Collection Analysis

Consistent with EAST’s mission to protect and preserve print scholarly resources, libraries that join EAST as Retention Partners are asked to participate in a collection analysis. This can be done for an individual library or for a group of libraries. The goal of the analysis is to identify monograph or journal titles that the library will be asked to make retention commitments to and retain on behalf of EAST.

As part of the collection analysis participating libraries’ print collections are compared to identify uniqueness and overlap within EAST, show the occurrence of these holdings elsewhere both nationally and regionally, and usage levels across the group.

The outcome of the analysis is an agreed retention model that consists of rules related to collection usage, age, subjects, access, holdings overlap within the group, availability of digital copies, and when feasible the levels of overlap regionally and nationally. The Eastern Academic Scholars’ Trust (EAST) has gone through a series of collection analyses looking at both monographs and serials/journals.

Further information on the specific methodology of EAST’s collection analyses is detailed in the Monograph Collection Analysis and Serials & Journals Process and Results sections and a number of the Member Resources are also focused on aspects of collection analysis.

Libraries interested in joining EAST and participating in a collection analysis project should please contact the EAST Program Director Susan Stearns (sstearns@eastlibraries.org).