Shared Library Collection: Georgia Tech And Emory University

Out of the Stacks

Georgia Tech and Emory's plan to build shared library collection begins in earnest this month. Partnership could lay the foundation for library consortium in Atlanta area.

Carl Straumsheim | January 13, 2016

If you take the books out of a library, is it still a library?
That’s the question the Georgia Institute of Technology pondered -- and eventually answered in the affirmative -- when administrators, faculty members and librarians there in 2013 began to define their vision of what the institute’s library should look like by 2020.
The most symbolic part of that transition is starting this month. Virtually all of the books in Georgia Tech’s collection -- more than 95 percent of them -- are headed to a cold storage facility, creating a shared collection with neighboring Emory University. But the more prominent changes are less visible, including a transformation of the library from a “big box filled with books” to a service organization with a large online presence. The institute’s partnership with Emory could even lay the foundation for a library consortium in the Atlanta area.

The Emory-Georgia Tech Library Service Center will house a shared collection of materials available to students, faculty and staff of both institutions. Source: http://news.emory.edu/stories/2014/11/upress_library_service_center/thumbs/library_services_center-1_hires.jpg

<more at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/01/13/georgia-tech-emory-university-begin-work-tie-libraries-together; related links: http://renewal.library.gatech.edu/ (Georgia Tech Library. Library Renewal) and http://news.emory.edu/stories/2014/11/upress_library_service_center/index.html (Emory, Georgia Tech to open joint Library Service Center. November 19, 2014)>