About SPDS

The Shared Print Decision Suite (SPDS) is a one-stop platform that harnesses technical and social infrastructure of shared print programs to organize key collections data and enable the community to harmonize workflows, timelines, and decision-making and reduce library workload.

SPDS supports WEST's efforts to identify and secure retention commitments for titles that are highly duplicated across member institutions as well as titles that are at risk for permanent content loss due to a lack of electronic access points by gathering and synthesizing data from member institutions and outside sources. WEST's collection model is rooted in data-driven decision making, calculating risk based on a combination of criteria, identifying optimal candidates for archiving through overlap analysis across member holdings, and dictating what actions should be taken during archiving to strengthen the reliability and accuracy of the collections. By automating much of the analysis process WEST is able to perform this analytical work at scale, ingesting holdings from dozens of members and outside sources and making proposals to the member institution with the deepest holdings and optimal storage conditions. WEST is also able to facilitate collaborations between members to fill gaps in archived collections by comparing member holdings and highlighting these connections in reports produced as a result of the SPDS analysis.

For HathiTrust, SPDS supports the administration of retention commitments by allowing users to see what items have been committed for retention within the HathiTrust Shared Print Program and by which retention library. This enables HathiTrust members to share preservation responsibilities and participate in member-driven collection management strategies through coordination. Including HathiTrust retention commitments in a system with WEST commitments allows all users to benefit from collaboration with other national shared print programs.

For more information about using SPDS for WEST, see the SPDS Serial User Manual. For more information about using SPDS for HathiTrust, please refer to the Instructions for Submitting HathiTrust Retention Commitment Records, the full SPDS Monograph User Manual will be available soon.

About WEST

The Western Regional Storage Trust (WEST) is a distributed retrospective print journal repository program serving research libraries, college and university libraries, and library consortia in the Western Region of the United States. Under the WEST program, participating libraries consolidate and validate print journal backfiles at major library storage facilities and at selected campus locations. The resulting shared print archives ensure access to the scholarly print record and allow member institutions to optimize campus library space. This collaborative regional approach to managing library collections represents an important step, when joined with other initiatives, toward development of a network-level shared print archive. For more information about WEST, visit the WEST website.

About HathiTrust Shared Print Program

Rooted in HathiTrust’s mission of preservation, access, and collection stewardship, the HathiTrust Shared Print Program (HTSPP) preserves print and digital collections by linking the two. As the largest monograph shared print program, HTSPP transforms the way HathiTrust members work to think beyond local ownership to collaborate on managing collections, enhance the quality of our collaborative collection, and tackle major strategic challenges around collection management, in a time of restricted space and funding. With our members, we aim to build a comprehensive print and digital archive of published literature from around the world and make it accessible through digital access and interlibrary loan.

Contact SPDS support

Contact the SPDS Support Team with any questions or comments, or if you need assistance.