Primary governance of the Eastern Academic Scholars’ Trust (EAST) is provided by the Executive Committee (EC) which was formed in the fall of 2015.  The EC includes six elected members who represent the diverse perspectives of EAST: public and private institutions, those with large, medium and small collections, those already engaged in shared print through local consortia and those who provide only financial support.  In addition, the two co-principal investigators for the Mellon Foundation funded grant and the Project Director sit on the EC. 

Following their election, the EC appointed the Monographs and Validation Working Groups to facilitate on-boarding Cohort 1 institutions.  In 2016, the EC added  the Serials & Journals Working Group to explore additional shared print opportunities, the Inter-Library Loan Working Group to provide recommendations for best practices, and the 583 Working Group to provide recommendations for recording retention commitments. The EC anticipates appointing new Monographs and Validation Working Groups when Cohort 2 institutions are finalized.

Further details on EAST governance can be found on the Policies & MOU webpage.

• The Monographs Working Group was established to help shape the collection analysis scenarios that determine the retention commitments as well as work with the EC to determine policy recommendations to be incorporated into the formal agreements across the membership. 
• The Validation Working Group was established to work closely with the EAST team as well as an outside statistical consultant to develop and test a two-part sample based validation study focused on inventory confirmation.  These studies are important to ensuring confidence and trust in the retention commitments made across the EAST libraries. 
• The Serials & Journals Working Group was established to make recommendations to the EAST Executive Committee regarding EAST's work with serials and journals. These recommendations will be focused on: the scope of collection analysis for serials and journals, developing a set of retention selection criteria, and producing additional operating policies and procedures required specifically for the management of retained serial and journals titles.
• The Inter-Library Loan Working Group was tasked with recommending workflows and operating procedures for lending between EAST partner libraries. Per EAST policies, members may use their own institutional policies to fulfill requests for EAST holdings though EAST members have strongly voiced support of a practice of free lending across EAST partner libraries. The mission of the ILL Working Group is to form recommended lending guidelines and best practices for EAST partners.
• The 583 Working Group was tasked with exploring and recommending methods by which retention commitments could be recorded in local ILS catalogs. The group produced a set of best practices for using the 583 field when recording retention commitments. As of Fall 2017, the working group is exploring the appropriate methods for recording serials and journal retentions.

EAST Operations Committee

To facilitate EAST's growth, a standing Operations Committee (OC) was elected from the membership in Summer 2017.  This Committee reports to the Executive Committee and is responsible for development, implementation, and operationalization of policies and procedures for EAST.  Any policy or procedural recommendations from the OC require approval by the Executive Committee prior to implementation. The OC works closely with the EAST Project Team and may recommend the appointment of ad hoc Working Groups to address specific policy or procedural issues. The OC includes 6 – 8 members with representation from both Retention and Supporting Partner institutions as well as across the diversity of the EAST membership based on type of institution, size of library collection, etc.

Each Supporting and Retention Partner institution has appointed an Operational Contact to implement the policies and procedures developed by the Operations Committee.

Staffing

In addition to the above governance groups, the EAST Project Team  includes salaried staff who provide project management, data support, and general administrative and project direction.