recent program assessment is that there is a strong desire among WEST members to participate as Archive Holders in the program. Participating as an Archive Holder is an excellent opportunity to play a greater role in WEST and to contribute to the distributed print archiving effort.

The Operations and Collections Council and its Collections Working Group have just completed the annual collections analysis for Cycle 4 and have developed candidate title lists for Archive Holders and Builders. Archiving proposals will be distributed in July to institutions holding the deepest backfile.

Training and orientation for new Archive Holders will commence in Summer 2014. The WEST Archive Holders/Builders Roles and Responsibilities document is available on the WEST website.