Western
Regional Storage Trust (WEST) Announces Print Archiving
Milestone
The Western
Regional Storage Trust (WEST), a partnership to create a
distributed retrospective print journal repository in the
western United States, has completed its first round of print
journal archiving under a three-year program jointly funded by
WEST members and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
In this first
cycle in the 2011-12 academic year, 12 WEST libraries serving
as archive holders on behalf of the partnership have archived
more than 6,100 journal titles, comprising more than 160,000
volumes. These totals include almost 5,100 titles archived at
the Bronze level (no validation; also have digital
preservation), more than 500 titles archived at the Silver
level (validated for completeness at the volume level) and
more than 500 titles validated at the Gold level (validated
for both completeness and condition at the issue level).
The WEST
validation levels are designed to ensure that library
collections are preserved and made available for long-term use
by future generations of students and scholars, while
investing in archiving efforts appropriate to the level of
risk. These WEST archiving commitments have been recorded in
the OCLC WorldCat database and the Center for Research
Libraries (CRL) Print Archives Preservation Registry (PAPR)
using Print Archives Metadata Guidelines developed in
conjunction with an OCLC pilot project last year, making this
information available in a standardized form to libraries
across the U.S.
Building on
these archiving commitments, WEST has produced individualized
collection comparison reports for most of its members — an
important benefit of WEST membership. To aid in making
collection management decisions, each member library that
provided information about its print journal holdings has
received a report listing the titles in its collection that
have been archived by another WEST partner library.
WEST also is
pleased to welcome eight new members who joined in 2012:
California State University – Northridge; New Mexico State
University; and, through the consortial membership of the
Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC),
California Baptist University, La Sierra University, Santa
Clara University, University of Redlands, University of San
Diego and Whittier College. This brings the total WEST
membership to 109 libraries in 18 states, many through
consortial partners Orbis Cascade Alliance and SCELC.
About WEST
Western
Regional Storage Trust is a distributed
retrospective print journal repository program serving more
than 100 research libraries, college libraries and university
libraries, and three library consortia, in the western part of
the United States. WEST is funded by member fees and by a
grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The California
Digital Library (CDL) serves as the administrative host for
WEST.
About the California Digital Library
The California Digital Library supports
the University of California libraries in their mission of
providing access to the world's knowledge for the UC campuses
and the communities they serve through the development and
management of digital collections, innovation in scholarly
publishing and the long-term preservation of digital
information. The University of California library system,
which includes more than 100 libraries on the 10 UC campuses,
collectively is the largest research/academic library in the
world. More information about CDL is available at www.cdlib.org.
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