New Pilot Initiative to Enhance Shared Print Collaboration Across Libraries
HathiTrust, the Western Regional Storage Trust (WEST), and the California Digital Library (CDL) are excited to partner on a pilot to enable greater cross-program collaboration in shared print. All three organizations are committed to fostering the technical and social infrastructure to enable an exchange of services, data, and resources within the shared print eco-system. Approximately 40 libraries are members of both HathiTrust and WEST, which includes all 10 University of California Libraries.
Shared Problem, Shared Solution
While there is considerable overlap amongst the libraries who retain print collections on behalf of the HathiTrust, WEST, and UC shared print programs, there is no easy way for libraries to see their own commitments and those of their partners across all three programs. The goal of this pilot is to successfully ingest and make available HathiTrust monographic shared print data in AGUA, a web-based service that currently supports serial shared print workflows for WEST and the University of California Libraries, which will allow the libraries and program staff to track and manage commitments on one platform.
Jo Anne Newyear-Ramirez, Associate University Librarian for Scholarly Resources at UC Berkeley and 2025 chair of the WEST Executive Committee, who also served on the 2015 HathiTrust Print Monographs Archive Planning Task Force reflects, “By aligning the efforts, this partnership is poised to enhance the sustainability, visibility, and impact of shared print across all three organizations. Member libraries will benefit from the ability to view and manage commitments for HT, WEST, and UC programs.”
By first focusing on adding monograph commitments data from HathiTrust, the three organizations will provide libraries with a one-stop platform to access data on their own commitments (both serial and monograph) and those of partner libraries. This sets the stage for harmonizing shared print workflows, timelines, and decision-making to reduce the workload on libraries that participate in or wish to participate in multiple programs.
Michael Brewer, Senior Information Resources Officer at University of Arizona, current member of HathiTrust Program Steering Committee (PSC), and 2025 past chair of the WEST Executive Committee, says the pilot will “demonstrate to the broader shared print community that collaborative work across membership organizations to develop infrastructure toward meeting national needs is not only possible, but also makes good sense.”
Discovering Shared Print Community Needs
Over the past year, HathiTrust, WEST, and CDL gathered information by reviewing technical landscapes, scoping use cases, collecting stakeholder input, and writing functional requirements. They also established a cost-share model and sustainability plan. The partners approved the pilot proposal this summer and will begin in January 2026.
If the pilot results in successful integration of HathiTrust data into AGUA, the three organizations plan to pursue additional collaborative efforts. Ideal scenarios would include developing improved processes for systematically tracking and updating commitment data; analyzing monographs to identify and establish new commitments; making digitization decisions for items not yet in the HathiTrust collection; identifying commitments geographically; and expanding initiatives to support government document retention.
With a decade of perspective on the issues, Jo Anne Newyear-Ramirez is optimistic.
“I see this pilot as the beginning of a broader shift toward more cohesive, data-driven shared print practices. By pooling resources and aligning infrastructure at a national scale, we can create greater efficiencies, reduce duplication, and significantly streamline the management of shared print data. The lessons we learn here will help shape future collaborations and improve how libraries steward print collections at scale.”
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