Mellon Planning Grant Awarded to UC Libraries for a Western Regional Storage Trust

Emily Stambaugh, CDL Manager of Shared Print

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded the University of California Libraries a nine month planning grant to organize the “Western Regional Storage Trust (WEST)” — a shared print repository service, focused initially on retrospective journal archives. UC Libraries in collaboration with regional library partners will band together to prepare service models for consolidating print journal holdings in responsible ways to provide efficiencies throughout the libraries. WEST is envisioned as a robust partnership that will allow libraries to build and manage a cooperative regional archive at the network level.  The proposal calls for library leaders in the Western Region of the United States to convene in Oakland, CA to (1) design operating, governance, and business models to support cooperative print archives among diverse partners; (2) establish standards for low-level validation and disclosure; and (3) develop selection criteria incorporating risk-management principles to ensure persistence within the broader context of similarly intentioned national and international efforts.

Library leaders from UC, Orbis-Cascade, GWLA, SCELC, Stanford, CalTech, Occidental College and more will band together to design the Western Regional Storage Trust incorporating sustainable models for participation amongst a wide variety of partners.  We are pleased to announce that Lizanne Payne, Director of the Washington Research Library Consortium, will serve as the consultant for this process.
For more information, please contact Emily Stambaugh, CDL Shared Print Manager.