2025 EBSCO User Group

In partnership with GOBI, the Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation (IPLC) launched an ambitious collaborative collection development project in 2021. Informed by the findings of three prior projects, this pilot sought to explore practical ways in which the thirteen members of the Confederation could engage in prospective collection development in support of a vision to treat the sum of our local collections as one great collection. This presentation will explain how the project was scoped and managed and will provide a summary of the outcomes of a two-year pilot purchasing frontlist print Brill monographs through GOBI. Attendees will journey with IPLC through zones of ambiguity and discover differences between coordinated and collaborative approaches to collection development. The presenters will share IPLC’s concept of strategic duplication; metrics for identifying the number of copies needed for local use, preservation, and lending; our process for consensus building and decision-making; and governance models for collaborative collection projects and programs. We will also share our ideas on evolving the project to include ebooks by leveraging GOBI solutions and expertise.