For an ACRL committee producing a report, I’m investigating a category called “radical collaboration.” That basically means collaboration among academic libraries in relatively new ways, with collection development or public services or anything else.
If anyone knows of any examples of new types of collaboration among academic libraries, I would greatly appreciate it if you’d let me know, either in the comment section or via email at rbivens@princeton.edu.
Thanks very much.
I don’t know what counts as “new” for ACRL purposes, but in case these might:
* Consortial institutional repositories (several; WRLC Aladin is one)
* Academic-public library space and service sharing (e.g. Metro State University in the Twin Cities)
I don’t know what counts as new, either! It’ll depend on what I find out I guess. And thanks for the suggestions.
Perhaps not news to you, but there is the shared ILS implementation ongoing in the Orbis Cascade Alliance:
http://orbiscascade.org/index/shared-ils-implementation
News to me, Ben. Thanks for sharing.
Hi,
Interesting question!
OK, here is one that might whet your appetite: Have you heard of the Nereus Consortium? http://www.nereus4economics.info: They are a group of leading libraries from across the world focussed on economists.
There are lots of library consortia and networks across the world, and this is on the up, so I am curious as to what you are after.
What should their main goal be? For example, strategic development, innovation development, shared services, better resource management?
Best, Vanessa
http://www.proud2know.eu
Thanks for the info, Vanessa. As for what I’m after, I’ll know it when I see it. I have no preconceptions here, and am just interested in finding out new ways that academic libraries are collaborating. I’ll go where the evidence takes me.
I first came across the phrase “radical collaboration” in connection with the 2CUL initiative at Columbia & Cornell. http://2cul.org
Thanks, Scott. That’s one of the few of these I’d actually heard of and probably does serve as a model of such “radical” collaboration.