Cooperative Collection Development

Archives, Museums, and Libraries

Libraries, archives, and museums coincide in a mixture of organizational settings and face increasing anxiety to deliver more integrated access to their collections. Large institutions have a vested interest in being able to share their assets, unique and rare materials, from their various archives, museums, and special collections in an amalgamated way with their community of patrons. Integrated access to collections is just one example of how libraries, archives, and museums can amplify their effectiveness and influence by working more closely together. Exactly how do these three respond to pressure for greater integration? They share data and technological infrastructures along with expertise in order create online research environments that meet patrons’ expectations.

Although the type of materials and professional practices vary, libraries, archives, and museums share, manage, and collect and use overlapping functions. By fulfilling these functions, collaboration creates a best solution for institutions and patrons. Research Libraries Group programs conduct investigations into library, archive, and museum collaboration, particularly in data or service relationships. This all leads up to the big movement in libraries, archives, and museums – cooperative collection management.

The process of selecting and managing collection materials as a network of libraries, archives, and museums, rather than as individual site, is termed cooperative collection development. The libraries, archive, and museums in the network expand the network’s information base beyond what a single library can afford to provide alone for the patrons. Joyce Chapman discusses the association of TRLN among three universities to digitize twentieth century materials on a large scale. In this way, students of the university and community patrons have access. Chapman examined challenges and the essential need of having effective communication. The cooperative endeavors and provisions were shared; nonetheless, each university upheld their own method of managing. The result formed over 80,000 digitized materials throughout the first year alone, when their target was only 20,000. This is the future for libraries, archives, and museums. A great example of this is the Consortium of Arizona Museum, Archives, and Libraries. 

http://www.statemuseum.arizona.edu/library/cazmal/