WEST, the Western Regional Storage Trust

WEST, the Western Regional Storage Trust, is asking this month for a second Mellon grant to move the project from planning into implementation. UC Berkeley has been active as one of WEST’s Planning Libraries. UL Tom Leonard has recently committed Berkeley to continuing into implementation. We will be joining over 50 other western libraries, ranging from the very large to very small.

 WEST will focus on finding ways to preserve retrospective print journals while reducing unneeded duplication among participating institutions.

 WEST archives will be distributed among major library storage facilities (e.g., NRLF) and at selected campus locations, but with centralized project management / administration by the CDL. The project is not about building new buildings, but about building cross-institutional agreements to meet commonly held goals.

 “WEST offers innovations and benefits to participating libraries:

  1. Reclaim and reallocate library space. Availability of a trusted regional archive will allow participating libraries to deaccession journal holdings with confidence and reallocate space to meet local needs.
  2.  Reduce cost of print collection management across a partnership of libraries. By consolidating and servicing archived journals on a regional scale, participating libraries will significantly lower the cost of managing large serial collections.
  3.  Preserve the scholarly record. Development of a coordinated persistent archive informed by risk management principles will aid national and international efforts to protect important research resources as libraries adapt to a more fully digital environment.
  4.  Serve as a national model and collaborate with other regional initiatives. WEST provides an important transferable framework for print archiving decisions based on risk analysis and a comprehensive business model to encourage library participation. This model can be replicated for use by other distributed regional repositories.”

 If the Mellon Grant is forthcoming, implementation will begin in January 2011.