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Collaborative strategies for low-use research materials

Abstract Librarians are often fond of proclaiming that they are developing digital libraries. The clear evidence however is that the better strategy is to design services to “deliver digitally.” A brief overview of current, past, and future publishing trends will reveal data key to any understanding of evolving policies for preservation of a nation's intellectual output. These data highlight that academic libraries, at least, are presenting homogeneous collections of digital serials. Together with the budget pressures to maintain serial collections, the result is a lack of collecting diversity of the intellectual publishing of interest to academe. Presently, academic libraries in Australia are committing between 30% and 40% of their acquisitions budgets to digital resources. Yet, this cannot buy more than 10% of the published serials output. The availability of serial information will become more and more constrained in the very near future as the range of print serial titles shrinks in accordance with institutional buying power. CAVAL Collaborative Solutions is a consortium of Victorian university libraries and the State Library of Victoria. Established 25 years ago, it enables libraries to pursue projects together. CAVAL created the CARM Centre in 1997 to house one million volumes in state-of-the-art environmental conditions and fire suppression. The CARM Centre is unique in that it is a true collaborative collection of little used research materials. Ownership of materials is relegated to the CARM Centre. Simultaneously, each member takes on ownership of the CARM Centre's total collection. This results in a collection with no duplication, a no-discard policy, and an expectation for 250 or more years or functional service. Moreover, it provides individual libraries with a means of rationalizing collections and the ability to avoid capital expenditures. There are many implications for the member libraries as well as to the library system in Victoria and beyond.