Shared Print Repositories

Book excerpt: The chapters in this book address the growing endeavours of shared print repositories and programs in academic libraries, representing a global perspective with authors from Canada, Australia, Great Britain, and the United States. This book illustrates the complicated processes and challenges of coordinating selection, determining storage agreements (distributed or shared), ownership concerns, business models, and a host of collection maintenance issues. These efforts entail immense collaboration, regardless of the size of the project. Luckily, librarians are good at collaboration, but not always good at forging ahead into an uncertain future with regard to print collections. As echoed by authors in this book, the future is indeed uncertain, but undoubtedly libraries who partner together to address print archiving dilemmas will be better prepared for whatever the future holds. This book was originally published as a special issue of Collection Management.