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Rosemont Shared Print Alliance updates – new introductory video!

As part of WEST’s participation in the Rosemont Shared Print Alliance, the project team would like to share the following updates with members. The Rosemont Alliance is a federation of shared print programs that retain their decision-making autonomy, but seek to leverage collaborative opportunities that maximize our regional shared print efforts. Our program is one of five participating in the Rosemont Alliance: the Big Ten Academic Alliance, the Eastern Academic Scholars’ Trust, the Florida Academic Repository, Scholars Trust, and the Western Regional Storage Trust. If you would like to read more about the history and development of Rosemont, please see this earlier WEST blog post.

WEST and the Rosemont Alliance – Updates

During ALA Midwinter 2020, the Rosemont Alliance hosted its first open, public meeting in the beautiful Charles Library at Temple University. The presentation and discussion addressed in-depth program updates, accomplishments thus far, and a preview of our 2020 roadmap. A short summary of the discussion and presentation slides are available on the Rosemont Alliance website here. We are also excited to share a new, 3-minute video introduction to the Rosemont Alliance!

The Rosemont Operations Committee has hit the ground running in 2020 with the endorsement of best practice guidelines to support key shared print areas of interest: metadata, validation, and condition. These guidelines were developed with colleagues in the Partnership for Shared Book Collections. Moving forward, the Rosemont Alliance intends to continue to work with its counterpart, the Partnership for Shared Book Collections to align shared print policies and practices between monographs and serials whenever possible. Please note that OCLC is in the middle of finalizing a new batch registration process for shared print in WorldCat. An OCLC working group (consisting of library staff and program staff from both monograph and serial shared print programs) has also been convened to review and revise, as necessary, the OCLC Shared Print Metadata Guidelines. We anticipate that these two circumstances will impact the Rosemont Alliance guidelines and that we will be refining and expanding them in the not so distant future.

Finally, we just want to note that the Rosemont Alliance Executive Committee approved drafted Last Copy Principles and Guidelines, as well as Guidelines for the Donation/Transfer of Print Journal Titles in December 2019. With Executive approval, these guidelines are distributed to the regional programs for review and ratification. Each program will be moving through its own process of ratification, but the aim is to have ratification and/or feedback from the programs by the end of March 2020. WEST’s Operations and Collections Council will be reviewing the guidelines and making a recommendation on any further review necessary.