WEST Summer 2023 Member Meeting Roundup
On July 27 WEST held an extended member meeting to introduce the Future of WEST strategic planning work in six areas that the Executive Committee prioritized for potential changes and prepare members to provide feedback on three areas where WEST is making near-term recommendations and three areas where WEST sees need for longer-term investigation.
Meeting attendees received a broad overview of the history of WEST and the inflection point the program is currently at, and then were invited to participate in three breakout rooms focused on each of the areas where WEST is making near-term recommendations for changes:
- AGUA systems development capacity
- Membership and fee model
- Collections analysis and archiving models
Attendees then received brief updates on two areas of longer-term investigation: digitization and creating an enhanced WEST ILL partnership.
The final session of the meeting was a panel discussion on expanding the national preservation network. WEST Program Manager Alison Wohlers moderated a panel discussion between two current and one former WEST Executive Committee members on expanding the national preservation network. The panelists, Denise Stephens (University of Oklahoma; 2023 WEST Executive Chair), Melissa De Santis (University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus), and Michael Levine-Clark (University of Denver), reflected on the impacts the current national shared print federations have had on WEST and the larger shared print ecosystem, their visions for the future of national shared print collaboration, and the opportunities for and challenges to advancing WEST’s vision they see in the impending merger of the Rosemont Shared Print Alliance and the Partnership for Shared Book Collections.
WEST is making the recordings of the panel discussion as well as a pre-meeting workshop on deselection resources publicly available for WEST members and non-members to access, as these topics are of significant interest within and beyond WEST.
WEST Panel Discussion on Expanding the National Preservation Network
WEST Deselection Resources Workshop