Libraries

The Libraries of the Big Ten Academic Alliance are aligned in the vision of uniting our separate collections into one collection, shared and fully networked: the BIG Collection. By this phrase we mean a holistic and comprehensive understanding of what a library "collection" is: not simply the things we hold, but our services; our people; our expertise; our technology; and our infrastructure.

In advancing this future of interdependence and excellence, we are guided by our North Star in everything that we do:

In order to advance a just, trustworthy, scalable & sustainable open knowledge ecosystem, make open, more equitable scholarship our lead purpose.

On these pages, you'll find more about the services, programs, and community that are advancing this vision in a principles-centered, mission-driven, values-aligned way.

Academy Owned Scholarly Publishing Landscape Report

Launched in the fall of 2022, the Big Ten Academic Alliance [BTAA] landscape assessment of academy owned scholarly publishing activities explores the shared challenges and opportunities facing publishing programs and operations within the Big Ten institutions.

Big Ten Open Books

Big Ten Open Books connects readers everywhere to fully accessible, trusted books from leading university presses. Established as a new model for open-access publishing focused on equity and inclusion, we invite you to explore our Gender and Sexuality studies collection.

BIG Collection: Resource Access Policy Harmonization Report

The Resource Access Policy Harmonization pilot team is pleased to share their final report. Aspirational in nature, the report includes the new BTAA Resource Sharing Agreement plus Scanning Standards; reaffirms the Principles and Protocols for Sharing Special Collections within the Big Ten; and articulates important next steps for future pilot projects and working group investigations.

Library News

Mark Sandler wins 2017 Hugh C. Atkinson Memorial Award

Feb 2, 2017, 12:01 PM

Mark Sandler, former Big Ten Academic Alliance Director of Library Initiatives, has been awarded the 2017 Hugh C. Atkinson Memorial Award.

Named in honor of one of the pioneers of library automation, the Atkinson Award recognizes an academic librarian who has made significant contributions in the area of library automation or management and has made notable improvements in library services or research.

“Dr. Mark Sandler is a library leader of great vision whose innovative ideas and persuasive skills carried to fruition two of the most impactful initiatives in the history of digitization,” said Mark Stover, Hugh C. Atkinson Memorial Award Committee chair and dean of the Oviatt Library at California State University, Northridge. “His founding of the Text Creation Partnership brought together a number of academic libraries with Proquest, and this collaboration produced the seminal Early English Books Online database. Mark also championed the Google Book Digitization Project among the member libraries of the influential Big Ten Academic Alliance, thus greatly expanding the corpus of digitized books for both the Google project and the HathiTrust repository.”

“During his long career, Mark was known for his effectiveness as a negotiator, his uncanny ability to bring about consensus on contentious issues, his collaborative professional relationships, his strategic vision, and his far-reaching ideas,” continued Stover. “From his early arguments in favor of cooperative collection development to his unwavering commitment to the ideal of digitizing all U.S. federal documents, Mark Sandler has left his imprint on the world of academic libraries like no one else.”

“It is a tribute to his wide-ranging influence that twelve diverse luminaries of the library world wrote detailed letters supporting his nomination, including several university library deans, the head of a major academic library consortium, a library school faculty member, the vice president of an important library technology vendor, and the executive director of the HathiTrust,” Stover added. “Mark Sandler is, for all the reasons stated above, this year’s highly deserving recipient of the Hugh C. Atkinson Award.”