Beginning in late 2023-2024, EAST is undertaking work with 67 member libraries to analyze titles published or acquired from 2011-2021. Details of this work are outlined below, and this page will be updated as the project progresses.
Background
In 2016, the first EAST collection analysis project was carried out with our initial cohort of 40 libraries. Since then group and individual analysis projects have grown the EAST membership to more than 150 libraries and the number of retention commitments to over 11 million title holdings. The retention model used for this initial work limited the scope of titles to those published prior to 2011 and we have continued to limit the retention scope to such titles with subsequent collection analysis work with new libraries and groups joining EAST through 2022.
Goals
Now that more than six years have passed since those original commitments were agreed, and considering the interest in monograph collection analysis expressed in the EAST 2020 program assessment, an EAST Collection Analysis Working Group has been tasked with planning a group-wide monograph analysis project with the goal of ensuring that this newer scholarly content is also protected and accessible to researchers in the future.
This analysis is also an opportunity to learn from the experiences of our original work and take into account additional factors. The Working Group is analyzing the newer titles through additional lenses and considering factors such as the availability of commitments from other shared print programs, digital availability, geographical distribution of commitments, and other risk considerations that are under development by the Partnership for Shared Book Collections.
These factors will allow EAST to better “right size” the number of copies members are asked to retain. The Working Group is also investigating bringing a DEI lens to this work and provide participating libraries with opportunities to use the analysis to better understand the diversity of their local collection as well as the EAST collective collection.
This large scale collection analysis also acts as a model for future group analysis projects as EAST determines the optimal frequency of such group wide work as well as how best to fund such work.
Working Group
Many thanks to the members of the 2023 Collection Analysis Working Group
| Beth Blanton | University of Virginia |
| Todd Falkowski | Trinity College |
| Tony Fonseca | Elms College |
| Annie Glerum | Florida State University |
| Terese Heidenwolf | Lafayette College |
| Anne Koenig | University of Pittsburgh |
| Sarah McCleskey | Hofstra University |
| Teresa Negrucci | Wesleyan University |