A subject-based shared approval plan for consortia purchasing of U.S. university press books

While consortia have been successful in cooperating among members for the purpose of sharing electronic resources, they have struggled to extend that level of cooperation to print materials. OhioLINK is investigating methods to accomplish this goal. This paper expands on that initiative and presents a method for creating a shared approval plan for purchasing U.S. university press titles. It presents a subject-based solution stemming from a prior research initiative with OCLC for establishing financial commitments and randomized ownership of materials to be shared among consortium member libraries. This study projects results of this method by applying a prior year's publication output. The results do not describe a perfect plan but one worth exploring as a means to cooperatively purchase and share print books.

► Investigates a method to reduce duplication and expand content for print materials ► Uses a subject breakdown to determine library financial commitments and ownership. ► Employs randomization to equitably divide titles purchased among participants. ► Projects results by applying a previous year’s set of U.S. university press titles. ► Projected results, although not perfect, show the method is worth attempting.