Information Scotland The Journal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland ISSN 1743-5471 Issue contents | Journal contents | About the online edition of the journal April 2009 Volume 7(2)

Aiming higher

Farewell CASS and welcome SHEDL

Jill Evans updates us on policies for collection preservation and development in Scotland.

The Collaborative Academic Store For Scotland (CASS), a SCURL project, is held in the National Library of Scotland’s Causewayside Building. Seven partner libraries have deposited low-use but research-valuable material on the basis of a variety of strategic objectives:

• to encourage users to access the same material electronically and deposit the print equivalent in CASS
• to accommodate new material on the vacated shelves
• to make different use of the vacated space such as new learning environments
• to consider CASS as the next safe step in the workflow prior to disposal of the stock
• to ‘buy time’ during building refurbishments

Each partner library paid a financially attractive fee to the National Library of Scotland for the storage, access, and document supply of the material so, in effect, all parties gained. However, the biggest gain was the collaborative aspect of this project for the SCURL members with the National Library of Scotland stepping in to assist SCURL and the project when all other avenues appeared unsuccessful. It was the pioneering drive of the project by my predecessor in SCURL, Catherine Nicholson, who ensured the success of this quite innovative activity.

Now, a few years hence, and with the arrival of the UK Research Reserve (UKRR), we are witnessing and working toward the closure of CASS with the partner libraries discussing disposal of stock, perhaps reclaiming just a few metres of stock, and developing a Scottish Collections policy to which we will all contribute and observe. My colleagues in the CASS Steering Group and the CASS Operations Group have had to make some heart-searching decisions regarding the future of the stock: could you make the decision to dispose of collections of print material in the certain knowledge that ‘your’ institution’s users will have access to the same material elsewhere, but not certain that you have not destroyed the heritage of your research collection, or that perhaps in 10 years’ time someone will ask you why you reached that decision? 

CASS has been so successful in a variety of arenas: it met the shared services agenda of the Scottish Government, it generated worldwide interest with other countries now following similar principles, it stimulated debate about a Scottish and a UK collection management policy and, as an evolutionary and creative project, it has allowed us to contribute to the work of the UKRR. It is heartening to know that four librarians from the Centre Technique du Livre de L’enseignement Superieur near Paris are determined to spend time with me and a few of my colleagues to learn as much as possible in a few hours to inform their project of building a ‘silo’ for 47 French libraries and museums to safely store their print material of 40,000 metres: CASS occupies nearly 5,000 metres.

A new beginning for a SCURL initiative is the Scottish Higher Education Digital Library (SHEDL), which has negotiated contracts to access the content from three publishers’ from 1 January 2009 for the users of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and Small Specialised Institutions (SSIs). Although we have only January 2009 access figures to examine, we have begun to observe a marginal increase in use of the content and we, the SCURL SHEDL Steering and Working Group members, are confident that further increased use will be witnessed in the forthcoming months.

The SHEDL Groups are now considering the next potential publishers with whom to work with JISC Collections and Content Complete Ltd for the next contract.

Jill Evans is Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries (SCURL) Service Development Manager. j.evans@nls.uk

Information Scotland Vol. 7(2) April 2009

Information Scotland is delivered online by the SAPIENS electronic publishing service based at the Centre for Digital Library Research. SLAINTE (Scottish libraries across the Internet) offers further information about librarianship and information management in Scotland.