jan05book.indb
Collaborative Collection Management
in a High-density Storage Facility
Scott Seaman
This case study reviews selected collection management issues encoun-
tered in a collaboratively managed high-density remote storage facility. In
2000, four Colorado institutions—the University of Colorado at Boulder,
the University of Colorado at Denver, the University of Colorado Health
Sciences Center, and the University of Denver—opened a shared high-
density storage facility. This mix of public and private institutions agreed
to collaborative collection management, including a nonduplication policy
and the granting of direct access to stored materials for nonparticipat-
ing institutions through a statewide union catalog. Ownership of stored
materials, selection of items for storage, operational management, and
online and physical access proved to be challenging policy issues requir-
ing committees, patience, and compromise to resolve.
he Association of Research
Libraries (ARL) estimates
that member libraries added
9,480,045 volumes to their
collections in 2001–2002.1 Given a con-
servative estimate, one would expect
such magnitude of materials to occupy
1,185,000 linear feet of shelving space or
225 miles of shelves annually. Yet, even
among those universities that undertook
library construction projects during the
1990s, few added significant shelf space
on which to store the growing print col-
lections. Instead, today’s library planners
and architects choose to reduce footprints
of traditional shelving in order to open vast
areas of library floor space for collaborative
study space and information technology.2
To accommodate this shift, millions of
seldom-used volumes are being systemati-
cally removed from library shelves each
year for permanent storage in off-campus
facilities. Since the late 1990s, in fact, lead-
ing library architects and planners have
assumed that any library with more than
a million volumes would maintain an off-
campus storage facility as an integral part
of its collection management strategy.3
Although libraries have adopted many
different models for off-campus book
storage (at least within the ARL), high-
density storage facilities are becoming
the preferred choice, with more than
two dozen opening in the past fi een
years.4 High-density facilities store vol-
umes arranged by size on unusually tall
shelving rather than sequentially by call
number in traditional library stacks. By
storing materials by size rather than call
number, space efficiencies of more than
Sco Seaman is Associate Director for Administrative Services in Norlin Library at the University of
Colorado at Boulder; e-mail: Sco .Seaman@Colorado.edu.
20
mailto:Sco�.Seaman@Colorado.edu
Collaborative Collection Management in a High-density Storage Facility 21
seven times are realized when compared
to traditional shelving. This significantly
reduces land, construction, and operating
costs. High-density storage facilities also
can provide state-of-the-art preservation
environments for materials. An online
catalog record for each item informs pa-
trons that the item is stored in a remote
location, and items are typically requested
by the patron directly through the online
catalog. Regular courier deliveries bring
requested materials to campus.5
PASCAL Partnership
Colorado’s high-density facility, the Pres-
ervation and Access Service Center for
Colorado Academic Libraries (PASCAL),
is jointly operated by four libraries: the
University of Colorado at Boulder, the
University of Colorado at Denver, the Uni-
versity of Colorado Health Sciences Cen-
ter, and the University of Denver. PASCAL
is not only one of the earliest collaborative
high-density storage facilities, but it is
unique in that it forms a public–private
partnership between the campuses of
the University of Colorado at Boulder, at
Denver, and the Health Sciences Center,
all public institutions, and the University
of Denver, a private institution.
In their 2002 review of the literature,
Steve O’Connor, Andrew Wells, and Mel
Collier noted that “collaborative storage
implies a shared approach to collection in
terms of growth, shape, management and
access.”6 Throughout the planning process,
PASCAL was envisioned as a collab-
oratively managed facility that integrated
diverse collections, offered electronic ac-
cess to its contents, and provided rapid
delivery to the participating partners and,
equally important, to the wider Colorado
library community. Each library brought
unique collections and user demands to
the partnership, but it also was recognized
that such a collaborative facility could
contribute to a shared storage solution and
could offer unique services for the benefit
of a much larger community.
Although several high-density stor-
age facilities, including the University of
California’s Southern Regional Library
Facility, the University of Missouri Li-
braries Depository, and the Southwest
Ohio Regional Depository, cooperate to
share a common facility, none of those
facilities manages stored collections
collaboratively. In the literature, only
the Five-College Library Depository in
Massachuse s reports deaccessioning du-
plicate copies with joint ownership of the
stored collection.7 PASCAL proved more
far reaching than all of these facilities by
committing to collaborative collection
management and by offering collection
access and delivery to a large number of
nondepositing libraries. By doing so, it
has become a statewide resource for both
academic and public libraries.
Four institutions jointly proposing
an inexpensive solution to a persistent
library shelving problem proved a
compelling project for the conservative
Colorado legislature to fund. At the same
time, implementing common policies and
operational processes proved challenging
for the four libraries. The mission of each
institution, and therefore of each library
collection, was very different. Boulder
represented an ARL library supporting
Ph.D. programs in forty-four fields. In the
mid-1990s, the Boulder campus enrolled
22,000 FTE students and had a library
collection of more than three million
volumes. The Health Sciences Center’s
Dennison Library supported the state’s
only medical school and a nationally rec-
ognized biomedical research program. In
the mid-1990s, the Health Sciences Center
enrolled 2,600 FTE students and had a
library collection of 265,000 volumes,
and the Auraria campus enrolled 23,000
FTE students with a library collection
of 600,000 volumes. The University of
22 College & Research Libraries
Denver, the oldest private university in
the Rocky Mountain region, enrolled
approximately 9,500 students in the mid-
1990s and its Penrose Library held more
than a million volumes.
That such a diverse set of institutions
would partner on a high-density storage
facility is largely the result of pragmatism
and geography. By the mid-1990s, all four
libraries needed additional space and all
four were located in the Denver metro-
politan area. Each library cited examples
of how shelving had been added to its
buildings, thus eliminating ever-greater
amounts of student seating. All four insti-
tutions were experiencing the impact of
changing classroom teaching practices that
necessitated more group and collaborative
study spaces in libraries. With increas-
ing pressures for group study space, the
libraries were unable to meet the student
demand. The Auraria Library, in fact, was
not at capacity for materials. Instead, it
cited the need for modern student seating
as the primary reason for moving low-use
materials to high-density storage.8
Regardless of whether the primary rea-
son was to create shelf space for new ma-
terials or to open additional seating space
for students, none of the four institutions
was able to construct additional on-cam-
pus library space. Boulder had gone so
far as to lease traditional warehouse space
off-campus, but that was proving to be
an inefficient use of funds.9 Whether the
constraint was lack of funds, insufficient
land, or campus administrations with
other capital priorities, construction of on-
campus bookstacks was not a possibility
for any of the institutions.
Prospector Union Catalog
Colorado academic libraries have a
lengthy history of cooperative projects. In
the early 1980s, for example, the Colorado
Alliance of Research Libraries pioneered
in creating its own online library system.10
January 2005
In 1998, the Alliance, of which all four
PASCAL partners are members, initiated
Prospector. This shared union catalog
merges the library catalogs of the major
Colorado academic libraries, including
all four PASCAL partners, into a single
union catalog. Users can choose to search
only their local catalog or can search in the
Prospector union catalog and make online
requests for delivery of materials held by
any other Prospector library.
Prospector currently merges the cata-
logs of twenty-three libraries in Colorado
and Wyoming and includes large public
academic, medium-sized private aca-
demic, and public libraries as well as three
different brands of automated library
systems. Prospector participants include
such large systems as the Denver Public
Library, the University of Northern Colo-
rado, and the University of Wyoming, as
well as much smaller libraries such as the
Fort Collins Public Library, the University
of Denver Law Library, and Mesa State
College. More than one and a half million
users are registered in Prospector.11
The Prospector union catalog pro-
vided a key piece of automation in the
implementation of cooperative collection
management at PASCAL. As materi-
als were moved to PASCAL, database
records would be updated on both the
local system and the Prospector system.
Any user searching the Prospector catalog
could see PASCAL holdings, regardless
of the library that submi ed and owned
the item. This capability drove much of
the philosophy and many of the policy
decisions pertaining to collection manage-
ment of stored materials.
Shared Collection Management
A governing board composed of the four
library deans and directors of the four
institutions was established to oversee
construction, develop policy, hire key
personnel, and monitor ongoing opera-
http:Prospector.11
http:system.10
Collaborative Collection Management in a High-density Storage Facility 23
tions. The governing board articulated the
vision of PASCAL as a collaborative facil-
ity efficiently storing the low-use materi-
als of the four partners, but also making
those collections readily available to a
statewide user base. This would include
not storing duplicates, circulating all
materials submi ed to PASCAL, making
holdings viewable through the statewide
Prospector union catalog, and allowing
stored materials to be directly requested
by any of Prospector’s registered users in
Colorado and Wyoming.
Although numerous libraries jointly
share a single storage facility, the stored
materials are typically viewed as sepa-
rate collections with each library having
proprietary rights to the items it has
stored. Even though housed in the same
facility, the materials have been selected
using criteria unique to the owning li-
brary and circulate with policies distinct
to the owning library. Because most
libraries move materials off-site based on
some criteria of low use, there is a high
likelihood of each library independently
selecting the same items for off-site stor-
age. Most significantly, however, patrons
may have li le or no access to stored
collections that their library does not
distinctively own.
In contrast, having an online union
catalog through which all participants
and their patrons could readily view
each other’s holdings presented an op-
portunity for the four PASCAL partners.
It was recognized that if all PASCAL hold-
ings were reflected in Prospector, it could
serve as a resource through which the
stored collections could be managed col-
laboratively and made available directly
to the broader Prospector constituency.
However, controversial issues such as
continuing ownership, access policies,
joint retention decisions, and retention
had to be resolved as construction was
under way.
Continuing Ownership and Access
When discussion of the concept of a
jointly occupied high-density storage
facility that incorporated collaboratively
managed collections began in 1999,
several concerns were raised concerning
its operation. Perhaps the issue of most
concern to librarians was ownership of
stored materials. There was a widespread
perception among collection managers at
the four institutions that jointly owned,
off-site materials could not be considered
part of the local collections. Accredita-
tion standards, correctly or not, were
most o en cited as the impediment to
moving large collections off-site. Upon
investigation, however, no accrediting
body required library materials to be on
campus for them to be counted as part of
the collection. But holdings counts were
important for various statistical report-
ing. This was complicated by the variety
of bodies to which the PASCAL partners
reported.
Effective resource sharing, however,
depends on seamless access to materi-
als. A key policy decision agreed to by
the PASCAL partners provided for local
ownership, but also for universal cir-
culation of stored materials. That is, all
material submi ed to PASCAL would
be represented through the Prospector
catalog and would circulate to any of
the twenty-three participating libraries.
This decision proved controversial. A
few collection managers felt an aversion
to putting valuable collections at risk
by opening their use to a much larger
public. Although these collections, o en
uncataloged, had always been available
to outside users through interlibrary
loan, borrowing was a cumbersome and
slow process that limited potential re-
questors. With its simple online request
mechanism, Prospector promised rapid
delivery to the patron. For those man-
agers who had invested their careers in
24 College & Research Libraries
carefully selecting items for distinguished
collections, even sending materials off-site
was difficult and circulating them to an
unknown and potentially abusive public
was too much. Another concern was that
by mandating circulation of all PASCAL
materials, rare and archival materials
would be excluded from storage. These
items were noncirculating in the own-
ing library and, because they could not
realistically ever be permi ed to circulate,
would be inappropriate for PASCAL. But
with its state-of-the-art environmental
controls, PASCAL was particularly suited
for just such materials.
In the end, it was felt that universal ac-
cess outweighed the need for rare books
storage and PASCAL opened with a policy
of circulation for all stored materials. For
the purposes of electronic searching and
delivery, then, PASCAL appears to the
user as any other library in the Prospector
system. For example, a user anywhere in
Colorado can perform a Prospector title
search, find the item to be in PASCAL, and
request the piece be delivered by courier.
It is no different than searching any other
title or requesting delivery from any other
Prospector library. Loan requests made
through Prospector for PASCAL materials
conform to the common Prospector loan
policies. This seamless integration of PAS-
CAL holdings into the Prospector catalog
has contributed to remarkable usage of
the collection by non-PASCAL partners
throughout Colorado. Nearly 22 percent
of all PASCAL circulation was requested
through Prospector by non-PASCAL
partners in 2003, and usage by non-PAS-
CAL partners is increasing rapidly. One
consequence of such outside usage is that
PASCAL is considering extra staffing just
to retrieve such requests.
Local Selection and Joint Retention Policy
Early in the planning process, the govern-
ing board agreed that “It [is] a desirable
January 2005
general approach to consider PASCAL
as a library of record.” That is, PASCAL
would hold the remaining last copy of
any monograph or journal volume for all
partners to share. This would free each
partner from maintaining the scholarly
record on-site. If the item was stored in
PASCAL, the remaining partners would
deaccession their copies rather than store
them in PASCAL. However, this did not
mean that there would be strict submis-
sion guidelines for materials submi ed to
PASCAL. Instead, in the same planning
document, the governing board con-
cluded that “PASCAL is for permanent
storage of low-use items, which will be
locally defined.”
If “low use” was le for local interpre-
tation, however, the issue of duplication
of submissions was not. According to the
program plan, “Only with this sort of
shared facility can participating libraries
make permanent, joint retention deci-
sions to minimize duplication of stored
items, especially in the area of back runs
of journals. Shared use data on important
but lesser used research materials can be
collected in order to implement a policy of
minimal storage duplication. Collabora-
tive decisions can be made to determine
which copies are retained for storage, al-
lowing every participating library to rely
on permanent retention, in a preservation-
orientated facility, of the copy which has
been retained.”12
Although the four institutions were
diverse in mission, three—CU Boulder,
CU Denver, and the University of Den-
ver—had large undergraduate popula-
tions and each library held collections to
support such instruction. Consequently,
it was felt there was the possibility of
unnecessary duplicate materials being
sent to off-site storage, particularly with
large serial sets. For example, there was
the likelihood that each institution would
submit dozens of bound volumes of Sci-
Collaborative Collection Management in a High-density Storage Facility 25
entific American, Time, and Encyclopedia
Britannica. Such submissions could fill
the storage facility with unnecessary
duplicates and accelerate the need for an
expensive second storage module.
Negotiating the details of a four-cam-
pus retention policy proved a challenge.
Unnecessary duplication is difficult to
define, and duplication to one institution
may represent an important third copy to
another. Some librarians were concerned
that simultaneously mandating that all
PASCAL materials circulate while limit-
ing PASCAL submissions to a single copy
put collections at risk. As an ARL library,
the Boulder campus had as its mission to
preserve the scholarly record. Circulating
irreplaceable last copies, some librar-
ians argued, compromised that charge.
Deep concern also was expressed that
the single-copy policy would erode local
control over collection development. For
example, if three libraries weeded their
copies of a title based on the presence of
a copy being in PASCAL, what would
happen if the owning library permanently
recalled that item to its shelves? The item
might not be as transparently available to
those libraries that weeded their copies.
Such concerns prompted important com-
promises among the partners in negotiat-
ing the retention policy.
For monographs, it was agreed that
“single copy” was to be defined as one
copy for each partner. Therefore, up to
four of the same monograph could be
submitted to PASCAL. This was seen
as an important processing concession.
Otherwise, every monograph submi ed
to PASCAL would have to be searched
in Prospector to determine whether it
duplicated an existing title. With hun-
dreds of thousands of titles moving to
PASCAL, searching each title was seen
as too time-consuming to be practical. By
agreeing to send no more than one copy
from each library, the collection manag-
ers felt they could maintain the spirit of
the agreement without move schedules
coming to a halt. In reviewing materi-
als for storage, for example, a collection
manager confronting three shelved copies
of a title could keep one on the shelf, flag
one for weeding, and flag one for storage.
The burden of physically moving materi-
als through a local or Prospector search
routine was avoided while minimizing
potential duplication.
For serials, where a greater possibil-
ity for duplication existed among the
partners, it was agreed that only a single
copy would be accepted in PASCAL.
Duplicates were to be identified based
on OCLC number and title as well as a
match on specific holding information
from records in Prospector. Although du-
plicate volumes were not to be sent, fill-in
volumes were welcomed. An entire serial
set, then, may comprise volumes owned
by several partners. As with monographs,
each library retains ownership of the se-
rial volumes it stores in PASCAL. Unlike
monographs, serial volumes may not be
returned permanently to the owning li-
brary. When a serial is moved to PASCAL,
it is permanently stored in the facility. Any
PASCAL partner may request a long-term
loan from the governing board, regard-
less of ownership of the volumes. This
policy is intended to address concerns
that critical materials may be withdrawn
unexpectedly from PASCAL. At the same
time, collection managers must weigh the
need for on-site shelf space against the
reality of never being able to permanently
return serials submi ed to PASCAL.
Negotiating the monograph and serial
submission polices among the PASCAL
partners was a time-consuming, but criti-
cal step. Although permi ing each library
to submit one copy of a monograph might
appear self-defeating, it was anticipated
that the practice would have li le impact
on overall space consumption in PASCAL
26 College & Research Libraries
because nearly 70 percent of PASCAL
contents were projected to be serial vol-
umes. Moreover, because the mission of
each of the four libraries was somewhat
different, the monographic duplication
among the four partners was known to
be relatively small. With relatively few
monographs going to PASCAL and with
little monographic duplication among
partners’ collections, this was viewed as
an acceptable compromise.
For all materials, it was agreed that only
collection managers had authority to de-
termine whether an item was a duplicate.
PASCAL staff could not “return items on
the grounds of perceived duplication.”
Identifying duplicates from libraries
with histories of very different cataloging
practices was not as obvious as was first
thought. Boulder, for example, had a his-
tory of cataloging by unique title whereas
the Health Sciences library generally
cataloged by series title. This difference,
as well as many more subtle differences
in cataloging practice, precluded students
from accurately determining whether
items duplicated one another. Conse-
quently, collection managers were given
final authority to determine whether an
item duplicated a PASCAL holding.
Conclusion
PASCAL combines low-use materials
from four distinct institutions into a
single collection directly accessible to
regional users through a union catalog
and circulates its holdings, regardless of
institutional ownership, under a single
set of loan policies. The four PASCAL
partners also have pioneered a practice
of coordinating submissions, including
nonduplication of materials, to maximize
storage space. Such collaboration has
elevated PASCAL from being an isolated
storage annex to becoming a regional re-
source similar, in many ways, to a stand-
alone library.
January 2005
Institutionalizing the single-copy
concept was more complicated than the
planners had envisioned and its imple-
mentation involved important compro-
mises. Collection managers, interested
in preserving the scholarly record, were
concerned that circulating last copies was
imprudent. Storage planners, wanting
to maximize storage capacity, worried
that limited space would be consumed
by thousands of duplicates. Permi ing a
single copy of a monograph per institu-
tion, but only one serial volume for the
partnership, seems to have balanced
collection managers’ concerns regarding
redundancy with the constraints of lim-
ited storage capacity. PASCAL is filled to
slightly over half its capacity; however,
no quantitative assessment of duplication
has been performed on the collection.
There is a perception that this policy is
successful in reducing or eliminating
stored duplicates, but because of the de-
centralized nature of materials selection,
it is impossible to know conclusively if
the policy has been successful. An indirect
measure of success would be to determine
whether the number of duplicates stored
in PASCAL exceeds the number the policy
allows. In addition, it would be useful
to examine loss rates and any instances
in which materials were permanently
returned to owning libraries.
Making low-use materials available
to a large, nonacademic user base was
viewed with some trepidation by many
collection managers. They repeatedly re-
minded planners that “low use” does not
mean irrelevant. In fact, low-use materials
are o en the unique research materials
that most distinguish a library’s collection.
That collection managers would be hesi-
tant to place such valuable material under
the control of an off-site storage facility
that would circulate items to any of one
and a half million people is not surprising.
Perhaps more surprising, though, is how
http:successful.An
Collaborative Collection Management in a High-density Storage Facility 27
heavily those materials are being used by
external patrons. That nearly 25 percent
of all PASCAL loan requests are from
non-PASCAL institutions underscores
the collection managers’ assessment of
the value of such materials. Furthermore,
this suggests that, when seamlessly acces-
sible, low-use materials at one institution
may be requested routinely by another.
Despite—or perhaps because of—such
usage, collection managers of the four
institutions continue to submit materials
and PASCAL’s remaining vacant storage
is fully commi ed.
That other institutions are formally re-
questing to join the PASCAL partnership
is evidence that the collaborative model
of PASCAL has been successful. Plans
for the second storage module are likely
to include additional academic partners
and may contain public library partners as
well. At that point, PASCAL will become
an integrated part of the collection man-
agement strategies of the region.
Notes
1. Martha Kyrillidou and Mark Young, ARL Statistics, 2001–2002 (Washington, D.C.: ARL,
2003), 24–29.
2. Richard J. Bazillion and Connie L. Braun, Academic Libraries as High-tech Gateways, 2nd ed.
(Chicago and London: ALA, 2001).
3. William G. Jones, “Library Buildings: Renovation and Reconfiguration,” ARL SPEC Kit
244 (April 1999), 14,18.
4. ARL, Library Storage Facilities, Management, and Services, SPEC Kit 242 (Washington, D.C.:
ARL, May 1999).
5. David Weeks and Ron Chepesiuk, “The Harvard Model and the Rise of Shared Storage
Facilities,” Resource Sharing & Information Networks 16, no. 2 (2002): 159–68; Sco Seaman, “High-
density Off-site Storage: Document Delivery and Academic Library Research Collections,” Jour-
nal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Information Supply 13, no. 3 (2003): 91–103; Ronald
Chepesiuk, “Reaching Critical Mass: Off-site Storage in the Digital Age,” American Libraries 30,
no. 4 (Apr. 1999): 40–43.
6. Steve O’Connor, Andrew Wells, and Mel Collier, “A Study of Collaborative Storage of
Library Resources,” Library Hi Tech 20, no. 3 (2002): 258.
7. Willis E. Bridegam, A Collaborative Approach to Collection Storage: The Five-College Library
Depository (Washington, D.C.: Council on Library and Information Resources, 2001), 29.
8. Paulien & Associates, Inc., “A Program Plan for a Library Remote Storage Facility for the
University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Colorado at Denver, University of Colorado
Health Sciences Center, with the Participation of the University of Denver” (Apr. 1997): 23. Avail-
able online from h p://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/adminservices/seaman/PASCAL.pdf ; Internet.
[Accessed 9 August 2004].
9. Brice Austin and Sco Seaman, “Temporary Remote Book Storage at the University of
Colorado at Boulder Libraries: Facilities Planning, Materials Preparation, Selection, and Retrieval,”
Collection Management 27, no. 1 (2002): 59–78.
10. Rebecca T. Lenzini and Ward Shaw, “Creating a New Definition of Library Cooperation:
Past, Present, and Future Models, Library Administration & Management 5, no. 1 (1991): 37–40.
11. “Prospector: The Unified Catalog.” Available online from h p://prospector.coalliance.
org/;Internet. [Accessed 9 August 2004].
12. Paulien & Associates, “A Program Plan for a Library Remote Storage Facility,” 6.