Working in a complicated, organic, evolving ecosystem that is today’s library collections environment, the Ivy Plus Libraries Collection Development Group is working towards collective collections across the partnership. This presentation will explore why this deep collaboration is necessary, what initiatives and programs are currently underway, and the highlights and challenges Galadriel has observed in the first 1.5 years as the inaugural Director of Collections Initiatives for Ivy Plus Libraries.

1. ACRL NY Symposium
The Mission: The Academic & Research Library in the Twenty-First Century Information Environment
December 1, 2017
Moderated Panel: The Distributed Execution of the Twenty-First Century Academic Library Mission
Galadriel Chilton, Ivy Plus Director of Collection Initiatives
Abstract
Working in a complicated, organic, evolving ecosystem that is today’s library collections environment,
the Ivy Plus Libraries Collection Development Group is working towards collective collections across the
partnership. This presentation will explore why this deep, distributed, collaboration is necessary, what
initiatives and programs are currently underway, and the highlights and challenges Galadriel has
observed in the first 1.5 years as the inaugural Director of Collections Initiatives for Ivy Plus Libraries.
Slide Speaking Points
Good morning! Thank you to Thomas Keenan
for inviting me to join you this morning to talk about the
work of the Ivy Plus Libraries’ Collections Development
Group. Thank you as well to Miranda McDermott for
moderating this panel and to everyone who helped with
the logistics for this great event.
Before looking forward at what is currently happening in
the Ivy Plus Libraries Collection Development Group -
what is Ivy Plus Libraries?
Ivy Plus Libraries is a partnership between thirteen
academic research libraries.
The partners are Brown University, the University of
Chicago, Columbia University, Cornell University,
Dartmouth College, Duke University, Harvard University,
Johns Hopkins University, the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton
University, Stanford University and Yale University.
BorrowDirect, the very successful unmediated resource
sharing service that began in in the late 90’s with three
partners, is the Ivy Plus Libraries’ first cooperative
initiative. One could say: Ivy Plus Libraries, the
partnership brought to you by Borrow Direct.
From BorrowDirect’s success emerges questions such as:
• What does our scholars’ use of BorrowDirect tell
us about our general collections as an ecosystem
of information?
• How does scholars’ use of BorrowDirect inform
and evolve management of our collections?

2. Striving to explore and answer these questions, the AULs
of collections at the BorrowDirect participating
institutions began meeting in 2008.
Since that first meeting, the AULs of Collections now
meet as the Ivy Plus Libraries Collection Development
Group.
Here is an excerpt from the Collection Development
Group’s vision:
“The Ivy Plus libraries embrace a vision for collection
development and management which recognizes our
preeminent academic research and special collections as
one great collection in support of the teaching, research
and public missions of our respective institutions and the
global scholarly community. The Ivy Plus libraries will
endeavor to implement projects and initiatives which in
time will move research materials in a variety of formats
‘above the institution’ to embed them in a networked
infrastructure that fosters collaboration, cooperation and
consolidation in support of building and providing access
to distinctive academic research collections.”
Our goal is to develop models and methods to enable
collaborative management of library resources that
encompasses all aspects of the collections lifecycle.
We are on the path of an adventure with tremendous
potential!
Since I began as the inaugural Director of Collections
Initiatives in June 2016, the Collection Development
Group has continued collaboration work towards this
vision, we are working on the following initiatives:
• Exploration of:
o What should an Ivy Plus Libraries shared
e-book program with a few print copies
look like?

3. o With the demise of OCLC’s Worldcat
Selection Tool, what would a Collections
Lifecycle Tool that would enable Ivy Plus
Libraries to collaborative share
information and jointly manage
collections look like?
o What kinds of collections analysis tools
and data do we need to successfully
fulfill our vision of “one great collection
in support of the teaching, research and
public missions of our respective
institutions and the global scholarly
community”?
Additionally, the Collection Development Group
established a Web Collecting Program led by the Ivy Plus
Web Collecting Librarian and the Web Collecting
Advisory Committee.
This program is a collaborative collection development
effort to build curated, thematic collections of freely
available, but at-risk, web content in order to support
research at participating Libraries and beyond.
So, what are the key challenges that the Ivy Plus Libraries
Collection Development Group faces when it comes to
collective collections?
• A few are:
o The concept of comprehensive
collections, and
o The change from branded local
ownership compared to collective
stewardship and access.
Additional challenges, but also necessities, to
collaboration that I noted during my first year are trust,
governance, and communication.
Thus, the partnership is working on governance and
communication structures that enable and support the
building of trust and social capital so that collaboration
and cooperation succeed.

4. Back to the challenge of the concept of comprehensive
collections, it’s important to remember that while all of
the Ivy Plus Libraries have very deep and broad
collections, libraries have never had comprehensive
collections– this is why resource sharing services like
interlibrary loan and BorrowDirect that our scholars rely
on – are necessary.
So, we are working to replace perceptions of
• “striving for comprehensive collections” and
• broad “just in case” collection development”
with
• “addressing complex and ever-changing
conditions”
through
• “collections as a service”
and working on careful alignment amongst Ivy Plus
Libraries to create collective collections in a complicated,
organic, evolving scholarly ecosystem.
For as Dan Hazen wrote “The library can solidify its own
sense of purpose, and also point the campus toward the
future, by recasting its documentation in terms of all the
research resources associated with its users and the
fields they represent. Insisting on in-flexible, site-specific
codifications for our hard copy acquisitions will only mire
us in the past."
Looking at the present and into the future so as not to
become mired in the past, Ivy Plus Libraries is different
than a 13-institution comprehensive collective collection.
The group’s business plan calls for:
• Efficient use of resources that “...focus on
maximizing access while also reducing
[unnecessary] duplication across the partnership
of purchasing, processing, sharing, and storage
costs.”
Such a vision calling for efficient use of resources and
maximizing access is necessary because….
…of the evidence that points to the need to do so,
including the decrease in funds available for materials.
This graph shows the tremendous collections
acquisitions strength of the Ivy Plus Libraries as of the
most recent available ARL data – 11 out of the 13

5. institutions are represented here – but it also shows that
funds available are not steadily increasing as in the past.
If dollars are a vehicle then Ivy Plus Libraries certainly still
have a mighty fleet, but how can we collaborate for
efficiency and ensure that this fleet goes farther?
The demand for content in multiple formats, as well as
the need for funds to support the infrastructure for
accessing and housing collections of all types: discovery
services, link resolvers, institutional repositories,
digitized collections, etc. means that materials budgets
are spent differently than in the past and that the funds
do not all go to content.
Here we see how funds for serials (e and print),
monographs (e and print), and bibliographic tools have
shifted over time.
Additionally, circulation among 12 of the 13 Ivy Plus
Libraries has decreased steadily over the last 5 years with
projections that the decrease will continue. Yet, despite
decreasing circulation of tangible items, the number of
monographs purchased is still steadily increasing though
at a slower rate.
Furthermore, projections from publishing industry for
the last 10 years show increases and decreases in various
regions, but overall growth of 611% meaning that the
number of possible publications to purchase continues to
increase.
At this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, publishers from over
100 hundred countries filled exhibit spaces 10 times the
space of an ALA Annual exhibit hall – roughly the size of
10 soccer fields. Booths for publishers like Elsevier,
Wiley, and SpringerNature, were significantly larger than
analogous booths at ALA conference.
So, material available to purchase that may be of interest
to our research communities is increasing, prices for
subscriptions continue to increase, and yet, we have less
funds to buy content, less space to keep physical
collections, and the circulation of physical monographs
that have been purchased is decreasing – but over ¼
million tangible resources circulating through
BorrowDirect each year shows demand for physical
materials.

6. Also, there’s also a greater proliferation of
documentation of the human experience (e.g. e-mail,
twitter feeds, blog posts, etc.)
Additionally, when it comes to the human intellect and
skills needed to manage collections, there is a
tremendous need for a variety of skills to match where
scholars are going and where collections are going:
digital scholarship and data management as well as
ensuring that areas such as e-resource management,
collection discovery, metadata, etc. are robustly staffed
as a key part of collection stewardship.
While all this evidence points to the necessity for
significant changes, deeper collaborative, and distributed
work, it’s also important to pause and realize that when
it comes to data-informed decisions, that our human
nature is to question or refute any data that goes against
our preexisting philosophical structures and personal
stories – that is are different than our current deeply
held mental models.
Dan Kahan, law and psychology professor at Yale Law
School, and founder of the Cultural Cognition Project
notes that when it comes to accepting scientific data and
facts about global warming, the disposal of nuclear
wastes, and the effect of conceal and carry laws, humans
tend to accept and assimilate new facts ONLY if it fits
into a pre-existing narrative with meaning.
So, when it comes to our collections, if data about our
collections is counter to our current narratives, then it’s
time to craft new narratives, because as Kahan states
“evidence can’t be refuted by just saying ‘no’.”

7. So, as we adopt new philosophies of library collections,
build new models for collection analysis and evolve what
is a library collection – that is a collective and with
shared stewardship instead of a single institution’s
ownership – it’s time to build a new structure, a new
narrative of understanding that describes what is a
“library collection.”
Thus, Ivy Plus Libraries is working to:
• Use quantitative and qualitative data with critical
eyes to create a clearer picture of what our
communities of scholars need, and we
understand that their needs are constantly
shifting and often unpredictable.
• Use this data-informed narrative to cast a light
ahead, and
• Be a community that invokes this necessary
change and crosses a new threshold.
In 2013 Dan Hazen and Deborah Jakubs wrote:
“Cultural expression, scholarly communication, and data
are moving toward digital modalities of creation and use.
The scale of meaningful activity in support of these shifts
has clearly surpassed what libraries and their institutions
can accomplish on their own.
New perspectives and approaches are essential as the
entire scholarly community addresses this emergent
context. We have both the opportunity and the
responsibility to develop a coherent strategy to advance
international scholarship.”
- Dan Hazen and Deborah Jakubs
Embracing this opportunity and responsibility that is
before us is necessary for our libraries to survive, evolve,
and thrive…
We’ve all heard Herbert Spencer’s phrase “survival of the
fittest” that he used to describe Darwin’s natural
selection.
However, ethologist Mark Bekoff notes that though
“’Survival of the fittest’ has always been used to refer to
the most successful competitor,…in fact cooperation may
be of equal or more importance.”

8. Bekoff continues by writing that “if the group [of
animals] works together then each individual’s chance
for survival [and I’d add thriving] improves.” Bekoff notes
that “Animals certainly still compete, but cooperation is
central in evolution of social behavior, and this alone
makes it key for survival.”
Thinking on my experience with the Ivy Plus Libraries
Collections Development Group, I’m inspired and excited
about the cooperation I see, the web collecting program
and the initiatives underway, as well as the extraordinary
potential to move where collective collections as a key
component of libraries’ support of the scholarly
ecosystem is the norm rather than the novelty.
I compare the partnership to a flock of tundra swans, or
snow geese – each bird remains a distinct individual, yet
they come together and migrate as is necessary for their
survival and in order to thrive – they migrate as a flock,
and as a group cover significantly more mileage in far
less time than flying solo.
Citations
Beck, J. (2015, January 29). Americans Believe in Science, Just Not Its Findings. The Atlantic. Retrieved
from http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/americans-believe-in-science-just-not-its-
findings/384937/
Bekoff, M. (2007). The emotional lives of animals: A leading scientist explores animal joy, sorrow, and
empathy--and why they matter. Novato, Calif: New World Library.
Hazen, D. C. (1995). Collection Development Policies in the Information Age. College & Research
Libraries, 56(1), 29–31. http://doi.org/10.5860/crl_56_01_29
Hazen, D.C. & Jakubs, D. (2013). The Global Dimensions of Scholarship and Research Libraries: Finding
Syndergies, Creating Convergance. https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/28553796.
How Many Books Have Ever Been Published? (n.d.). Retrieved September 20, 2016, from
http://mentalfloss.com/us/go/85305
Kahan, Dan M. and Jenkins-Smith, Hank and Braman, Donald, Cultural Cognition of Scientific Consensus
(February 7, 2010). Journal of Risk Research, Vol. 14, pp. 147-74, 2011; Yale Law School, Public Law
Working Paper No. 205. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1549444 or
http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1549444
Transcript | This American Life. (June 24, 2016) Retrieved September 14, 2016, from
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/590/transcript