Collective Collection
A Collective Collection refers to the shared resources of multiple libraries, archives, and museums. Collective Collections can be leveraged to benefit all institutional stakeholders, including researchers, scholars, students, and patrons.
OCLC Research’s Collective Collection work provides evidence and insight to support decision-making into how cultural heritage institutions organize shared collections and services. Through this work, OCLC Research is helping to create a more connected, collaborative landscape for libraries, archives, and museums, with the goal of making collections more accessible, impactful, and cost-efficient.
Publications
Reflections on Collective Collections
16 January 2020
Brian Lavoie, Lorcan Dempsey, Constance Malpas
Collective collections are the combined holdings of a group of libraries, analyzed and possibly managed as a unified resource. Constructing, understanding, and operationalizing collective collections is an increasingly important aspect of collection management for many libraries. This article presents some general insights about collective collections, drawn from a series of studies conducted by OCLC.