ReCAP Shared Collection
Columbia University, Princeton University, and the New York Public Library, partners in the Research Collections and Preservation Consortium (ReCAP), are also partners in a resource sharing initiative: the ReCAP Shared Collection. Columbia faculty, students, and staff have access to the ReCAP Shared Collection through the Columbia catalog, CLIO. Users can locate additional items in CLIO and request direct delivery to campus.
With support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, we have transformed our partnership from joint management of the shared off-site collection storage facility, ReCAP, to cooperative stewardship of a shared collection. The project goals were twofold: to better manage and preserve the shared collection, and to create the technical infrastructure necessary to allow cross-partner borrowing between institutions. Upon its completion, the project has enabled each organization to provide its patrons with seamless discovery and direct request of the ReCAP materials of all partners, thus empowering its users with a more diverse selection of resources than ever before.
The technical infrastructure was implemented in early fall 2017, integrating more than seven million items from Princeton and New York Public into Columbia’s CLIO catalog for discovery and delivery. Now, faculty, students, and staff of Columbia and its affiliates can request Princeton and NYPL materials directly from the ReCAP offsite facility using the “Offsite Request” link in CLIO, just as they have done with Columbia materials at ReCAP.
This project facilitates both rapid delivery of material - including electronic delivery of journal articles - and improved management of materials, empowering each partner institution to build deeper, broader, and stronger collections.
