Columbia University Libraries and its partners are pleased to welcome Yale University to ReCAP, the Research Collections and Preservation Consortium, effective July 1. The group, which also includes Harvard University, the New York Public Library (NYPL), and Princeton University, enables library users from all participating institutions to access materials from a shared collection of more than 18 million volumes. Yale will make available an additional 2.7 million unique titles in the coming months.

“The addition of Yale to the consortium is such an exciting development,” said Ann Thornton, Chair of the ReCAP Board of Governors and Vice Provost and University Librarian at Columbia University. “The last 25 years of collaboration have shown that this model of resource sharing and collection-building works, enabling us to be responsible stewards of resources while expanding access for our respective academic communities.”

Since ReCAP was founded in 2000 as an initial partnership between Columbia, NYPL, and Princeton, its shared repository on Princeton’s Forrestal Campus has grown to hold more than 18 million items. Harvard joined the consortium in 2016 as an associate member, then as a full member in 2019. Consortium members fulfill approximately 300,000 requests from researchers and libraries worldwide each year.



ReCAP’s Shared Collection Service, launched in 2017 with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, enables users at Columbia, Harvard, NYPL, Princeton, and now Yale to experience increasingly seamless access to extraordinary holdings accessioned over centuries. 

Through the Discovery-to-Delivery Program, users request items directly from the local catalogs of each consortium member for two-business-day delivery to their own institution. Since its founding, the use of shared holdings across each partner library has increased by more than 30 percent, demonstrating the value of integrated access to distributed collections.

“The ReCAP partnership embodies Yale University Library’s commitment to preserving and enhancing access to the scholarly record,” said Barbara Rockenbach, Yale’s Stephen F. Gates ’68 University Librarian. “Through this shared collection, we can leverage the deep investments each partner library has made in print holdings, both past and future, to ensure that all researchers have access to the print resources they need. This collaboration amplifies the reach and impact of all of our collections. We are thrilled to be part of it.” 

Learn more about ReCAP from Ian Bogus, Executive Director of the Consortium: