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ALA Annual 2024: Shared Print Round-Up

July 19, 2024 Author: Nika WorthCategories:

This year at the American Library Association Annual Conference (ALA Annual), which took place June 27th-July 2nd in San Diego, there were several exciting updates from organizations in our shared print community. 

Shared Print news kicked off at the Print Archive Network (PAN) Annual Forum on Friday, June 28th, where we heard a variety of updates about work happening both at the regional and bi-national levels, including a presentation from CDL’s own Alison Wohlers. The presentations and a brief takeaway are included below. Click the title of each presentation to view the complete slide deck.

  • Harnessing the Shared Print Network in New Ways: Addressing Gaps in the Digital Preservation Safety Net  (Alison Wohlers, UC/ WEST Shared Print Program Manager)
    • WEST is currently developing a pilot project to coordinate the donation of duplicate copies to Internet Archive.
  • PAPR Changes (Marie Waltz, Head of Access Initiatives & Collections Care, Center for Research Libraries)
    • PAPR will soon be migrating to TIND, an Integrated Library System (ILS), with the goal of enhancing performance and scalability, improving security and compliance, improving integration and interoperability, and more.
  • Partnership/Rosemont Merger (Aaron Krebeck, Director of Library and User Services Washington Research Library Consortium)
    • The Shared Print Partnership (the new merged name of the Rosemont Shared Print Alliance and the Partnership for Shared Book Collections) kicked off a bridge year on July 1, 2024 with the goal of establishing governance structures and strategic planning, cultivating stakeholder engagement, and implementing a comprehensive communication strategy that encourages community involvement more broadly.
  • Slow or FAST: Diversity in Shared Print Participation at SCELC & EAST  (Sara Amato, Program Manager, Eastern Academic Scholars’ Trust, Teri Oaks Gallaway, Executive Director, SCELC, and Jason Price, Director of License and Open Access Services, SCELC)
    • SCELC and EAST have completed Goal 1 of their IMLS grant funded investigation into expanding diversity and inclusivity in shared print. Goal 1 focused on identifying ways to expand MSI participation in SPPs by understanding how to communicate the value proposition of SPPs for MSIs and design solutions for overcoming barriers to participation. They’ve now moved on to Goal 2, which focuses on researching the impact of MSIs on collection diversity using FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology).
  • Who Gets What and Why: Moving EAST Collection Analysis Forward (Sara Amato, Program Manager, Eastern Academic Scholars’ Trust)
    • A deep dive into EAST’s collection, looking at the evolving scope, timeline for retention commitments, considerations of using the FEMA National Risk Index when allocating retentions moving forward, and much more.
  • Exploring Shared Print Workflows, Data, and Tools: Current Practice and Perceived Gaps  (Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Executive Director, OCLC Research)
    • Overview of the current focus group work being conducted with those working with varying involvement in shared print across the library environment, and some of the findings as well as next steps for sharing findings.
  • Developments in Shared Print Analysis with Alma Data Visualization. (Aaron Krebeck, Director of Library and User Services, Washington Research Library Consortium and Katy Aronoff, Director, Solution Consulting (Americas), Ex Libris)
    • A look into developments in the Proof-of-Concept stage for Alma focused on supporting Consortia and shared print through cross institution analytics

Then, on Saturday, June 29th, the Collaborative Collections Lifecycle Project (CCLP) held an update session covering updates on the current phase, Phase 1, of their grant project focused on, “fostering an ecosystem of interoperable systems, standards, and open collaborations among libraries, publishers, and service providers.” (Collaborative Collections Lifecycle Project: A Presentation at the CNI Spring 2022 Membership Meeting). Updates covered a variety of possible collaboration models for future work, a description of the focus of Collaborative Collections Lifecycle Infrastructure Project (CCLIP) Working Groups, progress on UX work and prototype mockups, as well as next steps for CCLP.

View the presentation slides here: Collaborative Collections Lifecycle Project Update (Todd Carpenter, NISO, Sebastian Hammer, Index Data, and Boaz Nadav Manes, Lehigh University)

Also on Saturday, the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) held a Shared Collections Interest Group Meeting, which included two presentations with group discussions. Heather Weltin reported on and answered questions about the recently completed HathiTrust Shared Print Program Phase 3 Pilot Project. As pilots are meant to do, this one surfaced unexpected considerations that will shape the next steps that HathiTrust takes in expanding the scope of the pilot. Heather then teamed up with Alison Wohlers to present on and facilitate discussion around the CDL, CRL and HathiTrust Collaboration’s two-part blog series on sustainability and shared print that posted to the Scholarly Kitchen earlier this year. The ecosystem approach, proposed as a path forward from long-standing sustainability barriers in shared print, resonated with attendees from multiple organizations.