RLUK is pleased to announce that the Copac Collections Management (CCM) tools project is moving into a new phase, made possible by ongoing funding by Jisc. In 2013 RLUK will be working alongside the Copac team at Mimas, the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield, York (White Rose Consortium), and Senate House Libraries and the Royal College of Surgeons to design and deliver the CCM Tools. The focus of this new phase will be to widen participation whilst also exploring community involvement and user support requirements. The prototype CCM tools will be made available to RLUK member libraries and RLUK will be working with participants to gain feedback on the tools themselves and their needs for training and support provision. This activity will feed into sustainability planning and defining the requirements for any initial CCM tools service.
The Copac Collections Management tools project has now been underway for two years. RLUK has worked to design and deliver the CCM prototype tools and to engage the broader community in understanding their potential. The library community reception to the CCM tools has been overwhelmingly positive and participating libraries have worked with RLUK to identify use cases that demonstrate increased efficiencies in collections management activity.
During the second phase the project’s partners and collaborators provided invaluable feedback as to how CCM could assist with space management, improve decision-making and provide a powerful tool for advocacy work with their user community. They also shared similar strategic concerns about ensuring long-term access to print materials for the research community as a whole, and were strongly supportive of CCM in the longer term, being able to use the tools to avoid the loss of “last copies” nationally.
