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WEST Cycles 16 & 17 Archiving Proposals Now Available for Review and Commitment

September 2, 2026 Author: Nika Burns TeshinCategories:

Every other year WEST conducts an analysis of members’ print journal and serial holdings to identify archiving priorities for the next two years. In fall 2025 WEST members began the process for the next archiving cycles, Cycles 16 & 17, by submitting files of their unarchived holdings for analysis. WEST is pleased to announce that the analysis is complete, and proposals for Cycles 16 & 17 archiving are now available for review and commitment in SPDS (formerly known as AGUA).

The Cycles 16 & 17 collections analysis comes along with recent changes to the WEST Access Policy which may impact decisions of which titles to archive.  

Over the past two years, the WEST Operations and Collections Council has been working to update key documentation to reflect the shift away from Archive Type terminology towards plain language descriptions of risk as prompted by the Future of WEST strategic planning in 2023. Concurrently, the OCC considered possible changes to the Access Policy stemming from member feedback on Future of WEST ILL explorations.  

The OCC spent several months discussing and implementing changes to the WEST Access Policy and have finalized a new version which is posted on the website: WEST Access Policy.

The new Access Policy has two primary changes:

  1. The delivery guidelines for WEST Archived materials have changed so that rather than requiring physical loans for building use only at the borrowing institutions when requested, lenders are now only asked to provide physical loans “when appropriate”. If a physical loan is not appropriate given the fragility of the physical issue or volume, local loan policies, or given another relevant concern, then electronic document delivery or photocopies may be provided instead. This change might open up more opportunities for archiving within WEST institutions. It may be beneficial for archivers to think about which collections they were previously excluding from archiving and whether that is still applicable given that physical loans are no longer a requirement of archiving a title with WEST.
  2. There is a also new section “Recommended Best Practices for Loaning WEST Archived Materials” in which WEST supports, endorses, and encourages member libraries to adhere to the accessibility standards and best practices being set by other programs and consortia with resource sharing expertise such as the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA) Resource Sharing Reciprocity Agreement and the SCELC Resource Sharing Toolkit. This section also lists a few specific best practices which WEST encourages members to adhere to.

Finally, to support the priority to identify and archive scarcely held titles, WEST continued to analyze members’ holdings to identify higher-risk titles (titles with little to no electronic availability) that have historically been overlooked for archiving because they are not held by any of the Archive Builders. Archive Holders who commit to journals in this category are not required to physically validate the journal run or transfer the content to storage.

To review your institution’s archiving proposals and submit archiving commitments, log in to SPDS and navigate to the Review Proposed Journals page. Please see the WEST SPDS User manual for instructions on reviewing proposals and making commitment selections. As a reminder, beginning with Cycles 12 & 13 the WEST definition of a backfile has been updated to v.1-2020; continuing existing practice, archiving low risk level materials up to the current year is preferred.

As a reminder, the WEST Project Team holds zoom office hours on the second Thursday of every month, from 10am-11am PT. We’d be happy to answer questions, demo the process in SPDS, or address any other concerns that you may have. The next office hour will be on Thursday, Sept. 10th, if you’re interested in attending please register here: https://UCOP.zoom.us/meeting/register/SZApOI8sRtCJJ62VfaILfQ  

For a detailed overview of the Cycles 16 & 17 collections analysis with key findings and recommendations, please see the complete WEST Cycles 16 & 17 Collections Analysis Report.