Defining stack management

The Australian Council of State Libraries (CASL) established a Stack Management Working Group as a forum for discussion and exchange of information about stack management issues to support the formulation of guidelines and standards and the development of staff skills. To support this process, the Working Group plans to develop a range of issues papers, the first being a paper that defines the concept of 'stack management.' As the Working Group found few references to stack management in the literature, it decided to develop the definition from a core list of functions carried out by CASL stack managers and their staff across a range of levels in the National and State Libraries. This process highlighted that stack management functions are client focused, impacting on organizational decision making at strategic and operational levels, and that future stack management systems will need to embrace hybrid print-digital collections.