“This report provides insight into the characteristics of regionally consolidated print collections, key relationships across these collections, and their implications for system-wide issues such as information access, mass digitization, resource sharing, and preservation of library resources. Written by OCLC Researchers Brian Lavoie, Constance Malpas and JD Shipengrover, Print Management at “Mega-scale”: A Regional Perspective on Print Book Collections in North America combines urbanist Richard Florida’s mega-regions concept with WorldCat data to construct twelve regionally consolidated print book collections. The analysis of the regional collections is synthesized into a set of stylized facts describing their salient characteristics, as well as key cross-regional relationships among the collections. The stylized facts motivate a number of key implications regarding access, management, preservation, and other topics considered in the context of a network of regionally consolidated print book collections. The report also presents a simple framework to organize the landscape of print book collection consolidation models, as well as to clarify and distinguish basic assumptions regarding print consolidation. Print Management at “Mega-scale” provides a unique perspective on the new geography of library service provision, in which services and collections are increasingly organized “above the institution.”
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