Deselection: Shared Print Programs

Academic libraries take seriously their role as custodians of the scholarly record. With that said, different libraries have different missions. Some university libraries are able to serve as the repository of record for a given area of scholarship. At smaller institutions, libraries often choose to tailor their collections to the current needs of teaching and research. Programs for the shared management of print monographs (often called “shared print programs”) have emerged as one way to address the need to preserve print monographs. Santa Clara is proud to have joined the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC) Shared Print Program to ensure retention of titles across member libraries. Shared print programs also exist in other regions of the United States, as well as nationally through HathiTrust and the Print Archive Network (PAN).

Rick Lugg (2012) defines the goals of shared print programs as:

• Reducing the overall number of low-use surplus copies
• Minimizing the number of low-use copies taking up space in open stacks
• Assuring that deselected content is securely archived in both print and digital form
• Coordinating deselection regionally and nationally to assure sufficient copies are retained
• Assuring that deselected content remains accessible to users