As an outcome of the Aberdeen Woods Conference on Cooperative Collection Development held in November 1999, four Working Groups are being established to implement projects identified by Conference participants as important to future CCD development. (See the entire list of actions recommended by Conference participants.)

These groups will consist of six to ten participants selected by their respective Coordinators/Chairs, and will:

• Identify and discuss (via listserv) issues relevant to their areas of focus.
• Formulate a workplan to achieve the group’s objective.
• Achieve the outcomes for the group, which might be the publication of a set of recommendations, the establishment of new CCD processes or mechanisms, the production of new information resources to assist those involved in developing and maintaining ongoing cooperative collection development projects, or other specific actions.
• Present and discuss their findings, projects, and recommendations at the next Cooperative Collection Development Conference tentatively scheduled for fall of 2002.

To volunteer to work with one of these groups, just click on the Coordinator's name below, and send an e-mail outlining your request. At this time, we are limiting participants to attendees from the Aberdeen Woods Conference and collection staff from CRL member institutions. The Chairs will select the rosters for their groups from among those volunteering. We hope to have the groups operational with their appropriate listservs and webpages in early October.

The groups to be established are:

Mission and Outcome Statements

Working Group to Map Current Cooperative Collection Development Projects

John Haar, Vanderbilt University [HAAR at library.vanderbilt.edu]

Our working group is charged to develop a map of current cooperative collection development projects to present prospective collaborators with a "tree of possibilities." Put another way, our goal is to create and maintain an accessible, authoritative, and up-to-date resource that reports who is doing what in the arena of cooperative collection development. By way of answering the obvious question--what should such a "map" include?--there are several conceptual and procedural questions we will need to address:

• How should we define cooperative collection development? What types of projects will qualify for inclusion? Should we include every consortium that purchases electronic databases, for instance, or should we include only consortia whose collaborative efforts extend beyond shared database acquisition? Should we include all cooperative ventures with union catalogs and resource sharing components, or only those who practice coordinated collection building?
• What information should the map provide to be a useful tool for both practicing and aspiring cooperative collection developers? How can we best structure this data? Assuming that we create a searchable website, how would it be indexed? By geographical region, institution, subjects, type of cooperation, other features? Should we include governing and procedural documents?
• How can we gather this data comprehensively, and how can we routinely maintain and update it?

As chair of the working group, I invite your comments and suggestions about these and other pertinent issues, and I solicit volunteers to join the group and participate in its work.

CCD Survey Form
Survey Responses

Working Group to Identify Best Practices in Cooperative Collection Development

Cynthia Shelton, UCLA [cshelton@library.ucla.edu]

What do successful cooperative collection development projects have in common? What are the common pitfalls that can short-circuit a CCD project before it reaches its potential? What are the steps that a regional consortium should take to initiate a CCD framework? How can successful CCD projects be expanded without jeopardizing their initial success? What are the "politics" of cooperative collection development and what procedures can work to convert institutional self-interest into a group approach?

The Best Practices Working Group will identify and discuss the critical elements of the cooperative collection development process through an examination of how surviving projects have utilized different approaches to achieve some measure of success. Realizing that not all such projects are alike, the Group may work initially with the "Mapping" Working Group, in developing a systematic classification approach to the different types and approaches to cooperative collection development. Then, the Best Practices Group will look at each type of project, identifying the critical elements and developmental stages where decisions can mean the difference between success and stagnation. The members of the Working Group may interview participants of successful projects to gain their perspective on their experiences, and will also talk with participants from projects which have been less successful, to find out what obstacles have proved to be the most significant. The Working Group may also develop questionnaires to develop a broader base of information.

The outcome of the work of this Group will be a series of recommendations for CCD projects of various types and at various stages of development, pointing to existing programs which can serve as sources of information and as examples of success. These recommendations will be available on a webpage and may also serve as the basis of one or more papers in library journals. The results of this project will be available in advance of the 2002 Conference on Cooperative Collection Development.

Working Group for Qualitative Evaluation of Cooperative Collection Development Projects

Steve Bosch, University of Arizona [sbosch at bird.library.arizona.edu]

MISSION: How do we know if cooperative projects achieve positive results for the majority of participants? The assessment of the outcomes of cooperative collecting projects has proven to be, at best, problematic even if attempted. This project group will create methods for quantifying and evaluating the economic benefits of cooperative collection development projects and develop tools for using this data to maximize the benefits of cooperation.

OUTCOMES: The project group will investigate and define activities or cost drivers that could be used to measure cooperative collection development projects, develop a scaleable tool or a set of procedures that can be used by participants in CCD projects to evaluate their projects, pilot the evaluation of a project, and develop an assisted self-assessment program applying the results of the evaluation.

Working Group to Expand Cooperative Collection Development in Scientific and Technical Collections

Diane Perushek, Northwestern University [perushek at nwu.edu]

MISSION: For many years, American research libraries have engaged in cooperative collection development to leverage their funds and ensure availability of resources for American scholars. The CCD in Sci-Tech Collection Project seeks to apply the principles and practices of cooperative collection development to some of our most costly and heavily-used materials—those in science and technology. The scope of this project includes acquisition, delivery, preservation, and archiving.

OUTCOMES: The Project will identify areas in science and technology for distributed acquisition and deacquisition; draw up a plan to implement this acquisition and deacquisition; begin a program to archive both print and on-line serials backfiles; survey types of materials in need of preservation treatment; inventory of obstacles that have prevented earlier sci-tech CCD from succeeding, including a listing of previous and current projects; identify granting agencies such as NSF and submit a proposal for funding for one sci-tech CCD project; survey types of materials in need of preservation treatment; etc.

Return to AWCC 2002 Conference Page