Consortial Actions and Collaborative Achievements: RLG's Preservation Program

Abstract

RLG is a not-for-profit international alliance of about 160 members, including universities and colleges, national and public research libraries, archives, historical societies, museums, and independent research collections devoted to improving access to information that supports research and learning. Founded in 1974 as the Research Libraries Group by four visionary library directors from Columbia, Harvard and Yale universities and the New York Public Library, the consortium formed to allow research institutions to tackle tough challenges via collaborative action. Key issues were managing the transition from locally self-sufficient and independently comprehensive collections to a system of interdependencies that would preserve and enhance the capacity for research in all fields of knowledge and improving the ability to locate and retrieve relevant research resources (RLG, 1986). At its inception, four activity areas were identified for collaborative action: cooperative bibliographic control and access; effective mechanisms for sharing information and resources among member institutions; expanded and coordinated collection development efforts; and preservation of the collections, either in the original or surrogate format.

Citation

Dale, R.L. (2009), "Consortial Actions and Collaborative Achievements: RLG's Preservation Program", Lynden, F.C. (Ed.) Advances in Librarianship (Advances in Librarianship, Vol. 27), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2830(03)27001-X