EAST’s first set of collection analysis was carried out in 2015 and focused on the print monograph collections of its 40 founding members, which totaled more than 16 million title-holdings. The EAST Project Team and Monographs Working Group worked with the collection analysis vendor OCLC Sustainable Collection Services® (SCS) and their online analytics tool GreenGlass® to agree on a set of retention rules that were approved by the EAST membership and Executive Committee. In 2017, EAST welcomed a second cohort of 12 libraries to go through a monograph collection analysis, again working with SCS, 9 million title holdings were analyzed. The combined retention models resulted in approximately nine million title-holdings being allocated to EAST Retention Partners for the minimum 15 year retention period. Quite an accomplishment!
Since 2019, EAST has offered options for libraries that wish to join individually or as part of an already established consortium or system, and use either GreenGlass® or Gold Rush® as a collection analysis tool (comparison chart). See more statistics about the collective collection on the Purpose and History page.
In 2023, as part of the strategic directions, EAST undertook an updated collection analysis with 67 member libraries to examine materials published through 2021. See the EAST Collection Analysis of 2011-2021 titles for the results of this work.