BIG Collection Steering Committee Announced

The Library Directors of the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) are pleased to announce the appointment of the BIG Collection Steering Committee. The objective of the BIG Collection is to create a coherent knowledge environment for Big Ten faculty and students, with content universally available to all without regard to which institution produced or purchased it. The BIG Collection will be supported by interoperable services and systems at scale that rest on a foundation of shared infrastructure. 

The Steering Committee will act as the umbrella for the initiative and the executive steward of resources and strategy.  It will guide the BTAA in implementing successful infrastructure and policy to bridge the fifteen separate libraries of our universities toward being experienced and managed as one collection, fully networked--the BIG Collection.

As the overarching initiative to advance the commitment to a shared, interdependent future for the research libraries of the Big Ten, the BIG Collection is the lead idea, the center of gravity to align resources and activities across BTAA library initiatives. “The convening of the Steering Committee represents a significant step toward bringing shape and form to the vision of the BIG Collection,” said Maurice York, Director of Library Initiatives for the Big Ten Academic Alliance. “As a community and an alliance, we will collectively design the future that we want to see. The group is charged with thinking on behalf of the whole and holding the collective strategy. There is much more to come.”