The Evolution of Collaborative Collection Development within a Library Consortium: Data Analysis Applied in a Cultural Context

Background And Literature Review

There are varied approaches to consortial or collaborative collection analysis, often divided by format type, such as serial vs. monograph or print vs. electronic. Comparative analysis for groups of libraries and consortia often relies on OCLC WorldCat holdings for comparisons, or groups may opt to use local shared systems for their studies.

A common goal of consortial or collaborative collection analysis is to better understand how affiliated libraries’ collections might operate together as a whole. The State University of New York (SUNY) system, for example, used the OCLC/AMIGOS Collection Analysis CD to compare the monographic holdings for four members of the SUNY system so that they might have a fuller picture of the collections and their shared strengths (Dole & Chang, 1997). This type of study provides opportunities for identifying relative subject, format, or publication date coverage among the participants, as well as to identify gaps in coverage or areas of overlapping strength that might be useful in developing collaborative collection projects.