2014 Charleston Library Conference

In June 2013, the Central Iowa Collaborative Collections Initiative (CI-CCI), inspired by a Charleston pre-conference on data driven shared print collections, was established. CI-CCI went from being just an idea to a formal, MOU governed organization, in just six months. It is consists of a group of five mid and small central Iowa private academic libraries. Members are Central College, Drake University, Grand View University, Grinnell College, and Simpson College. Unlike other collaborations of this nature, the initial primary focus of the group was identification of titles for retention, as opposed to identification of weeding candidates. Because retention was of major concern to the group, each library did a retention verification project. Each assigned retention title was physically verified on the shelf and marked as a retention title. It is our understanding that this is unique to these types of collaboratives.

The second primary focus of the collaborative is the development of the “shared collection” approach via prospective collection development. The group is about to embark on this phase of the project, and it will be challenging due to the fact that we do not share a common catalog or vendor. Nor do we currently have the same level of interest in ebooks or PDA. The long term intent is to enhance access to scholarly resources and to manage acquisition costs.

Attendees of this session will hear how the collaboration was initiated, what steps were taken to create it, what structures and governance were put in place to support it, and what the next steps will be, including potentially adding on additional members. Further, we will highlight the pros and cons of a small collaboration, both in library size and number of participants, and we will offer tips for initiating a collaboration outside an existing structure.