Big Ten Academic Alliance Cooperative Cataloging Partnership receives ALCTS Collaboration Award

The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) has selected the Big Ten Academic Alliance Cooperative Cataloging Partnership (BTAA CCP) as the recipient of the ALCTS Outstanding Collaboration Citation for 2018.

The Outstanding Collaboration Citation recognizes and encourages collaborative problem-solving efforts in the areas of acquisition, access, management, preservation or archiving of library materials. It recognizes a demonstrated benefit from actions, services or products that improve and benefit providing and managing library collections. The citation will be presented on June 23 at the ALCTS Awards Ceremony during the 2018 American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference and Exhibition in New Orleans, La.

As documented in the Library Resources and Technical Services (LRTS) article (v. 61, no. 2, April 2017) “Strength in Numbers: Building a Consortial Cooperative Cataloging Partnership,” the BTAA developed a pilot program among its cataloging units to match cataloging expertise at one institution with cataloging needs at another, allowing collections that might otherwise remain hidden in backlogs to be made available at the institutional level and, through ILL and union catalogs, to the world at large. During the pilot 768 materials in 27 languages and a variety of formats were cataloged by BTAA partners. The pilot demonstrated the economic feasibility of developing a consortial service, and the CCP began as an official program on July 1, 2016.  The successful transition from pilot to official program enabled the partnership to grow, expanding to additional institutions, to 40 languages, and has provided metadata for over 1,863 titles. 

The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) is the national association for information providers who work in collections and technical services, such as acquisitions, cataloging, collection development, preservation and continuing resources in digital and print formats. ALCTS is a division of the American Library Association.