cooperative collection development programs in law libraries

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Cooperative CollectionDevelopment Programs in LawLibrariesA. Hays Butler JD, MS (LIS) aa Rutgers School of Law , Camden, USAPublished online: 13 Oct 2008.

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Cooperative Collection DevelopmentPrograms in Law Libraries:

Barriers and Benefits

A. Hays Butler

SUMMARY. A number of cooperative collection development pro-grams are described and analyzed in this article. Factors such as econom-ics, geography, and institutional culture are examined and used todiscuss the dynamics of these programs. The author stresses that whilemany of these endeavors are successful they should not be seen as solu-tions to larger overarching problems. [Article copies available for a feefrom The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-342-9678. E-mail ad-dress: <getinfo@haworthpressinc.com> Website: <http://www.HaworthPress.com> © 2001 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]

INTRODUCTION

While library cooperation has become a very hot topic in the profes-sion in the last several years, it is hardly a new idea. Indeed, library co-operation has been a key theme in the profession since the late 1800s.As early as 1886 Melvil Dewey wrote an article on Library Coopera-

A. Hays Butler, JD, MS (LIS), is Associate Professor and Librarian at RutgersSchool of Law-Camden.

The author would like to express his gratitude to all the librarians who furnished in-formation that was used in the preparation of this article. In addition, the author wouldlike to thank Anne Dalesandro, Gloria Chao, and David Batista for their valuable sug-gestions.

[Haworth co-indexing entry note]: “Cooperative Collection Development Programs in Law Libraries:Barriers and Benefits.” Butler, A. Hays. Co-published simultaneously in Legal Reference Services Quarterly(The Haworth Information Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc.) Vol. 20, No. 3, 2001, pp. 13-25; and:Teamwork and Collaboration in Libraries: Tools for Theory and Practice (ed: Marc B. Silverman) TheHaworth Information Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc., 2001, pp. 13-25. Single or multiple copiesof this article are available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service [1-800-342-9678, 9:00 a.m. -5:00 p.m. (EST). E-mail address: getinfo@haworthpressinc.com].

tion which appeared in Library Journal.1 The American Library Asso-ciation formed a committee on library cooperation in the 1880s.2However, while the subject of library cooperation has been of impor-tance throughout the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, the for-mation of library consortia, largely in response to the development ofinformation technology, has become particularly common since theearly 1960s.

Library consortia offer a wide range of services, including union cat-alogs, ILL, document delivery, joint cataloging, cooperative collectiondevelopment, and reciprocal borrowing privileges. The range of organi-zations offering such services has also been impressive, including na-tionwide organizations such as RLIN and OCLC, state cooperativessuch as OhioLink and ILLINET, and regional organizations such as theTriangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN) (involving a group of ac-ademic libraries in North Carolina). While some of these organizations(such as TRLN) involve libraries of one type, many organizations re-flect an impressive degree of multi-type library cooperation.3 In recentyears consortial activities have become even more intense in responseto the development of the Web and economic advantages associatedwith the joint licensing of electronic databases.4 Law libraries havebeen very active in this effort to improve the efficiency of library ser-vices by cooperative activities.5

This article attempts to evaluate the barriers and benefits of coopera-tive collection development programs among law libraries. The focuswill be on print, rather than electronic, materials. While the joint licens-ing of electronic databases is an increasingly important aspect of librarycooperation, cooperative collection development will continue to be asignificant and relevant component of library networking and resourcesharing.

The article examines seven collection development programs cur-rently operating in academic law libraries. With several exceptions,most of these programs are simply one service offered by the coopera-tive. Therefore, the structure and the programs of each cooperative willbe described to provide the context in which the program operates. Theanalysis will then evaluate barriers to the success of the programs aswell as their benefits.6 The discussion will focus on 4 key questions:

• What are the economic circumstances under which cooperative collec-tion development is most likely to work?

• How does the institutional culture of law schools affect the success ofsuch programs?

14 Teamwork and Collaboration in Libraries: Tools for Theory and Practice

• What is the relevance of other factors, such as geographical proximity,similarity of institutional mission, time and organizational structure?

• What is the impact of other forms of resource sharing and networkingservices, such as ILL, on the success of these programs?

After analysis of the seven programs, the article will conclude by de-veloping an overall set of guidelines which will assist law libraries indetermining under what circumstances such programs are most likely tobe successful.

ANALYSIS OF PROGRAMS

The Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN)

TRLN is an example of the participation of law schools in a broaderacademic library network. It began in 1933 as a cooperative programbetween the academic libraries of Duke University (Duke) and the Uni-versity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC).7 TRLN, which nowalso includes North Carolina State and North Carolina Central (NCCentral) Universities, was formed in 1980 and serves the law schools aswell as the other components of these academic institutions with a vari-ety of programs (e.g., cooperative collection development, joint data-base purchase, etc.). The cooperative is governed by a board and anexecutive committee. One of the most important characteristics ofTRLN, as well as most successful cooperative organizations, is the factthat the members are all in close geographic proximity to each otherwhich facilitates cooperation (the campuses of Duke and UNC are only8 miles apart).

While cooperative collection development between the general li-braries has been fairly extensive, according to Mark Bernstein, a Dukelibrarian, cooperation between the law libraries has been somewhatmore limited. In the 1950s, Duke and Chapel Hill, mainly in an effort tosave money, began coordinating their purchase of state administrativecodes. While this program continued for a number of decades, as Lexisand Westlaw added state administrative codes to their systems in thelast 5-10 years, gradually the law schools canceled their subscriptions.

Outside the joint acquisition of administrative codes, other efforts tocooperate by the law libraries have been difficult to implement becauseof differences in their basic missions. A joint committee on cooperative

A. Hays Butler 15

collection development explored the possibility of jointly acquiring for-eign law materials. Duke, whose curriculum includes a significant for-eign law component, was interested in exploring the possibility of jointlyacquiring such law materials. However, the curriculum of NC Centraland UNC do not stress foreign law, and the committee concluded that thedifferent missions of the law schools was a barrier to cooperation in thatarea. This situation illustrates that significantly different curriculum orresearch interests at different academic institutions will generally presenta nearly insurmountable barrier to extensive cooperation in collection de-velopment between the academic institutions.8

The Chicago Legal Academic System (CLAS)

CLAS was founded in 1983 by six Chicago area law schools and hassince expanded to 13 law schools which cover a wider geographicrange. The organization began as a document delivery service and nowprovides reciprocal borrowing and ILL services as well.

As with TRLN, CLAS engaged in efforts over the years to cooperateon collection development with somewhat limited success. The mem-bers of the cooperative, according to Judy Gaskell, the Director ofDePaul Law Library, encountered two major obstacles in attempting tojointly acquire expensive materials. The first obstacle was the difficultyin agreeing which member could count a particular purchase for thepurposes of determining the number of volumes in the collection. Sincevolume counts have been very important for the purpose of evaluatingcollections over the years (including US News & World Report’s lawschool rankings), this problem posed a not inconsiderable barrier to ef-fectively cooperating in collection development.

The second barrier was the difficulty in making sufficient time avail-able to have meetings and administer the cooperative. Indeed, the prob-lem of time was cited by almost all the cooperatives discussed in thisarticle who did not have an independent staff structure but relied on li-brary staff to operate the cooperative as part of their library duties. Whilea few cooperatives discussed in this article were able to operate withoutan independent organization, in general they were engaged in fairly nar-row and well defined cooperative activities.9

Mid-Atlantic Law Library Cooperative (MALLCO)

MALLCO, founded in 1980 and open to law libraries either in or nearPennsylvania, includes 14 libraries, ranging from academic law librar-

ies to state law libraries (such as the State Library of Pennsylvania).This cooperative illustrates the extremely significant role played byfunding, geographical, and organizational issues in determining thesuccess of cooperative collection development.

The importance of funding issues in operating successful cooperativesis demonstrated by Rutgers Law Library-Camden, a MALLCO member.The general purpose of cooperative collection development programs isto cooperate in the purchase of low use, but expensive, materials.10 Whilethis type of cooperation is often of real benefit to libraries, this benefittends to exist in situations where certain underlying conditions are met.The most important condition is that the library has adequate funds topurchase and maintain its core collection and, in addition, is in a positionto acquire additional low use materials. Members can then assist eachother in purchasing these additional low use materials.

Rutgers is a good example of this phenomenon. Rutgers’s annual ac-quisition budget is adequate to maintain its core collection and purchasea modest level of additional (generally low use) materials. However,there is very little left over to participate in cooperative programs withother law schools. Thus, Rutgers has not been in a position to engage injoint acquisition programs with other members of MALLCO.11

In addition to funding issues, the cooperative illustrates several othermajor barriers to cooperative collection development. The organizationis so dispersed geographically–spreading all the way from Pittsburghon its western border to Camden, NJ on its eastern border–that it is verydifficult for members whose libraries are located on the borders of thisregion (such as Camden and Pittsburgh libraries) to travel to meetings.A number of members of the organization cited the difficulty in findingthe time to travel to meetings in Harrisburg, PA from their libraries andto participate in other cooperative activities. MALLCO is thus anotherexample of the difficulty in operating a cooperative which lacks an in-dependent staff to administer the activities of the cooperative, such asNELLCO (discussed below).12

A third difficulty cited by several cooperative members is the lack ofspecific goals agreed on by the members at the outset. Some of the moresuccessful networks (such as TRLN) have agreed on very specific goalswhich are spelled out in their governing documents. Some cooperativeswhich are discussed below do not necessarily have such formal docu-ments but they were formed to accomplish some very specific purposeswhich have been agreed on by their members. The existence of suchspecific goals is essential to the achievement of cooperative collection

A. Hays Butler 17

development (as well as to the achievement of other types of coopera-tive activities).

Northeast Foreign Law Librarian’s Cooperative Group

This small cooperative (founded in 1984), involving foreign legalmaterials and five law schools, is one of the most successful cooperativecollection development programs in the country. The network, an infor-mal group of law libraries including Columbia, Fordham, New YorkUniversity, Pennsylvania, and Yale,13 assigns VCRs (vigorous collect-ing responsibilities) to its members.14 Generally, this division of re-sponsibility is organized on a national basis. For example, Columbiaassumes primary responsibility for Hungarian materials and Penn as-sumes primary responsibility for Polish materials. While these collect-ing responsibilities are informal, the members do rely on each other. Forexample, as Ms. Maria Smolka-Day, who is in charge of foreign and in-ternational law at Biddle Law Library at the University of PennsylvaniaLaw School (Penn), noted, if Penn knows that Columbia is focusing onHungarian law, Penn can forgo collecting in that area.15

The cooperative is a particularly useful case study because it illus-trates the circumstances under which joint acquisition programs arelikely to work as well as their major benefits. The network is a classicexample of improving access to low use–and expensive–materials thatwould otherwise become unavailable. During the 1970s these lawschools were subject to the same financial pressures as all libraries andcanceled many titles. Before the cooperative existed, however, therewas a tendency to cancel the same titles. For example, if a law librarywanted to reduce the cost of Canadian materials, it would probably keepOntario’s reports (which are generally considered the most important),and cancel the reports of other provinces, such as Alberta. The problemwas that, without the existence of a cooperative, there would be a ten-dency for all libraries to make the same collection decisions, in an effortto preserve their core collections. By cooperating, the libraries could as-sure that between all the members, there would be a total set of Cana-dian reports. By dividing responsibilities for collecting materials bycountry, the libraries have accomplished the same objective on a largerscale.

The cooperative also illustrates the importance of a shared sense ofreciprocal obligations. All cooperatives are subject to the conflict be-tween local and cooperative responsibilities, but their survival tends todepend on whether the members share reciprocal obligations. These

pressures are no different in this particular cooperative. For example,Columbia has an excellent collection of Japanese materials (and a fulltime curator responsible for the collection). Penn has a strong collectionof Ukranian materials, probably stronger than would be warrantedsolely by the Law school’s curriculum. The justification for the strengthin Ukranian materials can be at least partially justified by the access toColumbia’s Japanese materials.16

The Chicago/Northwestern Foreign Law Cooperative

This cooperative involving the law libraries of the University of Chi-cago and Northwestern University dates back to the early ’80s. In manyrespects it is a somewhat unique arrangement and demonstrates thatsuch arrangements can take many forms and still be successful. The twolibraries alternate editions of treatises and other secondary materials innon-US common law jurisdictions (e.g., Canada, Australia, etc.). In ad-dition, they cooperate in the purchase of European materials. North-western purchases European materials published in Romancelanguages (e.g., Spanish, French, etc.) and Chicago purchases Germanlegal materials. They committed to purchasing materials at previouslevels of strength.17 The primary impetus to forming the cooperativewas to save space and to save money spent on foreign law materials.

Many of the conditions that are necessary predicates to the operationof successful cooperatives have been present in the Chicago/Northwest-ern arrangement. The two libraries are within 10 miles of each other andcan deliver materials to each other within 24 hours or less. The speedwith which materials can be transferred between libraries tends to re-duce difficulty of accessing materials that are not on-site. Both law li-braries have collections that are quite similar in size and scope. The lawschools have similar commitments to conducting research involving theuse of foreign law materials.

In general, the agreement to share responsibility for European materi-als based on languages has worked more successfully than the agreementto alternate editions of treatises. The latter agreement did not work as wellas hoped because the libraries had no baseline documents identifyingwhat titles were held by both libraries. Instead of performing a detailedanalysis, both libraries assumed they had roughly similar collections oftreatises. Over time, it became apparent that, in fact, the two collectionswere somewhat different. Both libraries alternated editions of treatises intheir collections, but, occasionally, one of the libraries wouldn’t have atreatise in the other library’s collection, and therefore wouldn’t update it.

A. Hays Butler 19

The two libraries are taking steps to rectify this problem by exchanginglists of treatises held by the libraries and then doing comparisons in orderto discover gaps in coverage and areas of unnecessary duplication. Thisexperience demonstrates the importance of collecting necessary data tosupport any collection sharing arrangement between two law libraries.18

Joint Serial Acquisition Programs

The programs previously discussed involved efforts to share gener-ally in the costs of primary and secondary materials of various kinds. Incontrast, the programs described in this section involved efforts to co-operate in the acquisition of serials. The first program involved a pro-posal by the Cooperative Collection Development Committee of theNew England Law Library Consortium (NELLCO). Ultimately,NELLCO decided not to proceed with the committee’s proposal butboth the proposal and the reasons for its rejection are instructive. Thesecond program involved an agreement between Gonzaga, Idaho, andMontana Law Libraries that has been in place successfully for a numberof years and provides an interesting contrast to NELLCO’s situation.

NELLCO is probably the most successful consortium of law librariesin the United States, and is generally an example of how law libraries, inthe words of its mission statement, can “pool their strengths to add toand enhance the essential services and vitality of their member organi-zations.” It was founded in 1983 and currently has 25 members (primar-ily academic law libraries, whose primary clientele consists of faculty,students, and alumni). The organization provides a large array of ser-vices to its members, including ILL, joint purchase of electronic data-bases, networking, as well as many others. NELLCO has an ExecutiveBoard and a Director who implements the policies determined by theBoard and is funded by fees contributed by its members.

As with many cooperatives, the most difficult challenge forNELLCO has been in the area of cooperative collection development.While its efforts in this area have been somewhat limited, the proposalpresented to the Board by its Cooperative Collection DevelopmentCommittee in the early ’90s is extremely interesting and worth study-ing. The Committee was instructed to prepare a list of “lesser-used” pe-riodicals so that the group could “consider a mechanism for sharing thecost of subscribing to them.”19 The three issues before the Committeewere developing a list of titles whose cost could be shared, determiningan appropriate mechanism for sharing their cost, and providing amethod for guaranteeing access to the materials. After months of study,

the Committee developed a list of 206 titles to suggest as appropriate forcancellation. The titles were listed in the Index to Legal Periodicals andwere not available in Westlaw. The Committee also proposed that the ti-tles would be held by the Social Law Library in Boston and the Univer-sity of Connecticut Law Library which would serve as documentdelivery centers for the Consortium. The Committee estimated that theproposal would save each library approximately $17,066 per year (in1993 dollars).

Ultimately the proposal was not adopted by NELLCO, and the rea-sons for this illustrate some of the barriers to this type of arrangement. Anumber of NELLCO members were concerned that (1) some facultymight object to not having copies of selected law reviews on site andthat (2) it would now be necessary to pay for interlibrary loan transac-tions (despite the savings realized from not subscribing, binding ormaintaining the titles that had been canceled). While this experiencedemonstrates that the feasibility of all cooperative arrangements is verymuch driven in academic institutions by their acceptability to the fac-ulty, it is possible that this proposal would fare better today. As morejournals have become available online, the culture that was prevalent inthe early 1990s that libraries must own paper copies of all journals maybe diminishing.

The fact that such objections need not always bar the development ofsuch sharing arrangements is demonstrated by the cooperative serialagreement entered by Gonzaga and the two other western schoolswhich has been successfully in place for a number of years. The threeschools entered an agreement which provided that the three librarieswould alternate the purchase of new titles of US law reviews. The pur-pose of the agreement was to assure that all new titles of US law reviewswould be available among the three member libraries. The agreementwas entered into 4-5 years ago and has operated successfully since thattime.

All the law schools owned the major law reviews which constitute avery important part of the “core” collection of any law school library. Theagreement represents a classic cooperative collection developmentagreement in which the libraries attempt to spread the cost of owning lowuse materials, in this case new titles and specialty journals. The facultyobjections present in the NELLCO situation were not an obstacle amongthese institutions (showing that institutional barriers are very fact andtime specific). While the individual subscription cost of owning these ti-tles is relatively low, the total cost of owning these journals, including the

A. Hays Butler 21

cost of maintaining the journals on the shelves, binding, and processing,while difficult to calculate exactly, are not inconsiderable.

CONCLUSION

Cooperation is inherent in the nature of law libraries. The overridingmission of law librarianship as a profession is to provide efficient andeffective access to legal resources. Resource sharing and networkinghave always been important tools in successfully achieving this mis-sion. The profession has developed a wide variety of networking ser-vices and techniques. Many of these methods, such as ILL, have provento be extremely effective and have become essentially universal in all li-braries in the United States.

As material costs increased in the 1970s and 1980s and budgets de-clined, law libraries turned to joint acquisition programs to reduce theircosts. However, as the experiences of the law libraries discussed in thisarticle demonstrate, this technique, while of value in some circum-stances, is simply not a general panacea and, in fact, has proven to begenerally a far less effective method of resource sharing than othermethods of networking such as joint cataloging and ILL.

There are three overriding factors limiting the use of resource shar-ing. The first factor, and perhaps the most important, is the institutionalculture in which the law library exists. In law schools placing a highvalue on research, the needs are understandably different with a greaterlikelihood the faculty will demand access to needed titles on the pre-mises. Moreover, faculty members generally want the law school’s ac-quisitions budget to be spent on materials they need for their research,rather than on materials that would be useful to another institution. Thefact that the academic community as a whole might benefit from a re-source sharing arrangement will not be the central concern of any par-ticular faculty member who is primarily concerned with his ownresearch. Thus, the ad hoc concerns of individual faculty members tendto drive acquisition budgets rather than an overall collection develop-ment policy.

The second major obstacle to these programs is economic. While allschools, regardless of relative affluence, have been affected by risingcosts and declining budgets, obviously less affluent institutions will bein less of a position to purchase low use materials in cooperation withother law schools. While such schools may be able to purchase theircore collection and even some low use materials, the inability to assume

reciprocal obligations in purchasing low use materials will tend to makeany significant degree of cooperation far more difficult.

A third circumstance limiting this form of resource sharing is the ex-istence of extremely efficient and effective ILL services which have de-veloped as a result of modern information technology. Such servicesinclude not only nationwide services (e.g., RLIN and OCLC) but alsoregional networks such as OhioLink (which connects 90 academic in-stitutions in Ohio). By providing libraries with access to literally mil-lions of items which can be transferred anywhere in the US in 2-5 daysor even in hours via fax, some of the traditional benefits of cooperativecollection development have substantially decreased.

As noted throughout this analysis, in addition to such institutional,technological, and economic factors, many other barriers exist to coop-eration. The absence of geographical proximity and similarity in mis-sion, as well as the lack of necessary data and sufficient leadership orcoordination–all these circumstances stand in the way of making theseprograms work. While all the programs discussed in this article were se-rious efforts to take advantage of the potential savings inherent in coop-eration, these barriers generally limited the results.

To be sure, some of the programs discussed herein have been suc-cessful, such as the Northeast Foreign Law Cooperative, the serials co-operative arrangement between Gonzaga, Montana, and Idaho lawschools, and the Northwestern/Chicago foreign law joint acquisitionprogram. The point is not that cooperative collection development pro-grams always fail or have no value. They may on occasion work ex-tremely well.20 The point is rather that it is extremely important torealize that they are not a general panacea to the problems of decliningbudgets and rising costs, but rather limited solutions that may be em-ployed occasionally, not so much to reduce costs, as to make the li-brary’s existing resources go further in certain areas and to provideaccess to a broader range of materials. As long as libraries keep theselimitations firmly in mind and selectively use this form of resourcesharing in appropriately limited ways, the technique will continue to bea useful option in the librarian’s general arsenal of networking tools.

1. For a good history of library consortia in the U.S. since the late 1800s, see JamesJ. Kopp, Library Consortia and Information Technology: the Past, the Present, thePromise, 17 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND LIBRARIES, March 1998, 7-12.

2. Id.

A. Hays Butler 23

3. For a discussion of various types of cooperatives, see Patricia Bril, CooperativeCollection Development: Progress from Apotheosis to Reality, in COLLECTIONMANAGEMENT IN ACADEMIC LIBRARIES 235 (Clare Jenkins and Mary Morley eds.,1991).

4. For an excellent article on the importance of the joint licensing of electronic da-tabases, see Norman Oder, Consortia Hit Critical Mass, 125 LIBRARY J., February 1,2000, 48-51. One indication of the importance of consortial activities at the presenttime was the formation of the International Coalition of Library Consortia in 1996, aninternational organization of library consortia from around the world. See Interna-tional Coalition of Library Consortia (http://www.library.yale.edu/consortia).

5. The American Association of Law Libraries publishes a list of law library con-sortia in the United States. The 1998-99 membership list indicates there are currently19 active law library consortia in the U.S.

6. An excellent general discussion of barriers to cooperative collection develop-ment can be found in G. EDWARD EVANS, DEVELOPING LIBRARY AND INFORMATIONCENTER COLLECTIONS, 427-461 (1995).

7. The TRLN network is discussed in Patricia Bril, Cooperative Collection Devel-opment: Progress from Apotheosis to Reality, in COLLECTION MANAGEMENT INACADEMIC LIBRARIES 235, 244 (Clare Jenkins and Mary Morley eds., 1991).

8. This barrier and others to cooperative collection development are discussed inPamela Zager, CD-ROMS in Texas Consortia in 1 ADVANCES IN LIBRARY RESOURCESHARING 74-85 (Jennifer Cargill and Diane J. Graves eds., 1990).

9. The development of ILLINET, a statewide cooperative in Illinois consisting of46 academic libraries, has also reduced the impetus for cooperative collection develop-ment in the Chicago area. This system provides statewide ILL and delivery serviceswhich are extremely fast and effective. Such organizations have reduced the need forcooperative collection development by replacing ownership of materials with access tomaterials utilizing various forms of modern information technology such as compre-hensive online union catalogs, and high speed delivery systems such as ARIAL andfax.

10. See Ann Thompson, Getting into a Cooperative Mode: Making CooperativeCollection Development Work, in COLLECTION MANAGEMENT IN THE 1990S 127 (Jo-seph J. Branin ed., 1993).

11. “Networks are a phenomenon of relative affluence. They cannot be created un-less each member . . . has sufficient resources of time staff, materials, and basic equip-ment and supplies to cooperate.” Boyd Rayward, Local Node in MULTIPLE LIBRARYCOOPERATIVES 66 (B. Hamilton and W.B. Ernst eds.1977), quoted in Evans supranote 6 at p. 431.

12. For a general discussion of issues such as geographical proximity and lack ofcomparable resources, see Joe A. Hewitt and John S. Shipman, Cooperative CollectionDevelopment Among Research Libraries in the Age of Networking: Report of a Surveyof ARL Libraries in 1 ADVANCES IN LIBRARY AUTOMATION AND NETWORKING 189(1987).

13. The cooperative is described in detail in Chapter 2 and Appendix II in RICHARDA. DANNER AND MARIE-LOUISE H. BERNAL INTRODUCTION TO FOREIGN LEGALSYSTEMS (1994).

14. Appendix II of INTRODUCTION TO FOREIGN LEGAL SYSTEMS, id at 224, de-scribes the nature of the obligation undertaken by the members of the cooperative as fol-lows: “The group has assigned a number of VCRs (vigorous collecting responsibilities),

as opposed to the RLG PCRs (primary collecting responsibilities), to its respective mem-bers. Like the PCRs, these remain largely undefined, and were assigned only within thepast four or five years. For the most part, the respective institutions committed them-selves to maintaining known collection strengths, previously assigned RLG PCRs, orknown faculty interests.” The list of all the countries assigned to the five law schools isextremely comprehensive, although some areas are not covered by any law school.

15. One of the most interesting features of this cooperative is its informality. Whilethe particular VCRs assigned to each member are written down, the cooperative has noformal written agreement governing its obligations. Even the obligations assumed bythe members to collect in particular areas are quite informal and flexible. A library isfree, for example, to decide to change its collection in a particular area if circumstanceschange. This flexibility was described by Ms. Smolka-Day as one of the major reasonsfor the success of the cooperative over the years.

16. While the fact that all members are committed to collecting foreign law materi-als and assume reciprocal obligations to each other in terms of collecting such material,Ms. Smolka-Day noted that the Cooperative doesn’t always demand an exact quid proquo. For example, Fordham’s curriculum and research activities are less intensively fo-cused on foreign law than some of the other members of the cooperative, and the lawschool, according to Ms. Smolka-Day, is not expected to collect on the same level asthe other institutions in the organization. While all members are expected to contributeto the cooperative, their contributions do not have to be equal.

17. Most of the information concerning this cooperative was gathered in a joint in-terview with Judy Wright, Director of the Chicago Law Library, and Chris Simoni, Di-rector of the Northwestern Law Library.

18. The development of library management systems which facilitate the collectionand sharing of bibliographic data have enormously improved the ability of libraries toimplement this type of agreement and avoid the data collection problems experiencedby these two libraries.

19. Memorandum from Robert Buckwalter to NELLCO Cooperative CollectionDevelopment Committee 1 (Oct. 12, 1992). The description of this cooperative serialsproject is based on a series of memorandums prepared by members of the CooperativeCollection Development Committee that were very helpfully furnished to the author bya member of the Committee.

20. For successful cooperatives other than law schools, see COORDINATINGCOOPERATIVE COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT (Wilson Luquire ed., 1985).

A. Hays Butler 25

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