The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) recently published its new Collaborative Collections Lifecycle Infrastructure Project (CCLIP) Recommended Practice, a framework designed to help libraries and consortia work together more effectively when developing, managing, sharing, and preserving collections. The guidance addresses key areas, including governance, acquisitions, metadata, assessment, and infrastructure, needed to support collaborative collection management across institutions.
The Collaborative Collections Lifecycle Infrastructure Project (CCLIP) is a NISO Recommended Practice that is part of the IMLS-funded Collaborative Collections Lifecycle Project (CCLP) (LG-252384-OLS-22) led by NISO, the Partnership for Academic Library Collaboration and Innovation (PALCI), and Lehigh University Libraries. Libraries have a long tradition of working together to expand their collections and provide more comprehensive coverage across all subjects through resource sharing. To support these strategies, larger networks of institutions have recently explored wider adoption of cooperative collections management, which this project defines as a process by which networks of institutions work collaboratively to acquire, manage, circulate, and preserve collections across the network. The CCLP seeks to overcome serious barriers to wider implementation, including the lack of available vendor-neutral interoperable systems, adequate governance and decision-making frameworks, and assessment tools.
Together, the CCLP and the resulting CCLIP Recommended Practice aimed to enable the efficient selection, management, and sharing of collections by developing a framework that libraries and consortia can use to share expertise, data, and collections to efficiently steward limited resources in serving library patrons.
As libraries continue to seek cost-effective ways to expand access to resources, collaboration plays an increasingly important role. One of the ways Amigos member libraries already benefit from collaboration is through consortial purchasing, resource sharing, and services provided by Amigos vendor partners. This new guidance from CCLIP offers libraries an additional roadmap for further strengthening those efforts.
Through a negotiated agreement, Amigos members also benefit from membership in the NISO Library Standards Alliance, which includes access to free educational webinars, discounted event registration, and opportunities to engage in standards development initiatives.