Beginning in 2010, the libraries of East Coast Consortium members Columbia, The New York Public Library, and Princeton put in place, and have constantly refined, a number of common approval plans to substantially reduce unnecessary duplication of new acquisitions across the languages of the region. The core goal of this activity has been to deepen and broaden our collective coverage of materials from this ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse part of the globe.
This effort has been greatly facilitated by the sharing (since 2000) of a high-density storage facility, ReCAP (Research Collections and Preservation Consortium) adjacent to the Princeton Campus and, most recently, by the cross-loading of catalog records between the institutions, allowing for the seamless discovery and request of materials by the students, faculties, and registered reads of each of the three partners. In 2019, the opportunities for further collaborations expanded further, as ECC member Harvard joined the ReCAP partnership, and is moving towards joining the effort to share bibliographic records for materials stored in ReCAP among partners. As of November 2019, ReCAP holdings numbered 16,203,104 items.
With each passing year, efforts to develop common, single-copy approval plans, and to designate “lead” institutions for certain less commonly requested languages have been expanded, refined, and implemented. The shift to inter-institutional collecting (which also includes Columbia’s BorrowDirect partner, Cornell) has even—to a more limited degree—impacted collecting of materials in Russian, the most commonly studied Slavic language.
In summary form, the following collaborative approval plans are presently in-force. Each collaboration is governed by a draft memorandum of understanding, and in-force common approval plans:
I. “Lead Institution Model”: One institution is responsible for maintaining a comprehensive approval plan for materials in the indicated language for the benefit of the entire ReCAP group. These materials are almost exclusively stored in ReCAP. Responsibilities are as follows:
Columbia: Albanian, Bulgarian, Kosovar imprints, Macedonian, Montenegrin imprints,and art & architectural imprints in Croatian, Slovak, and Slovene.
Harvard: Croatian, Slovak, Slovenian.
NYPL: Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian.
Princeton: Moldovan imprints.
II. “Collaborative Model”: Two or more ReCAP partners share a common, no-duplication approval plan with a single vendor. Responsibilities are as follows:
Columbia and Harvard: Hungarian.
Columbia (and Cornell), Harvard: Romanian.
Columbia (and Cornell), Harvard, Princeton: Serbian.
Columbia/Cornell, Harvard, NYPL: Belarusian.
III. “Modified Collaboration Model”: The “Modified” model presently has two variants:
1) Several institutions share a common approval plan that—pending the appearance of Harvard’s ReCAP (and Harvard Depository) records in all of our respective online catalogs—allows duplication ONLY for humanities materials between NYPL (which is not a BorrowDirect partner) and Harvard. These include:
Columbia, Harvard, NYPL: Czech. A no-duplication policy is in place with a common vendor between Columbia, Harvard and NYPL (with the exception of the broad category of history and humanities).
All four partners: Polish. A no-duplication policy is in place with a common vendor between Columbia, Harvard, NYPL (with the exception of the broad category of history and humanities), and Princeton.
All four partners: Russian émigré imprints. A no-duplication policy is in place with a common vendor between Columbia, Harvard, NYPL, and Princeton.
Columbia and Princeton: Central Asia and the Caucasus. Columbia focuses on the vernacular languages of the regions (with the exception of Azerbaijani), while Princeton collects primary Russian-language imprints from the regions. It is hoped that Harvard’s collections could also be integrated, once records are in place.
Columbia and Princeton: Eastern Ukraine. Eventually, it is planned to more fully incorporate Harvard’s Ukrainian collecting as well.
These will become part of the Collaborative Model when records are integrated and accessible by all four partners.
2) Coordination for Russian-language imprints.
This very large and complex category is presently limited to certain intra-ReCAP agreements, for materials from certain designated publishers, or from certain geographical regions of the Russian Federation. So, for example:
Columbia, Cornell and Princeton have identified publishers that can and cannot be duplicated by our common approval vendor.
Columbia, Cornell, NYPL and Princeton have divided responsibility for each of the Federal Districts of the Russian Federation, with the goal of being more comprehensive in our regional collecting.
Columbia, Cornell, NYPL and Princeton have divided up responsibility for comprehensive coverage of certain “mass-market” publishers for which we were once all receiving copies.
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This is the current core structure of ReCAP Slavic & East European Collaborative Initiative, as of April 2020. It is clearly an evolving structure, as we move towards further technological integration and sharing capabilities in the months ahead.
For further information, contact:
Robert Davis, rhd2106@columbia.edu
Bogdan Horbal, bogdanhorbal@nypl.org
Thomas Keenan, tkeenan@princeton.edu
Anna Rakityanskaya, rakityan@fas.harvard.edu