A vision of Shared Print

2024

In the next five years, shared print programs’ collaborative efforts will evolve into an ecosystem of interconnected hubs of knowledge focused on access, active coordination, and sustainable innovation. Shared print will be more fully integrated into collective collections that are an integral part of all library operations and planning. 

Purpose

The organizations and individuals involved will continually engage in activities that highlight the value of print resources for the scholarly ecosystem in order to ensure the long term retention and accessibility of print materials for future researchers.

Organization

Multi-entity stakeholders linked by flows of information, data, services and resources will make up a dynamic ecosystem to address issues across the collection lifecycle. Stakeholders will include, but are not limited to, university presidents, vendors, technologists, library functional specialists and scholars. 

An anchor institution with robust leadership and resourcing will provide a level of coordination, management, engagement and services for these stakeholders so that shared print continues to evolve.  

Strategy

We will achieve our vision by employing principles of transparency, inclusion, public good, responsiveness and leadership.

We will address the organizational and individual needs of collective collection building and maintenance through:

• Implementing nuanced understanding and application of collection ownership

• Continually meeting changing needs of local, remote and distributed collections

• Embedding the stewardship of collective collections in the work of the entire collection lifecycle

• Working to achieve economies of scale through services, collective expertise and collaborative leadership

• Developing and maintaining innovative systems that support an information infrastructure that promotes action

• Engaging national level and specialty libraries, regional and clustered networks, consortia and individual libraries to implement multi-level strategic action to steward collections